Barney's Greatest Hits - September 30th

As promised, I’m giving you Barney’s Greatest Hits because I work too much and have no good recent drinking stories (that and the fact that I can drink liquor for 5 hours straight and still make sound decisions. It’s hard to do dumb shit when it takes you 8 hours to get to that state). And in honor of this one year anniversary of it, here’s a scenario that would only happen to me (It’s not that this is such a great story that the date sticks out in my head. It’s that my job requires me to work around the government fiscal year (that goes October 1-September 30) so the end of the year is crazy. September 30th is always a day for celebration as long as I keep this current, soul destroying job).
I’m at work on a Saturday and we’re already planning a night out for everyone on our project (there’s 35 people on the project, 10 under the age of 30). We plan on meeting up at 8 since people are supposed to start getting off at 7. Me and Em leave at 5:30 and start immediately drinking shots of vodka while chasing with beers. We weren’t as bad as Stan Man who left at 3 to go to a concert (and have absinthe. More on that later). Around 8 people start showing up and we’re pretty hammered. Doh Boy (from West Virginia horse racing fame) buys us a shot of sambuka. I take it because its my policy to never to refuse alcohol, but sambuka is a candidate to be eventually be my first violation. I make several comments, most of which involve the word “bullshit” and this is the last time I had a clear memory of this night.
We end up leaving the first bar and going to another. Stan Man shows up and his first words are, “Dude, I’m so fucked up, I’m on absinthe.” I think my reaction was, well, the bar has officially been raised. Let’s do shots. I’m not too sure of that because it becomes hazy at this point. I do know that Doh Boy came with us to this establishment that has over 300 beers for sale and bought the first round. Not just any beer, but cinnamon flavored beer. That set me off. Already pissed about the sambuka, I was honestly considering fighting the man because of this cinnamon beer. So like any potential pugulent, I started throwing ice at him. Me and Stan Man start throwing ice from a random ice chest that I assume was used for storing beer. Empty at this point in the night, its being used to make Doh Boy’s life a living hell.
That’s when the security got involved. We were told to “cut it out” before we were “removed from the establishment”. Me and Stan Man considered this an affront to our sobriety and a challenge. So picture this: Barney, in a state that is altered by 5 hours of hard drinking (By my standards. Shots every 20 minutes chased with beers will get me to bad decision status in 4 hours. It just requires a lot of fucking shots), and Stan Man, fucked up off absinthe. We’re trying to play it cool in front of security who obviously have a hard on to stop people from throwing ice. But we’re motherfuckin’ Barney and Stan Man, we don’t play by they’re so called “rules”. So we continue throwing ice at Doh Boy. This anger security and we are escorted from the ice area (note: We were not thrown out of the establishment because we’re motherfuckin’ Barney and Stan Man. We’ve get preferential treatment at this bar, most notably the time we took a table for 6 over a group of six because the waiter knew us, and knew together, we’d spend more than the six combined. We have respect at a bar that serves 200 people a night.) I continue making cinnamon beer jokes to Doh Boy and his girlfriend. A year later and I still hate that cinnamon fuckin’ beer.
Eventually we leave the bar and Stan Man, Em and I are on the train home. Stan Man is scaring homeless people at this point with his incessant rants about the company we work for and how he’s going to leave (apparently, this was absinthe induced, which he continually reminded us of: “Dude, I’m on absinthe.”). Me and Em leave the train in a manner described later as “blissful” by the Stan Man (not that he remembers, this is from a camera phone recollection.) We go back to her place and the next thing I know, its 11 am and I’m watching a re-run of Best Week Ever.
That’s when I get a call from my manager which I ignore and let go to voicemail. Because she’s not considerate of others, she leaves an ominous voicemail that is up to you to interpret: “Barney, call me back as soon as you get this.” Considering the night I had and the fact that management knew of this activity and categorized it as “team building”, I’m assuming the worst. My first thought is that some one else had a really rough night and is in the hospital. My second thought is that other people saw me and assumed the worst, that I was in a ditch somewhere and management was just concerned about my well being (this pissed me off because I’m motherfuckin’ Barney. I walk off bad nights like I walk off multiple sprained ankles in the same game. Give me some credit.).
So being the fool that I am, I call back assuming that I’m just checking in to make sure I’m alive. Contrary to my original assumption, I’m being asked to meet this manager at our office because she’s lost her badge and needs someone to get her into the building. Thus, she is asking for my address so she can stop by my apartment to pick up my badge. This presents a problem, considering I’m not at my apartment and I’m at a coworkers place in an area I’m not familiar with. So the game began.
Being as hungover as possible, I began to play stupid with someone who was lucid and sober. Mistake # 1. There was only so long I could play the dedicated employee who will meet you at the office to let you in on my day off (plus, this was the perfect out for an awkward situation. “Sorry, gotta go, they need me at work.”) Unfortunately, my enthusiasm for going back to work gave me away. Eventually it got to the point where she was like “Barney, just give me your address, I have (insert some GPS feature here) and will be by in 30 minutes.”
Now she’s calling my bullshit and I have no response. I have to respond, “I’m not at my house, I’m near (insert random metro station here).” The response, “Hold on, I have a call on the other line…Ok Barney, I talked to Joe Blow, he has VPN access, I’ll just do what I need to do at his house. See you tomorrow.”
Relieved that I didn’t have to go to work, I immediately set out cursing my managers name while trying to figure out how I was going to leave gracefully (if anything is my forte, it’s leaving gracefully). Two hours later, I made my escape (as graceful as could be. I think it involved multiple trips to the bathroom after attempting to eat Domino’s pizza. I’m so graceful, I should be a baller-fucking-ina ).
Content that I had negotiated a sticky situation, I went into work on Monday pretty confident. Sure, I had been demolished in front of co-workers, but that wasn’t anything new. I wasn’t hungover on Monday, so I could take anything they could dish out about my drinking habits. Unfortunately, I wasn’t prepared for the onslaught that was about to begin as soon as I sat down at my desk:
“Barney, when I called, you were at (insert random metro station here)?
“Why, yes, I was.” (I’m recollecting my responses here are more dignified)
“Doesn’t Em live right by (insert random metro station)?”
“(In my brain: “Motherfucking bitch. How the fuck did you know that? I will kill your children and piss on their remains) Why yes, it is.”
“HAHHAHAHA, have a fun night, Barney?”
She then proceeded to talk on IM to Em about her Saturday night, which was great. There’s nothing that bolsters a woman’s self-esteem like being called the de-facto office slut (Not that she was. I’m just saying getting called out like that does things to women. At least I think it does. My insight into women is about as vast as my knowledge of why there are communist strippers). So thanks to my douche bag manager, I now have to do a walk of shame around the office and any chance of getting some in the future is put on hold because its not good for appearences, all because I couldn’t hold on 15 seconds longer for Joe Blow with VPN access to call back. Ain’t that my luck?