So my alumni club's game was Saturday evening. And it was all-around shitty -- not just the game, not just the turnout, but the treatment I got from the bar.
First of all, I did not see any of the regular waitresses who worked our tables in previous watches. Therefore there was no one there to come up to us and say, "Hey, how are you doing? Need help moving the tables?"
Instead there was this one huge guy behind the bar. I've seen him before; I even saw him earlier this week when I wanted to pop in and talk to the owner. At least he was familiar, and he even changed the channels to our game when the time came. That's good.
But then the asshole came out of him. I was hanging up my banner when he came over and said I couldn't do that. Another alumni association has dibs on branding, I guess, and this is the first time I was forbidden to hang up the banner. "Came straight from the owner," bartender said. Oh, the owner? The guy who's friends with my predecessor, the guy who I have e-mailed once a week the last two weeks, the guy who has not replied to either e-mail, the guy who's never there when I drop by (and pay to eat and drink there, by the way) -- out of the blue he gave the order that I cannot do what I have been doing the past three years. That guy?
It got worse. No one showed up. Then, just before kickoff, the Vice-President shows up. Thank God for him. I just assumed that we were going to have the same turnout that we had at the beginning of the year, and so I took it upon myself to turn the tables around and push them together so I wouldn't bother the waitstaff. But I had three tables all to myself, none of the seats occupied. I was just standing there with my dick in my hands. It's not as if we needed all those tables for two guys, but at least I wasn't lonely.
So the asshole bartender obviously saw this and just turned one of the TVs to another game. Hey, we're using that! That's kind of rude, wasn't it? Yes, absolutely ... but I couldn't do a fucking thing about it because we both saw that no one from my club was coming, so why in the hell would we need two televisions? Of course no one has just unilaterally made the decision to take a set away from us, but I couldn't do anything about it. Yeah, this guy wanted me to respect his authoritah!
So the game continues and we sit there, just the two of us, surrounding by our imaginary friends across three tables. This asshole bartender must have been shaking his head and going, "What the fuck are these two stupid dicks doing taking all these seats?" I felt so goddamn stupid there, expecting a party where no one decided to come. It was humiliating, even emasculating.
I didn't say as much to the VP, but I did ask questions. "Did you see my post on Facebook?" "Did you get my e-mail blast about tonight?" (He said yes to both.) So I was wondering why in the fuck didn't anybody show up. Did people not get the message? Was it the loss to Boston College followed by the late start time last week? (Didn't think that would be the issue since Saturday's game began at the much more hospitable time of 6:30, plus Oregon, purportedly the class of the Pac-12, was upset Thursday by Arizona.) Is it the suddenly cooler weather? Or, are there more ulterior motives at play?
I imagined that some people would go, "Yeah, well, I heard that the bar is suddenly a Michigan bar. Is that true?" And I would have to explain that the bar's big enough for both of us. Then I wonder who would spread such a malicious rumor. Man, could it be the person or people who complained about me to my predecessor? Could that person try to sabotage me and my tenure here? Is that the reason why no one's coming?
Is it me? Do people not like me? I don't think I'm that weird of a guy, I'm just ... me. I don't think people would not go watch with us because of me; that would be stupid. Could it?
Well, thank Buddha, then, that a new member of the club stopped by before halftime with her father. She's been to almost every one, now that I think about it. She's been the club's MVP. Yes, four's not two dozen, and they left early in the fourth quarter. But it's a lot better than four. And I need to thank her for snapping the picture. For some goddamn reason my iPhone can't take pictures anymore.
So the night got worse with the loss, of course. Goddamn, how in the hell do you let Arizona St. catch a fucking Hail Mary?! There were a couple of Sun Devils fans there. They gave me the business after the miracle win. All I could do was close my eyes and give them the finger, both of them. Have to admit, they were good sports about my obscene gesture; I shook the hand of one after they left. This might sound weird, but being able to flick two guys off for real has alleviated my obsessive compulsion to give the finger when I'm acting out. I've been doing that a lot as a result of the stress I'm feeling at work, to the point where I find myself just giving the finger whenever I think about things while I'm driving, and of course there probably is no worse time to give the finger than behind the wheel, at least when you don't have a gun. After tonight, I'm kind of good with the finger-giving, especially since I had a "genuine" reason to deploy them.
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So now I'm under the gun. It appears as if the owner of the bar is rolling up the welcome mat, and his minions have no qualms of being terse to me. I need to talk to the guy, but he's been giving me radio silence. And even if I could talk to him, I have no leverage because only four people fucking showed up. I'll say that the place was quiet, so they could have used all the business they could get. But Michigan's giving the owner money, money we can't afford.
Meanwhile I'm losing all the juice that I got over the summer, and I don't know fucking why, and I don't know how to fix it. And on top of all that our team lost on what was the top play on Saturday night's "Sportscenter," our team's going nowhere, no one likes the Head Coach, and the next game Saturday kicks off at 9:30 at night. There's going to be two people there, and once again I'll be humiliated.
Why the fuck do I do this?
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