Lying will not get you anywhere

The evening was purring along like a well-oiled, smoothly tuned machine. There’s a theory that the more cylinders there are in a car, the smoother the engine runs. More is better, right? But as a person who has worked in the service business for a long time, I have learned that the more variables there are, the more chances there are for things to go wrong.

Bartenders tend to be cynical. For us, the glass is always half empty; they have to be, because nobody is going to ask for another if they’re half full.

There were eight people waiting for seats at the bar. Six had checked in, two hadn’t. In fact, not only had the two not checked in, but they also avoided eye contact — not to mention verbal contact — at all attempts. It didn’t take a pessimist to realize where the problem was going to be.

“Can’t you do something?” people ask hostesses all the time. Like what? Cancel someone else’s reservation? Or let you cut in front of them?

Two seated people produced a credit card. The six people who knew they were next didn’t move, knowing that things were going to come their way no matter what. The two people who had avoided contact, however, inched closer.

“I’m sorry,” I said to the couple positioning themselves. “We have people waiting for these seats.”

“We were here before them,” said the woman.

It was lie No. 1.

There are some people who believe that by telling their truth they make it true for everyone. The problem is that sometimes your personal truth isn’t the truth of the situation. It takes a bigger person to admit that maybe they are mistaken.

“We were here before you,” said one of the other couples waiting. That should probably have been the end of it. It wasn’t.

“This is ridiculous, we have been waiting for an hour and a half,” the eye and verbal avoidant couple said.

Lie No. 2.

Nobody had been waiting for an hour and a half, not even the people sitting at the bar paying their tab. It’s easy enough to tell these days because computers time stamp everything. And the time stamp on the check I was processing was 45 minutes old. So, if they had been waiting for as long as they said, it would have been twice as long as the people sitting. A smart person once said that time is relative.

What they meant was that time is relative to the observer. That smart person, however, failed to mention one important aspect: What if the observer is wrong? Worse yet, what if they are being deliberately wrong?

The manager got involved. She explained that yes, it was first-come, first-served, but the bartenders kept track of who was first.

“We come here all the time, and we have never heard of this.”

Lie No. 3.

That policy has been in effect for at least five years. If you do come here “all the time,” you would probably know that. These days, not only do computers time stamp things but they also keep track of all kinds of other things, like how many times you actually do come here. In fact, in some cases, it’s possible to see what it was that you had for dinner the last time you were here.

“Nobody told us to check in.”

Lie No. 4.

When the couple had checked in on the availability of a table, putting their name down 20 minutes ago, they were told by the hostess that if they wanted a seat at the bar, to be sure and check in with the bartenders — just like she had told the previous six people waiting.

“The bartenders never looked up.”

Lie No. 5.

How did we know about the six other people? But lies like these aren’t designed to find the truth — they are designed to create an advantage. And many people seek an advantage in restaurant settings.

“How do we avoid standing in line?” ask people at the trendy hotspot.

“Can’t you do something?” people ask hostesses all the time. Like what? Cancel someone else’s reservation? Or let you cut in front of them? “Of course not,” they will say, but what they really mean is yes. They just don’t want to say it out loud.

“We are never coming back here.”

Lie No. 6.

If only this one was true, but alas, it never is.

Leaving me with these thoughts:

• “I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you,” wrote Friedrich Nietzsche.

• How many wrongs make a right? Well, it ain’t six.

• “Lying makes a problem part of the future; truth makes a problem part of the past,” said basketball coach Rick Pitino.

• “I don’t care, I got what I wanted,” might be the most defining, and most unfortunate, characterization of the modern era.

Jeff Burkhart is the author of “Twenty

Years Behind Bars: The Spirited Adventures of a Real Bartender, Vol. I and II,” the host of the Barfly Podcast on iTunes and an awardwinning bartender at a local restaurant. Follow him at jeffburkhart. net and contact him at jeffbarflyIJ@outlook.com