Lies.

Lying is wrong. It's beyond wrong. Pretty sure God forbids lying in that Bible, ya know? But sometimes lying is awesome.

Let's say for instance you're... a bartender. A bartender in a stupid restaurant with stupid customers who ask you stupid fucking questions all the time. An older couple sits at the bar to have a few drinks. Once you serve them, they continue to talk to you, asking you questions about the building, your job, your life, your co-workers. You get fed up. Knee-jerk reaction? Lying.

This is when lying is awesome.

"Now, are all of you working here part-time? Full-time? Students? What's your story? What's your life about? Your long-term goals? Are you single? Living in sin? A part-time magician? Who are you?"

Once I discovered the art of lying in these situations, these questions became so awesome to answer, almost to the point where I actually look forward to people asking them. In the past, I've been an aspiring astronaut (inspired by Sally Ride, naturally), a music-performance student (majoring in bagpipes, what else?), a florist, a bird-watcher, and, my personal favorite, a blimp driver. (All right, I'm lying, the blimp driver situation was out at a bar. But that happened, and I was really really awesome about it.)

Tonight I told my customers that all of the people who work front of the house are old friends from college; we all needed jobs at the same time that there was a mass exodus from the restaurant and we happened to get hired all at the same time. Once I'd said that everyone who worked FOH was related to someone in the kitchen. Crazy coincidence, right?? I mean, it makes sense when you realize that we have three line cooks, one prep cook, an outlet chef, and a sous chef. That's only six people! And you know, we're all native Minnesotans, except for the sous chef and that server over there, they're a brother and sister from Cleveland. (Those customers were particularly mesmerized by my bullshit.)

I would never lie to a customer about anything like where the bathrooms are located (or at least not until I quit), but I tell you, I absolutely love that post-lie moment, one after you've told an outlandish, outrageous lie, when the adrenaline kicks in. Are they going to call me out? Are they going to ask a question I'm not going to be able to answer and totally stump me? Fortunately these haven't happened yet. I've narrowly escaped a few close calls, but my tall tales are quite superb, if I do say so myself.


They're lying too, just different kind.