Sunday 24th May 2009 – Stroppy Barmaids

It is a holiday weekend, and, as is the custom across the world, the police are out in force to stop people killing themselves and each other.  In this case it is the Montana Highway Patrol and the Glasgow Police.  The Highway Patrol are out looking for 'DUI's (Driving Under the Influence). The city police are running a sting operation to check on under-age drinking (that's 21 here).

The barmaid is in a highly nervous state.  Almost everyone who asks for a drink is 'carded' (asked for proof of age, usually a driver's licence).  Montana Licences have a curious matt finish to them.  The barmaid is not young, and has difficulty reading them.  Out-of-state licences are more readable, but she doesn't know where to look for the date-of-birth.  All this takes time, and everyone is getting fractious.

It's not just that it's a holiday weekend: it's high school graduation as well.  So lots of older siblings are back from college for the ceremony.  The barmaid has not seen them for a year or two.  She can usually check they are who the licence says they are by asking after their cousins or their sisters or their aunts.

Apparently, young people can be used as in a sting operation, to catch bars who don't check.  And it's not just the liquor licence, or a fine for the establishment that's at stake:  the barmaid will get fined as well.  They take their under-age drinking seriously here.  I guess the young people get round it just as easily here as they do elsewhere.

I asked about the drink-driving limit.  I expected the '5' or '8' answer.  I  think '5' is strict, and '8' is moderate.  The actual numbers can vary quite a lot, from 50 to 0.05 (or 80 to 0.08) depending on what units the law is couched in.  The answer was not what I expected.  First they didn't know the number, but second, they thought it was "about two beers an hour", which not anything like the answer I expected, but is a strangely sensible way to look at it.  I expect they know that that applies to a standard sized person with a standard-functioning liver.

 

The day had started disastrously, with an attempt to video the Graduation Ceremony.  The black forces of the universe were in post-graduate mode: they got the band to play for a full fifteen minutes, knowing I liked to keep a piece of music complete, to make the editing easier; they hid my spare tape, so I missed the climax of the ceremony; and they throttled the editing software, knowing full-well I hadn't brought the wherewithal to reinstall it.  Back to another drawing board.