I wandered the desert this summer to arrive at the oasis of becoming a bartender in a high volume Appalachian tourist town.

As of two days ago I was fired.

For reference of the jobs I’ve held this year, I’ve been fired from two and quit one.

Before the details and the circumstances surrounding my termination come up (and they will not disappoint), I’m going to take an opportunity to say I’m out of ideas. I don’t have a college degree yet, and for the remainder of this month I am stuck in classes 5 days a week unable to work a full time job. I cannot get a job that requires the degree I do not have.

At the same time, I don’t see a future working in the food/beverage industry especially when there’s alcohol involved. Given the history of these blog posts, you the reader can clearly see I’ve exhausted many resources. It’s wearing on me. This constant cycle of jacking all trades is starting to show age on my face, my body, and my lifestyle. It weighs heavy on me, and the only light at the end of the tunnel for me is to embrace the unknown. To love and lean into the fact that I don’t know what to do going forward. Perhaps this is the state of preparation I need to be in to allow true change to happen.

But enough about me….

Let’s talk about moonshine!

Agave: Tequila, Sugar Cane: Rum, Potato: Vodka, Corn: Moonshine

Take your barley, corn, and wheat, and heat it up until it’s a vapor, the vapor travels through a still, and condenses back to water, which is collected, distilled again, jarred, and sold to the masses as a mysterious hillbilly delicacy.

Moonshine coming straight off of a still can range from 135-190 proof. The term proof came from colonial days where liquor was used to ignite gunpowder as proof of it’s potency. The term shot came from the wild west when poor people and outlaws could only afford a bullet’s (or shot’s) worth of liquor.

Where do I come in?

Picture a dingy liquor store with a tin roof and dark green floors. The sound of sticky soles from shoes ripping across the room step by step. To the left of the liquor store is a THC-A/Delta 8 THC store. To the right of the liquor store is a wine room and a still. Dead in the center of the store was a horseshoe bar with two coolers full of jars where I would stand for anywhere between 6-12 hours a day.

The town where I worked was technically a “dry county” which forced the hand for “moonshine tastings” to allow the business to operate legally. Prohibition doesn’t feel that far away.

I arrive at work and I am to train under an excuse of a man called Bubba. Bubba resembled Larry the cable guy if Larry the cable guy had done eight years hard time at the state penn. All of Bubba’s jokes consisted of X rated content and being physical with women. His overalls were littered in autographs and signatures reminiscent of an elementary schooler going away for summer break. Only Bubba was in his 50s. Throughout my tenure there, Bubba was fired for saying the wrong thing to the wrong person.

Geographically speaking, one would call me southern-American and not be wrong. Realistically though, I’m from a beach town on the gulf coast of Florida known for the circus, “snowbirds” and nobody being from there. I don’t have an accent, I don’t wear overalls, and I didn’t grow up in the mountains and the hollers. Which meant my first month at this job was me getting hazed by overweight hillbillies.

“Why don’t you come in in overalls boy?”
“You oughta bring in your gee-tar”

“You ain’t got a nickname? You really go by that?”

all things I was asked on the daily until they realized I wasn’t going anywhere. More importantly they realized how good I am with people. See, the people that come into this building are not from here. I am viewed as an ambassador to the area. A liaison if you will. Someone who can ease the transition between where they’re from and where they are. There is a prominent national park in this tourist town, and I’ve noticed two kinds of tourists.

One flavor of tourist would say something like, “I came to take my kids on a hike and to see the nature, what the fuck is all this cheesy country crap?”
As opposed to the other who would say, “Six Trump stores!? When are they building the seventh!”

Those who know me, know I have a drinking problem. They would say I’m crazy for having taken such a job but my argument was, “Nobody wakes up at 3am and has a craving for cotton candy flavored moonshine.” Mostly referring to what I like to drink is not going to be at this bar, making it ultimately easier to say no.

As much as I’d love to say I was right, I was not.

“We don’t drink and drive in this state, we sip and swerve.” I was never drunk on shift, but oh boy did I sip and swerve it. I never bought any of their product for personal use, but I definitely used it as playing a character to get more tips.

When Bubba got fired, there were flocks of people who would demand to know, “Where’s Bubba!?” as if I knew him longer than one day. I met it with the response, “Where do you work? Oh you’re a nurse? Hey where’s your doctor today?”
-questions of a certain nature will receive answers of an equal nature-

As much as I’ve studied about marketing and running a business, and as many business plans as I’ve fantastically drafted up in my head and on paper, I miscalculated one important factor.

The American public is not as intellectual as I had projected.

So much so, I pretended to be a psychic on the bar. I played the law of averages, and was deliberately wrong for an initial period of time so I could recognize patterns. The number one state where the tourists were from was Ohio, the close seconds were Indiana, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Anyone that was not from those states was actually a lot more obvious to spot. So at random I would guess if someone was from Ohio, and 5/6 times I would be right. Maybe I’d play with the phrasing to get people to say where they were from before I was officially “wrong.”

I moved onto occupations after that. The most frequent jobs I encountered were: law enforcement, health care, HR/Accounting/Admin. Women were more predictable than men.

Now because of the law of averages I was wrong plenty of times. However when I was right, those people were eating out of the palm of my hand. One person at my bar brought up “Barnum Statements” which ran parallel with the idea a friend of mine brought up of, “a list of shit any psychic could say.”

Other fringe benefits included: Instagram follows, girls’ numbers, one guy tipped me in weed (which I still have because I don’t smoke weed) origami money, career advice, free food, and stout employee discounts at a list of stores and restaurants.

The reaction to Bubba’s firing really showed me how attached the customers were to this “Moonshine Mascot.” Skills from this job in no way translate over to any other. Such a niche thing. Bubba’s departure illuminated the hard lines we walk in these types of jobs. For example, there was a flavor of moonshine called “the panty dropper” in which we were supposed to incorporate into our jokes, but we were also not allowed to say “fuck” at the bar. Dirty jokes were a part of the job but they couldn’t be too dirty. I’m cocking my head with my finger at the corner of my lips in consideration of what “dirty jokes that aren’t too dirty” means.

Some of Bubba’s highlights involved referring to one of his “cocktails” as “The Buttery Aereola which was not to be confused with the ring around the butthole. One sip of it can even make the manliest of men say mmmmmm.”

Not even 200 characters and we’ve hit pornography and homophobia. That’s what you come to this “bar” for.

What I got fired for was telling a woman, “For someone with such big ears, you’re so bad at listening.” I prefaced it by saying, “I have a joke but I shouldn’t say it.” The first time she didn’t listen to me. The second time I was like, “I really shouldn’t say it!” but they asked me to say it, and well, I’ll give them what they want.

Bad idea.

Truthfully, I was ashamed of this job. I didn’t tell my friends about it. This is the most detail I’ve gone into about it because I’m quasi-anonymous on this blog. Every time I put on my “work clothes” I felt dirty. I felt too old for the type of behavior asked of this job. When people would ask me “How are you?” when I was at work I’d say, “Never ask someone in the service industry how they’re doing. Ask me about how to change your spark plugs, as me about sportsball, anything. I’m babysitting adults, how do you think I’m doing?”

I knew I was going to get fired about one month into it. We got a new manager after Bubba got fired. She was there to enact strong change. From the minute she enacted the policy that we could not say “fuck” at the bar, I counted the days. The sad part was she liked me. She was in tears when she pulled me from the bar mid-shift and “Terminated my employment.” Her last words to me were, “You can use me as a reference” and I hold no doubts that we were all on different pages as to what was going on there.