Unhappy hour

I got a call from a young colleague this past Monday inviting me to happy hour with a few other young teachers from my school. In a surprising move, I accepted. Why surprising? It's certainly not because I'm not a drinker. My ravaged, prematurely aged face is evidence that I do, indeed, enjoy a cocktail or eight. (This is not to imply that I drink every day. I abstained one night last March when I had that stomach flu.) It's also not surprising that I attended a happy hour. I love everything about the 4 PM - 7 PM drinking experience. It's also not surprising that I agreed to drink with the people who invited me, all of whom are teachers, and young ones at that. Despite the 15 year age difference between me and the other three or four young teachers, we get along swimmingly whether at school or at a social outing. What makes it so surprising that I said yes is that the outing involved the words "teachers" and "happy hour" together. This pairing is something that should be avoided at all times, like mushrooms and pizza, blisters and genitals, and Adam Sandler and movies. Nothing but irritation can result.

I'm not against drinking with teachers, mind you. I'm not against drinking with anyone as long as that person is actually a drinker. (This rules out anyone enjoying a Zima or any drink with the word "spritzer" in it.) Nor is this going to be another scathing indictment against all teachers. Many teachers are very fine drinkers, meaning they drink most nights of the week and start a 72-hour drunk every Thursday night. Education is filled with alcoholics, just as other vocations are filled with drunks, be they cops, longshoremen, X-Games athletes or priests.

It's the meshing of teachers and happy hour that turns out so badly. These two things need to be kept separate at all times for the sake of bartenders, barmaids and me.

First of all, the teachers I'm talking about would never dream of going to happy hour on any other day of the work week but Friday. These Friday Happy Hour Teachers (FHHTs) are human cliches who probably send emails to their colleagues with "TGIF" subject headings, excited comments about "a cold frosty one" and lots and lots of exclamation points!!!!!!! You know the type. They are the same unoriginal people who enjoy New Year's Eve and attend lots of outdoor summer concerts, where they undoubtedly scream "whoooo" throughout the evening. They would never, ever, under any circumstance, go to happy hour on a Tuesday. There are papers to grade, goshdarnit.

These gatherings never take place at what might be considered a semi-cool bar. Those are too dirty and smoky and dark and filled with "those people." (To which I reply, "Yeahhhhhh ... ain't it great.") No, the big Friday afternoon alcohol sippage has to take place at the local Uno's, or Chili's, or Bennigan's or any other innocuous mega-chain. The only difference between these ubiquitous soul-squashing cardboard cut-out restaurants is their clever birthday songs. The drinking experience at one of these places provides as much authentic color and flavor as eating an Italian dinner at Olive Garden, which is probably where many of these teachers go after they've polished off their two or three drinks. ("Oh look, honey, the wine bottles have little wicker coverings! I feel like I'm in Florence.")

The happy hour bar is chosen based on a somewhat complicated equation, which is as follows: (Cost of discounted drinks) x (appetizer specials) + (possibility of outdoor seating, even if the al fresco experience means sitting alongside the scenic mall road, which creates all the ambience of drinking at a bus stop). Hence the weekly trek to Uno's/Chili's/Bennigan's.

The FHHTs enter the bar with a sense of self-importance and entitlement, for these are the type of teachers I've vilified in previous columns. They don't walk in, they strut in. They truly believe all the cliches that are so often used to describe them by condescending but well meaning people who work real jobs in the real world. I think some of these teachers are actually a bit miffed when the other bar patrons don't give them a round of appreciative applause for their efforts of the past week.

Next comes the ordering phase of the outing. Even though the happy hour specials change about once a decade, they still feel the need to make the bartender or waitress run through the litany of discounts and price reductions, even though these were clearly visible on the 37 signs between the parking lot entrance and the back of the bar. Instead, the server will have to tell them how domestic drafts are $1.50 and imports (and Sam Adams) are $2.50 and how rail drinks are $3 and how appetizers are half off and how chicken wings are 15 cents apiece and how bleu cheese sauce is 50 cents extra and how it must be easy as hell to get a teaching job if you can't even read this information on the 37 fucking signs you just walked past.

The next question will be, "What beers do you have on tap?" This is especially irritating at the bar, as any nimrod could just look at the taps to see what's available. But I think it's more of a power thing to make the bartender work that much more for the ample tip he is about to receive.

After obtaining the pricing and availability options, the FHHT can't just say, "Give me a Bud and start us a tab." That would make things too easy on the server. Instead, The Choosing of the Beer becomes a brain-burning exercise akin to a presidential decision. (I mean a "real" presidential decision, such as "What do we do about these Russian nukes in Cuba?" and not "Don't be a-botherin' me with all that I-rack talk ... which mountain bike should I ride today, the Trek or the Specialicized?") The Ordering of the Beer can go one of two ways. The teacher might furrow her brow, ponder the choices, then say, verrry slowly, "I'lllllll ... havvvvve .... aaaaaaa ... Bud Light ..... no ..... make it aaaaa ...... Miller Lite." Which is what she knew good and goddamn well that she was going to order all along. Or, if the teacher is trying to appear more urbane and impress her colleagues and the Uno's bartender and the Hecht's salesman sitting at the bar, she'll shoot the works and order the least-known beer on the list, or, if she's really trying to show off, something that ends with the word "lager."

These teachers, who lack any sense of bar etiquette, will then insist on paying for each individual drink. This involves a labored search through the wallet to find two one dollar bills. They avoid paying with a five or ten because that would result in receiving a handful of ones in change, one of which they might feel compelled to give to the already exasperated bartender. Instead, they'll hand over the two dollars ... and then wait for their change. This allows them to do the big Tip Presentation, which means placing the 42 cents on the bar for the bartender to scoop up. I have seen a teacher take this 42 cents and place 35 cents on the bar and pocket the other seven cents. I saw a male teacher do this. Twice.

Of course, not everyone orders at the bar. Some crowd around a table and abuse the waitresses in similar fashion, mostly in the form of demanding separate checks. I've seen the occasional clusterfuck that ensues when all drinks are put on one check, and it can get uglier than a Pistons/Pacers game. "How many Bud Lights did you have ... how many wings did you eat ... I didn't dip my four wings in the bleu cheese ... who the hell ordered the white wine?" (That would be the teacher who's husband is a pilot or something, allowing her a bigger happy hour budget.)

The conversations, should one be unlucky enough to overhear them, are also quite predictable. (And easy to hear, as FHHTs always talk loudly so that the others in the bar will know that they are teachers. They are so proud.) The elementary crew will talk about their wild college days, as most of them are usually pretty young. These wild stories usually involve an asshole boyfriend and a four-pack of wine coolers. The high school teachers talk about what the "asshole kids" did that week and gossip about other teachers. The middle school teachers are the saddest of all, as they often talk educational philosophy with the occasional digression into how much they hate their principals. All middle school teachers hate their principals, or they at least have to pretend to.

Yes, FHHTs can suck the life out of any bar and put a damper on the start to the weekend. When a group of cackling, penny-pinching, drink-counting goody-goodies take over a bar, they create a vortex that sucks all the bar goodness right out the place. You know, like the sadness. The sexual possibilities. The crushing hopelessness. The feeling (midway through beer number three) that you do have the gumption to turn your life around and that, goddamnit, you're going to do just that come Monday morning. (This goal is forgotten by Saturday morning's headachey trip to the bagel store, but it sure felt good Friday afternoon.)

I always feel bad for the people in the real world who are drinking in this atmosphere, those people who know real pressures at their real jobs, like the salesman who has to do cold calls all week just to keep up with his mortgage, or the longshoreman who has a 50-year-old back in a 27-year-old body, or the priest whose catechism class is losing more and more pre-adolescent hairless young boys to summer camps. And I feel worst of all for the sad, pathetic regular drinker who would rather drink in silence, turning more sullen with each beer, more morose with each passing minute, more brooding with each swallow, more bitter with each passing draught and more frustrated about what topic he can write about for "The Teachers Lounge" in the next issue of HoboTrashcan.

Ned Bitters teaches high school and dreams of one day seeing one of his former students on stage at a strip club. You can contact him at teacherslounge@hobotrashcan.com.