I'm laying on my back in the middle of the floor of someone that I don't know. I had just finished telling her how noble that I thought it was that she was studying to be a doctor. I was really drunk. Maybe I should start this at the beginning. I had gone up to St. Cloud, Minnesota to celebrate St. Patricks Day by consuming large amounts of beverages.

Trevor and I decided that the best way to start off with this would be to start at 9:30 in the morning and continue to drink all day. Yeah, it was a great idea. The first problem that we came across was that the bar we were going to start at wasn't open yet. It changed our plans a little bit, but we still got started at 9:45 or so when we found a little bar that had just opened. We had a few green beers (which I think is a health hazard, but oh well) and went on to the next bar. Two bars and a couple of hours later we were quite drunk and decided to go home for an hour or so break.

The break didn't really end up being one, because on our way home we picked up some liquor and had a few drinks while we sat around and watched the tv. Then Trevor remembered that he had to direct the news program at his college. It also happens that they needed a camera man. That's where my part came in. I think I did pretty well for being that drunk. I think that the camera stayed pretty steady, but I'm not sure because I was a bit drunk.

So we had lost an hour of drinking and had no choice but to hit happy hour which was just about to start. A couple of long island iced teas and plates full of hot wings later we were ready to continue. It was at this time that a couple of the people that we had been drinking with earlier in the morning rejoined our drunken group. You see, they had a final that afternoon and I guess that they thought they would be better prepared for it by getting plastered. The guy fell asleep about three times during the test and the girl had to get up and leave to throw up she was so drunk. I didn't say we were intelligent about the structure of our plan, just that we had a plan.

It was getting towards nightfall and we had to find a place pretty quick to set in for the night of drinking. It was spring break but there was still snow on the ground and we didn't want to have to walk around in the cold for long. So we settled down at a place that had a band playing for the night. They proclaimed themselves as an Irish band but I didn't buy it.

Trevor and I sat around drinking and watching the band and noticed that between every song they said something like, "This next song is really Irish, I hope you enjoy it." We were so amused about the fact that every song was an Irish song that we started yelling in between each song. Here's a sample of some of the things that we yelled:

"This next song is so fucking Irish that you'll piss your pants green!"

"This next song's so damned Irish that you'll change your last name to O'brien!"

Like I said, we were drunk and we thought it was pretty damn funny.

One of Trevor's friends sold merchandise for the band and he wasn't having very good luck. He was a little upset about it because for every CD that he sold he made some money. I decided that I should instruct him in the fine points of merchandising, expert as I believed that I was. I told him that his main problem is that he wasn't where the people were. He gave me a funny look. I said, "Look, all the people are out there on the floor watching the band, and you're sitting back here selling t-shirts and CDs in the corner. What's wrong with this picture?" He kind of nodded but didn't see how he could take his merchandising stand out into the middle of people. I told him that I could help. After all, I was a marketing genious since I had had three marketing classes at school. People just called me the master. At least they did in my head. People were always really nice in my head.

So I set out with a CD in my pocket and a t-shirt over my shoulder. Here was my sales pitch:

"Hey! I'm Johnny! I'm from Texas, how's it going?"

They usually answered with that they were good and what the hell was I doing in Minnesota when I lived in Texas. Anyways I continued, "So do you like this band a lot, I think they are pretty darn cool!" Of course if they were attractive I would try and hit on them and pick them up first, I was drunk but I still had my priorities. Usually my advances were turned down, mostly because the girl was standing right next to her boyfriend. If he wasn't there then I would have had a pretty good chance. The ones that weren't with anyone that I failed with I mark up to being afraid to bring me to their dirty house, being that I didn't have a house in Minnesota.

For the people that I actually asked if they like the band I would then ask if they wanted a CD. The whole night I stole one and ended up accidentally walking out the door with one in my pocket. After all is said and done I figure that I broke even. Walking out the door brings me to the next thing that happens.

Here's my lesson for life: When you and your best friend are both drunk, don't let your them get your jacket. Do it yourself. As I had not created this lesson yet, I let Trevor grab my coat on our way out. He told the guy that I was selling CDs for to hand him my black leather jacket. He grabbed it and we went outside. I started to put the jacket on outside because it was damn cold. But something was wrong.

I put it on and the sleeves seemed really tight. I didn't really pay attention to it and got the jacket all the way on. I was still cold, so I decided to zip up, something which I rarely did. I couldn't get both sides of the jacket to meet in the middle. I was thoroughly confused. It was now that Trevor saw my problem, "John, what are you doing."

I looked up in my drunken haze and said, "My jacket's broken Trevor, it won't close."

He looked like he didn't really want to deal with me at this time and he approached me and said, "Here, let me help." He tugged and tugged at the jacket but could not get it closed. Then he got it,"John, this is a girls jacket."

"Fuck you man, do I make fun of the way you dress?"

"No, this isn't your jacket, go find your jacket."

I looked at myself and kind of laughed. The sleeves of the jacket were halfway up my forearms and the actual body of the jacket only covered the top three quarters of my torso. I ran back inside, but the bouncer stopped me at the door and told me that the club was closed.

I pleaded, "But I need to get my jacket!"

He looked at me for a second, "You've got a jacket, get out of here."

"DOES THIS LOOK LIKE MY JACKET!"

He let me pass. I went inside and saw something almost as funny as me in the jacket that I was wearing. A girlfriend of one of the guys that we were with was standing there in my jacket. She was about five feet tall and extremely petite and was absolutely swimming in my jacket. We switched and I rejoined Trevor, much more comfortable than before.

We started walking home. Yep, I said walking. We were too drunk to drive and too cheap to get a cab. Besides, it wasn't too terribly far. We were walking along and I, for some reason screamed, "HEY YOU, GET OFF THE BIKE! YOU'RE GOING TOO FAST!" This was actually calm to some of the other utterances that I have yelled when drunk.

Trevor and Alex looked at me like I was crazy but we continued on. When we were about a block from the house I decided that I really needed to go to the bathroom. Luck had it that one of the girls that we had drank with that morning was getting ready to go into her house. She had a late night visitor, but that didn't bother me. I ran up and told her that it was an emergency and that I needed to use her bathroom. Trevor pleaded with me, telling me that we weren't that far from our house and to just keep going. But the girl let us in and I went to the bathroom.

When I came out I wandered around the house unsupervised for awhile and knocked on a couple of doors. From one of them someone told me to come in, so I did. I promptly collapsed on the floor and started asking questions, because she seemed kind of cute (that or I was really really drunk. Maybe a combination of the two.) So that's where we started our story and that's basically where we'll end our story. The girl who let us into the house came and dragged me out of the room after I was missing for about 20 minutes and we went home. That's that.

I'm sure that everyone has their fair share of bad restaurant service stories, but I don't care. I'm an uncaring, selfish bastard. I am going to tell a couple of the bad service stories that I have, and if you feel like it, you can e-mail me your bad experiences and maybe I will post them up here. Then you would have the envy of the other five people that read this. At any rate, here are the horror stories that I know of, some of them aren't mine, but as far as I know they aren't copyrighted so who cares.

It's odd, but the majority of my stories come from T.G.I.Fridays, they seem to hire waitstaff that just has problems comprehending the meaning of, well anything. My wife and I went to their restaurant one night and ordered an appetizer of nine layer dip (it comes with chips and nine layers of stuff to dip it in, one of the layers being cilantro or something like that). We waited for quite awhile for it to come out and when it did, our waiter instantly vanished.

We started to eat the chips and noticed that they were really really stale. We were finally able to track down our waiter and told him of our displeasure. He looked at us like he really expected us to say that. Then straightfaced he said, "Well, the only chips that we had were either really stale or really greasy, so I just picked what I thought that you would like more."

Well, at least he was honest, but we told him that we didn't really like either and to take them away or get us good chips. He took them away and were very hungry until our dinner came.

A few friends of mine and I took a road trip to New Orleans for my bachelor party. After a long night of drinking and an even longer morning of trying to recover we thought it best to try to get some food in our bellies. My friend Trevor said that he had heard of this good place by the docks that we should try out. Open for new suggestions, we went that way.

While we waited for a table to be open up we got our first clue that people were not wanted there by the waitstaff. First, the room in which we sat had about 7 empty tables, but we wanted to eat on the deck outside so that was ok. But there were several tables outside that looked like they could be occupied if anyone would lead us that way. During the 30 minute wait that we had, we go to listen to several of the conversations that the waiters had by the bar. Either they didn't notice us, or they didn't care that we could hear them. They bitched about particular customers and about how they hadn't gotten anything for tips that day. We just thought that they had had some really demanding and bad tipping customers so we continued to wait.

When we finally got our table (one of the ones that we had been looking at for the past half our on the deck) we were grateful. We ordered some drinks and got them fairly quickly and ordered our food when they arrived. Forty-five minutes later we still had no sign. Now you might think that we were stupid for sticking around that long, but we had heard that this food was supposed to be amazingly good. Yeah, I know that's no excuse, how about this one: we figured that the food had to come out soon, after all we had already waited this long. Not good? One more: we didn't want to go to another restaurant and have a potentially equal wait when we had already waited there for this long. At any rate, fifteen minutes later our appetizer finally arrived.

The waiter apologized for it taking so long saying that he was slammed and was taking care of a ton of people. We looked to the left at the two tables that both did not have any food. Then we looked to the right at the four tables of which one only had food and had doubts, but it was already too late because when we turned back he was gone. I really need to learn that disappearing waiter trick. I could certainly use that when my wife wanted to ask me to mow the lawn.

We finished our appetizer with no further sign of the waiter. Still no food and now no drink. It was starting to get boring watching people on the street because we were so hungry. The appetizers had tided us over for a little while, but now it was thirty minutes later. Finally our food came, we ate and left. All told, we spent three hours and three cents on a tip. Crazy fun!

My wife went on a different trip to New Orleans at an earlier time and had just as much fun as we did when it came to restaurants. She and her friend went to T.G.I.Fridays (I just noticed that there's a theme here about T.G.I.Fridays and New Orleans that is developing? Do you think there's a reason for that? Me neither.) and sat down and both ordered some form of alcoholic drink. Forty-five minutes later, still with no drinks, their waiter came up and apologized for it taking so long to get to them. He asked them what they wanted to eat.

"Well, a drink would be good to start, since we ordered it almost an hour ago." Kristen said to the waiter. Her friend Dani asked the waiter if the plate that someone next to them had was the special. He said yes, it was supposed to be some sort of salmon saladish thing. Dani told him that she would have that and Kristen said that she would "have that too".

The food arrived before they got so much as a drink of water. And when it arrived it was only one plate of food. They were a bit confused and when they asked the waiter where the remainder of the food was he replied,"I thought that when you said that you would have it too that you would be sharing." That wasn't the total problem though, the salmon salad thing had no salmon in it. Dani notified the waiter and he said, "Well, those people don't have salmon in theirs and you said you wanted that so that's how I ordered it."

I don't really remember how it ended, but there is an interesting post note to it all. Dani's dad is a vice president for the company that owns T.G.I.Fridays.

I'm sure that I have plenty of other stories that are equally as fun to tell, but I'm getting tired of typing. I really need to hire someone to type for me. And they can go to work for me too. Yes, I live in a fantasy world.