The Greatest Accomplishment Of A Bartender
By Anonymous
The Temples of Shaeth
were spreading, so that
more and more towns
had one somewhere.
This was a good thing
for Shaeth, but it was
less good for the bars.
One of the bartenders
began to grumble about
losing business to him.
“You run an informal temple
filled with my followers. Why
are you trying to argue with me?”
he said, throwing his hands up,
but the bartender didn’t reply.
This was a bemusement to
Shaeth, who thought they all
served drunks, until Prell
pointed out that bars ran on
coin rather than worship.
The point of the temples
was to give the drunks
somewhere safe to go and
something safe to drink, so
they could worship in peace.
The point of the bars was
to peddle drinks and revelry.
The catch was, Shaeth was
all about accepting people
as they were, but bars
sometimes left drunks
feeling out of place.
So he tried explaining
this to the local bartender.
They talked about what
their respective establishments
offered to their overlapping clientele.
“The greatest accomplishment
of a bartender lies in his ability
to exactly suit his customer,”
Shaeth said. “You have
to figure out what they
want and give it to them.”
“Apparently what they want
is you,” the bartender muttered.
“Well, they can have me, but
I can’t be everywhere at once,”
Shaeth said. “Every town has
a bar or tavern of some sort.”
This was largely true.
“If we could just spread out
the drunks a little, that would
help,” the bartender said.
“We could weave a network,”
Shaeth said thoughtfully. “Hook up
the temples with local taverns,
beermongers, vintners, and
so on for mutual support.”
“That might actually work,”
the bartender mused.
In other places, Trobby
shared recipes for foods
made with booze and
things that went well with
different types of booze.
Most bartenders found
something they could offer to coax drunks
back to their bar.
That diffused most
of the conflicts.
Not everyone was
quite so accommodating,
but they soon learned
the hazards of pissing off
the God of Drunks.
When the unruly ones
discovered their stock
going off quite a bit sooner
than they were used to, it made
their business drop off in a hurry.
Once they relented, though, that
could be set straight rather quickly
with appropriate penitence and
penance at the local Temple.
No sooner had Shaeth started
to straighten that out, however, than
some other gods began to get jealous.
“Hey, how come your pilgrims never
f*ck off in the middle of a pilgrimage?”
asked Trogar, the God of Hard Work.
“Because each of my temples has
a different booze menu, and
my pilgrims want to try them all,”
Shaeth explained smugly.
Trogar went home and
made a list of job skills,
then distributed them to
his priest so that each temple
offered a different set of lessons.
Shaeth found out about this when
a rather smashed workman
banged on his temple gate
asking after education.
“Now what am I supposed
to do?” Shaeth muttered.
“I’ve got this,” Trobby said,
and led the fellow off for
a lesson in cork removal.
