Missing In Action

It is always funny and strange at the same time concerning how people flow in and out of the life of a bar. There will be customers that are as regular as a heart beat for a period of over four years. Then with no apparent reason, or motivation, they move on, sometimes never to be seen again. They did not give up drinking, they just move on to another bar, in one case, just three blocks down the street. Sometimes this can be good. At first you are worried that you have lost a good friend and valuable customer and then slowly it becomes evident that since a particular person left, all of a sudden, your business increases. I would like to send a thank you note but that would probably be rude, crude and socially unacceptable. There are those people that just up and leave for no apparent reason and then there are those that don't leave for good, they just come in so seldom that you think that they have. These MIA's are also the people that come in and act so friendly that they were probably your womb-mate, they are your best friend and think they are the best customer in the bar. A few weeks ago one the these funny occurances happened when this young gentleman came into the bar with some friends and acted as if he was my most regular customer. "Where is the swing that goes over the bar?" he asked as he had been telling his friends about this crazy swing that people could get in and swing out over the bar. We told him that it was up for one night and one night only, for Mardi Gras, 2003. Yeah, he is a real regular customer.

It even applies to people that used to come into my restaurant. My wife and I will run into them around town and they will comment on how good their last meal was a couple of weeks ago, how they couldn't wait to get back for another meal. We then have to sadly tell them that the restaurant closed in May of 2002. "No you didn't, we were just there", they would reply. Sorry, we know when we closed the restaurant, in fact no one has been in the building for over six months and it is up for sale. I know they leave the conversations thinking we are crazy because in their minds, they know that they were just there. The mind is a terrible thing to loose.