Cocktail drinks with ice in club lights. Picture: iStock
Mzansi’s people can misbehave quite a bit, it seems.
Heroes and zeros walk among us, but it seems as if restaurant and pub owners end up getting an unfair share of zeroes.
Former restaurateur and now neighbourhood shopping centre manager Michelle (not her real name for the sake of hanging onto her job) said that during her three-decade long career she had been amazed at the brazen bravado some people display.
Drunken debauchery, in her estimation, is on the increase.
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“I think that after two years of on and off again restrictions on alcohol consumption, and the incredible stress we live under today, people are no longer giving a rat’s backside about what they do and who they do it to, or with,” Michelle says.
In the space of a fortnight, Michelle says), a ridiculously inebriated man smashed the glass door of a pub, just to get another drink.
But the bar was already closed.
“And this was after he had passed out in front of another shop, upstairs, had his cellphone stolen off him by late-night prowlers and was incapable of walking straight.”
She says security footage showed the man literally crawling up the stairs before entering lala land on another level.
A few days after the incident, he arrived back, tail between the legs, to pay for the glass door.
“During office hours, this man, along with most of the culprits I have encountered over the years, donned an executive cloak.
“Most of them are well-earning yuppies who just take partying way too far.” There are sad stories too.
Michelle recalls an eccentric trust fund inheritor who used to sit in the car park of another centre she worked at and read books all day.
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“But somehow this all deteriorated and suddenly she was addicted to drugs, and her boyfriend was her dealer. He would pimp her out to others for cash, after which he would feed her more drugs.
“We tend to see the worst of the worst in public spaces.”
Encounters take place in the car park or in the rest rooms, she says.
And at every centre she worked and during her time as a restaurateur, Michelle says, toilet paper dispensers and toilet seats were some of the items that needed replacing most.
“I don’t know how people break it when having cubicle sex, and recently we have had to change to toilet paper dispensers that were less easy to mount or rest on while doing the deed.”
Seats are used for drugs, but are also damaged often, mostly due to some wild-at-heart activities.
And when people are beyond tipsy, all toilets become unisex – and trees, shrubs or even cars become good enough shelter to let go of some bladder pressure.
“I have seen people relieve themselves on any surface or wherever they could find a spot. And women are just as guilty.”
She has also seen a woman once try and use a urinal, unsuccessfully.
Then there was the couple that parked their cars and rode off somewhere together in one of the vehicles.
They returned a few hours later, high as kites, only to get into a very loud and public argument.
And after pushing one another around for a bit, the couple moved their disagreement to the basement.
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This was where it got even more bizarre. The man, an attorney by trade, was so drunk and high, that he jumped into his car and sped off while his partner was on the bonnet, bashing the metal and windscreen in a rage.
Somehow, Michelle says, she got off the car and the man returned and aimed straight for the woman’s car.
He bashed it with his car repeatedly. Eventually security managed to remove him from behind the wheel.
It took four officers to restrain and cuff the crazed-out attorney, she says. He begged them not to call the police as he could loose the ability to practice law, had he collected a criminal record along the way.
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