Imagine working at a bar that is cash only. Would you make sure your customers understood that you were cash only, or would you let customers waste their time waiting for another employee to take a card?

In this story, one bartender is in this situation and decides to let a rude customer waste his time waiting. Everyone found the situation funny except for the customer.

Keep reading for all the details.

Don’t Wanna Pay Cash? Enjoy Your Wait.

I bartend at a cash-only neighborhood dive bar in a major US City.

We’ve been open for many decades and are about 70% regulars/semi-regulars, but the big exception to this is during the two street fests that happen outside our bar in the summer.

These fests draw tens of thousands of people over a weekend from well outside the neighborhood, and are normally the only time you can walk around in public with booze in my city.

These are also the only times we staff more than one bartender at a time; we’ll normally staff all four of us together all weekend long to manage the volume.

A lot of customers don’t bother to read signs.

We have a big sign behind the bar that says “cash only please” but during the fest we add a sign at the front door and, a few years ago, I got “CASH ONLY” printed on some t-shirts to share with my coworkers.

Since then, I’ve been the only person to keep said shirt, because the only people who bother to read it are the regulars who already know, and it’s a good laugh between us.

This past summer during the bigger of the two fests, I had a patron push his way up to the bar, literally elbowing a few other patrons waiting to order out of his way. He reaches over the bar and taps the bar maybe an inch from where my hand is holding a plastic cup that’s in the middle of being filled.

This was immediately two big strikes from me; don’t try to cut the line, and don’t get in my space/touch the bartender. I give him a look and he starts to order, and stops as he reads my shirt.

One guy misunderstood the “cash only” wording on OP’s shirt.

“Oh, you’re cash only,” he says, annoyed.

“Yes,” I say, while finishing up with the patron whose drinks I had been making.

“That’s okay, I’ll wait for one of your coworkers then. I want to pay with a card.”

It takes me a second to process what he’s said, and I quickly turn away to avoid laughing in front of him.

OP fills in the coworkers on the situation.

I quickly get and nudge my coworkers one by one. “Hey, dude in $TShirt_Color and khaki hat will only pay with a card, so don’t serve him.”

They roll their eyes, and gently elbow me back out of their quarter(s) of the bar.

I jump back into my space and resume taking orders from others around him.

After about three or four patrons, he interrupts me to ask when someone will come to take his order.

The guy finally got the message.

“Sorry sir, I let my coworkers know you want to pay with a card,” I say, and go back to ignoring him.

He keeps getting more and more agitated until he finally bullies his way up to the bar in front of one of my other coworkers and tries this all over.

When she tells him the whole bar is cash only and the business doesn’t accept plastic, he gets bright red and comes back to scream at me.

I just laugh and tell him I’d have happily corrected his mistake if he’d been even remotely respectful, but since he didn’t show any respect for the time of our other patrons, I didn’t think he wanted his time respected either.*

The owner found the situation funny too.

He yelled once or twice more and finally stormed off.

*I think what I actually told him was to F off, but my rose-tinted memory glasses remember saying this so let’s roll with it.

Told the owner what went down after we closed that night and we all had a big hearty laugh.

Best part is, we may finally start selling ‘CASH ONLY’ shirts for the bar next summer, the first official shirt the bar’s ever sold.

That’s funny that the rude customer misunderstood the situation. I can see why he was frustrated, but he was rude and clearly deserved it.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

I agree!

This is funny!

One person guesses about what bar this is.

“Cash Only” would be an odd name for a bar.

Some customers aren’t too bright.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a rude customer who got exactly what they wanted in their pizza.