Technology sorts out queue jumpers in the quest for pints
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
long, long time ago, I worked as a barman in a hotel bar – and as with any licenced premises within a 30 mile radius of Galway city, Race Week was the craziest week of the year.
You couldn’t keep the pints flowing if you were serving them with a power hose – and everyone wanted, nay demanded, to be served now.
So you did your best, as all bar staff do, to try and serve your customers in the order they presented themselves at the counter, and for the most part you got it right.
Until one particular evening – after either the Plate or the Hurdle – one punter took umbrage at what he perceived as issues with the running order and he began to shout.
The problem was further complicated by the fact that our loud-mouthed customer was a close family friend of the owner – and he was also a resident of the hotel which housed this bar.
It was the Lake Hotel in Oughterard, a hotbed for trainers and tipsters during Race Week back in the seventies and eighties, thanks to its legendary owner and racing enthusiast Jim Egan.
Jim, as anyone who ever knew him would readily testify, didn’t take prisoners – but equally you quickly came to realise that his bark was infinitely worse than his bite.
He wouldn’t thank you for it, but it would not be overstating it to say he was one of the kindest, most generous people you would ever meet – and yet he’d have killed you for saying it because he was happiest projecting the image of an grumpy, old curmudgeon.
Still, the troublesome customer wasn’t just a family friend of Jim’s; he was from racing royalty and indeed his family are still among the most famous racehorse breeders in the country.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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