Jeff Burkhart: Maybe it’s time to consider if you’re the problem

“We’ll have a draft beer,” said the woman standing at the bar and ordering drinks — a situation that happens hundreds of times in a bar, sometimes hundreds of times in one night.

“And an espresso martini,” she added.

I looked over to where we keep our fresh espresso, making sure that we had some.

“Is that OK?” she asked quite aggressively as I turned to make the drink.

“I’m sorry?” I asked, not because I needed to be contrite, but rather because I didn’t understand the aggressive tone.

“You have a puzzled look on your face,” she said.

“I do?” I asked, setting down the finished three-ingredient drink — espresso, vodka and coffee liquor — but now certainly having a puzzled look on my face.

“I know bartenders don’t like to make those,” she said.

“I don’t mind at all,” I said.

And that should have been that.

“Well, your look suggested otherwise,” she continued.

The customer sitting right next to her looked up at that and tried to make eye contact with me.

Considering what had just happened, I avoided averting my eyes.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about?” I asked.

“He didn’t have a look,” said her companion.

She now turned on him.

“I know those drinks are hard to make,” she said, jabbing her finger at him. “And I know bartenders don’t like making them.”

She clearly didn’t want to let it go.

The fact that the drink was already sitting on the bar and had been sitting there for the last 30 seconds made little difference.

“I read that in a magazine,” she said. “Everybody knows that.”

In fact, I was still pouring the draft beer, which in our bar actually takes longer than most of the drinks on our cocktail list, including, of course, our espresso martini.

These are all things that I certainly could have pointed out. But considering what had just transpired, I just kept my mouth shut.

Her companion, however, waded right on in.

“I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. It’s on their menu,” he said.

“In fact, it’s already made,” he added, pointing at the untouched drink in a tone that certainly suggested assuaging.

In my many years of observing human behavior, one thing that stands truest is that someone who treats other people badly are eventually going to treat you that way, too. It doesn’t matter if you’re a lover, colleague or just a friend, eventually it’s going to be you, too. It’s just a matter of time.

“Why are you attacking me?” she said, visibly recoiling.

If ever there was a puzzled look on someone’s face, it was the look on his face now.

“Attacking you?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “You’re always supposed to take my side.”

“I didn’t realize that there was a side,” he said.

Meanwhile, I just stood there. Somehow I felt that asking for payment in that moment might not be the best option. And in spite of a company policy forbidding cash tabs, I ran one — or, more correctly, I ran away from one.

Unfortunately in our society these days, it has become passé to acknowledge fault, especially any kind of fault on behalf of oneself. Doubling down they call it. And it’s possible to find justifications everywhere for that kind of behavior.

I watched a guy run into a parked car in a supermarket parking lot the other day. When the woman in the parked car got out, he asked her, “Why did you park there?” as if her properly using a perfectly legal parking space in a public parking lot somehow caused him to run into her.

And the internet doesn’t help. No matter how egregious behavior is these days, you can always find a group that takes your side — at least until it’s them. Then it’s going to be you that is the problem.

The argument had now continued on for some time. If one were counting, it was about the same amount of time it took me to make 10 more espresso martinis. When the drink features on your menu, you tend to make a lot of them. And if you tend to make a lot of them, you also tend to streamline the process.

Eventually, the man threw some money on the bar and literally stormed out. I looked at the woman, and she looked at me.

“See what you did,” she said.

Leaving me with these thoughts:

• The beginning of all wisdom is understanding that we ourselves might be wrong.

• “It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions,” once said former President Ronald Reagan.

• “A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody,” once opined Thomas Paine.

• I’m never checking on the fresh espresso with my eyes again, no matter what.

• If you’re never the problem, then someone else always will be.

Jeff Burkhart is the author of “Twenty Years Behind Bars: The Spirited Adventures of a Real Bartender, Vol. I and II,” the host of the Barfly Podcast on iTunes (as seen in the NY Times) and an award-winning bartender at a local restaurant. Follow him at jeffburkhart.net and contact him at jeffbarflyIJ@outlook.com