Ask A Bartender: What Does The OLCC Have To Do With It?

Friday, April 10, 2015

Kai Soderberg, GoLocalPDX Contributor

It's not you, it's the OLCC.

If you ever heard a bartender in Portland telling you that you were not allowed to do something and it seemed completely arbitrary to you, chances are that it was on account of the OLCC (Oregon Liquor Control Commission). Can’t take my drink outside with me? Why not? That’s ridiculous. Can’t bring my beer with me to another bar? What’s this world coming to? Can’t go behind the bar to grab the bartender’s elbow and order something? No you can’t.

While the OLCC is often the culprit cited for limiting your freedom to be completely oblivious to those around you, your bartender probably doesn’t want you wandering behind his bar anyway.

While some regard OLCC’s rules and tactics for enforcing them as officious paternalism at best, and downright Orwellian at worst, the truth is that the OLCC is the conscientious bartender’s secret pal. Yeah they’re annoying and some of their rules do seem arbitrary, but sometimes stop signs seem arbitrary until circumstances make them not.

There is a beautiful little list that the OLCC came out with a few years ago called the 50 Signs of Visible Intoxication. Its purpose is to inform the alcohol purveyor when it’s time to stop service. The list opens with the disclaimer that the signs don’t necessarily indicate intoxication on their own, but when in a combination with others, watch out. Some of the signs, like 37: can’t find mouth with glass, and 40: lighting more than one cigarette, are obvious. Others are less so: Making irrational statements (in a perfect world only drunks would do this), disheveled clothing (ditto), depressed or sullen. The list goes on but the point is that if your bartender finds you to be boisterous or rude, it behooves you to make sure that everything else about you is on point.

In my younger more surly days of dive bartending, I kicked out many people who were rude and had dumb haircuts, smelled like body odor, acted boisterous, the list goes on and on but the one sign that always caught my attention was good old #19: Obnoxious or mean.

This was the sign that made me want to look for other signs so I could shrug my shoulders in a -my hands are tied- gesture and say: “It’s the OLCC, they’re super strict about serving visibly intoxicated people”
“But I’m not intoxicated.”
“Well according to this list you are. Like I said, my hands are tied. Get a haircut and a better attitude and try again tomorrow.” Probably the most gratifying words I’ve ever spoken in those sad few years of my life and I have the OLCC to thank for them.

I used that list as an etiquette guide, not for myself but for others. I found myself constantly looking for defects in costumers (where I worked, it wasn’t hard). Alcohol is wonderful because it lowers inhibitions and allows us to temporarily throw these fundamentally arbitrary restrictions on our behavior out the window. And running around at night with a stained shirt, lighting more than one cigarette, and not taking yourself seriously for a few hours out of the week feels great. But for goodness sake, don’t be a jerk about it. Don’t make anybody’s life any more difficult than it already is, unless, of course, it’s mutual. If you’re not acquainted with that basic rule of thumb you probably shouldn’t be out in public anyway.