Wide Awake Drunks

After the Colorado trip I needed to make up some hours at work. Work needed me for the Memorial Day weekend. So I have worked 4 ten hour shifts and will finish off the week with a 12 hour shift today.

That's a lot of time on one's feet. I was glad to get sent to the poker room towards the end of last night because I would get to sit down for a while. The Pistons-Heat game was on, so the players were distracted. Unusually distracted. They all talked alot but they weren't making much sense.

Some of the guys were drinking a new kind of Budweiser. They called it "beer with energy". Nowadays "energy" means a few herbs and a whole lot of caffeine. One guy said if you drank energy beer all night you would wake up really alert in the morning. Another one said it tasted like water. I was working really hard to get then to focus on the game, which is tricky when you're dealing poker. You don't want to be rushing a player who is seriously ruminating over his big move, but you don't want to waste time if the guy is actually just studying his hangnail. These guys were all over the map attention-wise.

It was dawning on me that "energy beer" could have major repercussions on the career that I call --only half in jest-- "professional drunk wrangling". In thirteen years in the business I have come to rely on a certain drunk curve. Most people who drink enough get obnoxious for a while then they start to fall asleep. The ones that don't get sleepy are the ones who cause trouble. If "energy beer" means that fewer get sleepy, will that mean more arguments and more fights? Maybe it just means more inanity.