Petty torments and pyrrhic victories III: Wurzel the wi-fi weasel and his desperately dirty dog...

Nobody likes a freeloader.

Even the more tolerant among you will surely admit that there is something entirely distasteful and infuriating about a serial freeloader. The presumptuousness of it and the total lack of self-awareness; that’s the part of it that really boils me. The bare faced cheek and the absence of any semblance of shame. Personally I’d be far too embarrassed to conduct myself in such a way without constant appeals for contrition and excusing myself for being such a leech every other minute, but these people; it’s as though they either don’t realise what they are or perhaps simply don’t care.

Honestly, I can’t decide which is worse.

Take for example Wurzel the Wi-Fi Weasel. Wurzel is not his real name of course but for the sake of discretion that’s what we’re calling him. I work in a fairly busy central Brighton bar and Wurzel is a regular. At least he would be if he ever bought anything but he doesn’t. Instead he just sits in the bar for hours each day (every day) sipping at a free glasses of tap water and giving off a smell you would associate with mouldy shower curtains. It’s a heavy odour, the sort of thing you’d swear you could taste should you, on occasion, be so unfortunate as to get close enough for such a sensory assault.

Then there’s his dog. Once again for the sake of discretion we will eschew names to protect the innocent and refer to the animal simply as Dog. Doubtless once a beautiful creature Dog is now a mangy animal sporting a concentration camp-esque figure through what is likely a combination of untreated worm infestations and a total lack of adequate nutrition. Worse still the sickly whelp smells nearly as bad as Wurzel himself (though not quite) and is very poorly behaved. This is may be partly because the animal has not been taught how to behave properly in public but more likely it’s down to the fact that the poor thing is starving to death and takes any scrap of attention as a possible opportunity for food. This gives Dog a feverish desperation is his dealings with people which many often mistake either for aggression or affection.

It’s neither of these things. It’s starvation.

I have personally been witness to several occasions where this emaciated pup has violently choked itself against its own taught lead in a pitiful attempt to reach out with its tongue for what are often little more than crumbs. Pathetic morsels on the floor that wouldn’t satisfy a rodent, never mind a fully grown dog. It is honestly a little heart breaking to see and oftentimes Wurzel will then angrily reprimand Dog for doing so. Which is nice.

This sad and smelly duo spend their days in the vicinity of the bar from around 10am until the time our bar closes at 11pm. There’s a coffee shop next door and he sits in there for the first ten or so hours just using their Wi Fi to send out dozens of sad and lonely tweets every day (32.7 tweets per day in fact, I honestly sat down once and worked it out. Pretty easy if you know how many tweets he’s posted so far and how long he has been a ‘tweeter’). Then at around 8pm (every day – I just can’t stress that enough!) he moves from the coffee shop to our bar. He shambles in with his dog, his ever present and low hanging miasma and his tatty bags of shit.

He stands at the bar and he waits for his usual pint of tap water. Free tap water. Worse still he doesn’t even ask for it. He just stands there. Expectantly. Waiting for one of us to eventually say “Water?” He will never ask for it. He’ll just stand there safely assuming that by now we all know exactly what he wants and we’ll just give it to him because that’s what happens every day and that’s the routine, etched in stone.

And he’s right. We do. Because we are mugs.

And it’s this presumptuousness I mentioned at the start of this piece that really grates my cheese and doubles my knots. The absence. I know for a fact that he’s not homeless and he’s not entirely destitute; after all the man has a smart phone for goodness sakes but aside from this little luxury (and never mind the fact that despite keeping up payments on a mobile phone he struggles to feed his dog) it’s obvious to anyone with eyes and an average or above sense of smell that he’s not in a great place. You just wouldn’t glance at the man and say “Yeah, that’s the ideal. That’s where I hope I’m headed.”

Whether he’s out of work, in a rut or whatever the hell, I sympathise. Really I do. But the fact remains that if even he just showed even a modicum of gratitude and humility at the fact that seven days a week we let him have his pint of tap water and we allow him to sit in our bar for hours on end then I wouldn’t be writing this. After all we are under no obligation to do so. But we just hand it over and nobody says a thing? I don’t even say anything and I’m usually more than happy to confront people about this sort of piss-takery (I know this isn’t a word, shut up). Even if he just now and then looked a little embarrassed or perhaps referenced it every now and then.

“Thanks guys, I know I don’t buy anything ever but I really appreciate it”. Something like that is all it would take and I’d be fine with his smelly self arse sat there tweeting incessantly and creepily about his dog. But there’s nothing like that. Just shameless and freeloading.

And the worst part? We don’t even have to give him the tap water in the first place. Despite the common misconception we are not obliged to offer free tap water to any freeloading cretin that walks in the door.

According to Paragraph 3 of the Licensing Act 2003 (Mandatory Licensing Conditions) Order 2010, which came into force in April 2010, all restaurants in England and Wales that serve alcohol (that includes pubs, bars and clubs) are legally required to givecustomers free tap water.

Customers.

If however they have spent nothing then you as a bartender or a licensee owe them likewise; nothing. Now I’m not seriously suggesting that bartenders start refusing when someone walks in and politely asks for a tap water. Nine times out of ten the person polishes it off and is on their way. Denying them this would be just a little niggardly. But when that person takes their generously provided tap water and then proceeds to use it as a reason to sit at a table that might have been the seat of choice for some other paying customer, then there should be nothing standing in the way of you marching over to that stinking, bearded, tweeting parasite and his dog and declaring in a booming voice of authority;

“Get the hell out of my bar you stinking dustbin-raider!”

Or something like that.

So why don’t we do this with Wurzel? Well it’s simple and insidious. I’ve been working this bar for around a year now and around the time I started he would come in only now and then and he’d actually buy a beer. Sure, he’d use that beer as an excuse to sit all night until closing time but I don’t care. So far as I’m concerned you can stay as long as you like so long as you’ve put something in the till. It’s not about how much you spend. It’s about principle.

At some point Wurzel started coming in and ordering tap water instead of beer but we let it go because, well, most of the time he buys a beer and we know him so it’s cool. Right?

Then the days he would buy a beer became less and less and the days he ordered tap water become more and more.

Now I honestly can’t remember the last time he paid for anything but by now it’s too late. He’s been doing it for so long that if we said anything it’d just be weird and awkward.

Why now and not before? What’s changed?  

He’s in now and his feculent feet are under our nice clean table.

And so it is he sits in our bar every night for hours using the Wi-Fi for free. Untouchable. That’s all he comes in for, the free Wi-Fi. Sending his ridiculous little dog-loving tweets to his ridiculous little dog-loving followers.

It should go without saying that I have to do something to even the score. I can’t just sit there doing nothing and if we can’t be up front with him and tell him how it is then instead I’ve had to be cowardly and covert in my retributive efforts. And I’m totally comfortable with this.

There’s a thing I used to do when I worked as a hotel barkeep in Twickenham. We’d get these snotty wankers buying a single cup of tea and then using our Wi-Fi for hours on end during the day. As I mentioned earlier, ordinarily I wouldn’t care so long as they bought something but these guys were such rude, stuck up scumbags that I’d decided that they deserved to be messed with.

So I’d sneak off to the office and turn off the Wi-Fi. In unison, like a finely trained orchestra, the chorus would sound out and the music was beautiful; “The Wi-Fi isn’t working. I can’t get my work done. I have very important Skype calls to make! I’m expecting an urgent email…” All that sort of nonsense. So I’d feign obedient concern, pretend to go reset the router and watch as they grew ever more irritated.

To simply say that it felt good would be wholly unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. There is nothing quite like watching the self-important as they discover their smart phones and laptops will no longer connect to the internet.

Honestly, how on earth did we ever get by twenty years ago?

This was almost a decade ago and I thought for while I’d outgrown such petty torments but then I met Wurzel and Dog. Let’s just say that recently we’ve been experiencing problems with our Wi-Fi. Usually in the evenings. Honestly it’s the weirdest thing…