Men lose Millions in bars

By Ted Malanda

Careless and drunken men lose millions of shillings in hard cash to prostitutes and pub workers. TED MALANDA spoke to a 24-year-old waiter who has built a permanent house by stealing from drunkards

“It was the usual Friday crowd — wild, gregarious and loud. By midnight, there had been two fistfights and policemen had arrested a woman who had smashed a beer bottle on her date’s face.

The hookers were in their full element as usual. My practiced eye told me one loud-mouthed fellow who had planted a sexy looking chick on his laps was going to get his drink spiked — and robbed.

Reflecting with amusement on how tough such men look at night, and how miserable they are when they crawl to the bar the next morning without a coin in their pockets after being robbed by women, I slipped into the urinal to relieve myself.

But even before I could unzip my pants, I noticed a man’s foot protruding from the half-open toilet door. Fearing the worst, I went in to check.

The man, obviously blind drunk,  had undressed to his boxers. His clothes were strewn in an untidy pile beside his head as he snored ever so gently, like a baby, in a bar toilet. In his drunkenness, the fool thought he was sleeping in his house!

WALLET

I was about to shut the door when I noticed his wallet lying next to his jacket. I took a quick sideways glance to check whether anyone else was in the washroom and then shut the door. To my excitement, the wallet was bulging with notes, which I quickly retrieved. I also riffled through his jacket pockets and was rewarded with an even thicker wad of banknotes.

SNORING

When I shut the door behind the snoring drunk and left, I was sweating profusely. My heart was beating so hard I was scared I might faint. In fact, my supervisor took one look at me and gasped, “Haiya, are you okay?”

I said I wasn’t, popped some painkillers into my mouth and asked to be excused from work. When I got to my single room and counted the loot, I realised I was Sh198,000 richer  — the biggest amount of money I have ever owned. That was also the first and last time I boarded a plane.God had been unbelievably kind to me. Since I began working as a waiter a year earlier, picking this and that from bar patrons had enabled me to start constructing a six-room permanent house in the village. But the work had stalled — until this windfall. So later that day, after flying home, I strolled into a hardware shop in my rural town and bought all the roofing materials I needed.

My house is now complete. I have even installed electricity. When I look at it, I hardly believe it’s mine. People in my village say I must be a gangster to afford such a house at my age, but what do I care?

BUS FARE

It’s not like I steal the money anyway. You see, like that guy who was sleeping in the toilet? If I hadn’t relieved him of that money, someone else would have. At least I left him with all his clothes and was generous enough to tuck Sh100 in his pocket for bus fare the next morning. I didn’t even spike his drink like prostitutes do.

It’s been a crazy journey for me. That I’m the proud owner of a permanent house worth about Sh1.2 million barely three years after finishing school is unbelievable. All that money came from bar patrons, not my salary. I mean, I only earn Sh5,000 a month.

Nothing amuses me more than watching arrogant bar patrons belittle me because I know some of them have nothing, not even a pit latrine. They shout at me and think I’m stupid. But they don’t know that unlike them, there are times I don’t even pick my salary. In fact, there was a time I didn’t bother to collect my pay for 18 months. After all, on average, I make Sh40,000 a month — or sometimes more in one night, especially on Fridays and Saturdays.

The funny thing is, I don’t even go out of my way to steal from patrons. There was, for instance, one evening when I noticed a prostitute swipe a wallet out of a man’s hind pocket. Fortunately, when she attempted to slip the stolen wallet beneath the jacket she had placed on her seat, it instead fell to the floor without her knowledge.

MONEY

I kept an eye on the pair until they left then quickly retrieved the wallet. It had Sh40,000. Why do men go to bars with such large amounts of money?

But one incident I will never forget is one Saturday night when a man who was terribly drunk, called me rudely and said, “Why are you ignoring me yet I want to pay your bill? This is how you people behave and then when I leave with your money, you start calling me a thief. Here, take your money!”

I looked at the bill and I noticed it wasn’t ours. It was from the next-door pub. I suspect the bugger had stepped out to make a phone call or something and then wandered into the wrong bar in his drunkenness. So I kept a straight face while he counted out Sh11,200 and handed them to me. Incredibly, he even tipped me Sh500. If you ask me, people who spend that sort of money on alcohol in one night deserve to be robbed.

But that was just half the drama. I was so amused about his foolishness that I walked back to him with two beers and said, “Boss is so happy that you have spent a lot of money here and has bought you two beers!”You should have seen the way he grinned — before he passed out. I took the beers away. When he woke up, he ordered two more beers. I served him the same beers, which he paid for, and also pocketed the money he gave me to buy ‘boss’ a round.

Of course, he never came back the next day to check what happened probably because he had no clue where he lost his cash.  He was that drunk.

And what really can I say about the man who paid me a bill more than five times? He was ridiculously tipsy and each time I passed by to wipe his table, he would say, “Wee, chukua pesa yako (you, take your money)!” and hand over Sh1,200. I made almost Sh7,000 from that man that night!

CONNED

Bar patrons don’t know this, but each time a waiter or waitress is very nice to you, wiping your table, pouring your drinks and such, be careful. You have probably been conned big time because half the time, he or she is laughing behind your back.

We are ten times more intelligent than Kenyans think. We can tell you are easy prey and loaded the moment you walk through the door.

The best time for stealing from patrons is late at night. The tricks are too many to list, but the most common are: You ask for a double tot when drunk, we serve you one. You ask for choice whisky, we serve you cheap stuff. You order for beer, we inflate the price. You ask for mineral water, we serve you tap water and nicely ‘open’ the bottle for you. Usually, the ‘good service’ excites you so much that you hand out a tip — for tap water.

LEFTOVER BEER

For those who are really drunk, we collect leftover beer from all manner of brands, fill one bottle and serve it with a flourish. To ensure you don’t catch on, we even imitate the ‘pssss’ sound of a beer bottle opening. 

It’s a great job and if you are disciplined, you can make enough money to invest in your own bar or some other business.

What drunkards don’t know is that while they come to blow their money in bars, we come to invest. They stagger out of the bar with nothing to show for their hours at the counter, but we rarely leave the bar empty handed. In fact, like in my bar, we contribute Sh200 to our chama  daily.

Just ask yourself one question: How do Kenyans expect a bar waiter or waitress who earns a maximum of Sh5,000 in Nairobi to make ends meet — pay rent, buy clothing, meet bus fare and school fees costs and employ a house help at Sh2,500?Well, so long as careless and drunken men keep carrying large sums of money to bars, so long as they try to impress women, we will always make ends meet and live to open our own bars.”