On any given weekend night, there are hundreds of intoxicated party-goers scouring uptown for a quick bite, and while many businesses might be grateful for these late-night eaters, they can cause a headache for others.
Typical late night establishments like DP Dough, 374 Richland Ave., acknowledge that much of its business comes from those intoxicated gourmet seekers, said Matt Crumpton, executive vice president and vice president of franchise sales for the calzone shop. However, Crumpton said employees are not trained in a specific way to handle a rowdy drunk.
“Because D.P. Dough does not serve alcohol, we do not have any policies regarding serving intoxicated people,” he said. “However, as you can imagine, we routinely serve intoxicated people due to the nature of our late night business.”
Uptown Grill, 11 W. Union St., — home of the infamous late night staple the chicken and waffle sandwich — also does not train its workers on specific protocol dealing with partiers, but Tanner Karl, a former employee of the grill and a freshman studying communication studies, said that the drunk customers cause more entertainment than problems.
“The craziest thing we regularly saw were fights outside and they were entertaining,” he said. “But the thing that made me laugh the most was when people would tell me how much they loved me because their chicken and waffle was so good.”
Starting with Athens’ Homecoming, many fests and other holidays, some establishments that might not typically deal with partiers are bombarded with day drinkers seeking food.
Cody Schmid, a former employee at Subway, 25 N. Court St., and a freshman studying theater, said that on Green Beer day, he had to deal with an uncomfortable situation.
“I let a guy in before I cleaned the bathrooms and when he left I found that he vomited all over the bathroom, even on the ceiling,” Schmid said. “When he left he just walked right past me and didn’t say anything. It’s definitely not something you see at Subway everyday.”
Despite the possible drunken escapades, very few businesses train late-night employees on proper ways to deal with intoxicated people, which Karl said is because the situations do not usually become dangerous.
“We never really had any policies because their never tended to be problems,” Karl said.
ks574510@ohiou.edu
