Here’s All the Types of Guys You Don’t Want to Be at the Bar

This article originally appeared on VICE Canada

As a female bouncer I’ve witnessed a lot of sketchy behavior from dudes at the club. Over a five year span, I’ve seen men approach women like they were smoother than an aged cognac, but in reality just made women uncomfortable. The spectrum of ludicrous behavior ran the gamut from a guy having a fake bachelor party so he could get free kisses, to a group of men with “FREE MAMMOGRAM EXAMS HERE” T-shirts (offering breast exams on the spot), to my own personal favorite, a man just whipping his dick out at the bar and asking women what they thought of it. (Yeah, that actually happened.) Some of these guys were relatively harmless, but some were totally douchey/borderline criminal. It often felt like watching a depressingly-skeezy Choose Your Own Adventure book play out every weekend. So, in an effort to help you guys choose the right path (the one that keeps your penis in your pants), I made a list of the worst offenders and how to avoid being “that” guy on the dance floor.

The Loner

This is the guy who cruises bars solo because apparently he has nothing to lose and wants to make sure there are no witnesses to his efforts. There was this one bar I used to work at that had a serial loner come two, three times a week. His line every time was, “I come here alone to find beautiful women because I’m the ugliest of my friends.” Seriously bud? Now that approach just screams sanity and confidence to women. To avoid being the loner and making people uncomfortable as you stare longingly at them, hey, make some friends? Or maybe, just go to the pub and talk to the bartender? It’s much more inviting when a guy approaches a group of women with his own group of friends. The, “Who did you come here with?” line sucks when you respond with “Oh I came here alone.”

The Isolator

Here’s a fun fact: women are not zebra and you are not a lion trying to get your prey alone so you can attack. And yet so many dudes are tempted to isolate a woman by dancing her away from her group of friends, or grabbing her arm and leading her to a more secluded area to “talk.” At one bar I worked in, there was an older gentleman who couldn’t hear well, so he would try to do this isolation technique to every woman he spoke to. One time he actually grabbed the girl by the arm so hard to get her to walk away from her friends and talk to him, her shoulder popped out of her socket. As she continued to walk away, he jerked her back and dislocated her shoulder. Let me tell you, it’s absolutely not fun to try and help put a stranger’s shoulder back in its socket as some shitty Bieber song blasts from the bar speakers. Maybe just talking to the girl you’re interested in and her friends will be better for everyone.

The Begatron

Do you refuse to take NO for an answer and think begging will eventually wear people down? This is called emotional manipulation, it doesn’t work in any scenario, and it makes everyone feel shitty. Don’t beg her to take a shot with you. Don’t beg her to dance with you, or beg her for her phone number. Learn to read the curve. If she says no, she means no.

I remember witnessing the most pathetic response a man offered a woman who refused his advances. He had been talking to her and buying her drinks all night, but when it came time to go home, she said she was not interested. This dude then refused to leave her alone because she would not repay him for all the money he “wasted” on her. The only reason I knew this situation happened was because the guy eventually came to me to complain about his time being wasted and demanded the bar stop “fraud” like this from happening.

Classic dudes. Photo via Flickr user mbadsey.

The Spender

Flashing cash to peacock for a potential mate is a time-tested move. But offering to buy someone a drink is a lot different than trying to get someone super drunk, super fast. As a rule of thumb, if you’re going to buy a person a drink, have them accompany you to the bar. I realize some guys want to throw around their money to make up for wherever else they lack, but getting a girl in a bar profusely drunk is sus as fuck. I have seen guys spend crazy amounts of money and not get what they want. But the answer is not to throw loonies and toonies at women when they refuse your advances. This has happened more than a dozen times on my watch. A guy will see he spent money and the “investment” is not going the way he wants, so he starts throwing change at the girl to degrade her and make her feel bad.

The Toucher

This is the absolute worst guy you will meet at a bar. He’s not being affectionate, he’s just a pervert. We see him “accidentally” touching every woman’s butt as he walks by them, or managing to rub his chub on every woman in a crowd. There’s nothing wrong with dancing, but no one wants to feel you being aroused because you saw an ankle bracelet. During my second shift at one bar I worked at, I had a male patron walking around with his hand in his pants and the other hand trying to touch as many boobs and asses as he could. When I approached him about it, he said that he was itchy and it didn’t look like what I thought. I don’t care how severe your venereal disease is, please keep your hands to yourself—but not that close to yourself.

The Insulter

The negging trend should have died by now, but every once in a while someone surprises you with a retro move from The Game. Once, while I was working at a rave, I saw a woman’s birth control fall out of her purse. Some guy in the line beside her yelled, “BIRTH CONTROL IS FOR SUCKERS AND UGLY CHICKS! BUT HEY, I’D STILL SMASH, BABY.” As you can imagine, this definitely did not get him any love from the women in line.

The Stripper

One year during a shift I was working on St. Patrick’s Day, a guy began stripping down to his underwear to impress a group of women. I told him to put his clothes on, and he then proceeded to sit down on the ground (with no shirt, and half his pants off) and tell me if I wanted him out I would have to drag him out. Of course, I dragged him out as he was and he found himself shirtless in downtown Toronto in the dead of winter. To avoid being half naked and kicked out of a club in the freezing cold, please do not begin the process of getting half naked. We all know what happens to men’s bodies in the cold.

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