My last job..
..was working in a wine shop, with the rather impressive title of "Wine advisor", not that I had any qualifications other than an unhealthy appetite for red wine, and the finer the better.

We also sold the best single malt whisky selection in town, which attracted the weirdest customers - whisky fans can be pretty obsessive.

Every Saturday morning, about 10am, this one guy would come in with a bag bulging with 6 or more rare whiskys he'd acquired - on any given day this bag would have been worth at least 200 queen-heads.

No matter what was happening in the shop he would corner my boss - my most knowledgebale person I've ever met about fine booze without getting stuffy about it - and bring the bottles out one by one, for tasting, and over the course of an hour my boss would get sozzled on fine whisky while listening to the most boring man in the world drone and lecture about whisky in the most mind-numbing way possible.

My boss was being polite. He appreciated tasting what otherwise he would only taste rarely, but not at 10am on the busiest day of the week, and with someone he can't enjoy it with.

By about 11:30 my boss, and sometimes myself too, would be light-headed and merry (I'd sometimes get 2 or 3 shots out of the 8-10 dispensed, as a way of sparing the boss), bimbling and giggling round the shop, laughing at the customers like a couple of little girls.

By about 2 in the afternoon the alcohol would wear off and we'd crash horribly, realising that we had another 5 hours ahead of us - Satuday afternoon/evening being the worst shift going.

Not sure he was really such a bad customer - we got to taste some great whiskys and get temporarily smashed at work - but Saturdays would have gone so much more smoothly without him. Apparently he also had bags of watches and and antiques that he'd then take round other shops and bore other shop workers with, then presumably he'd go home to sleep it off and cry.
(lost, Sat 6 Sep 2008, 18:41, 2 replies)

A strange bunch

They're an odd lot; whisky fanatics.

I used to man a stand at Whisky Live and was fairly knowledgeable about most things whisky out of necessity (I've drunk a lot of that knowledge away now).

Some of the folks that came along knew so much about whisky it was frightening. Even the master distiller would glean the occasional nuggets of fact from these lunatics.
( Moey, Sat 6 Sep 2008, 19:06, closed)

wierdos
I just like how it tastes
(Stu Moo winner of five nobble piece prizes, Sun 7 Sep 2008, 15:02, closed)