Slinging’ Hooch: My 9-5 at the State-Owned Liquor Store

Through the reluctant rat race of chasing the daily cheddar, I’ve had a lot of oddball jobs. There was the Castle of Chaos scare actor position, where I smashed my thumbnail into a bloody pulp with a femur bone. There was the keyholder job at Fashion Place Fanzz (RIP), where I knew nothing about sports but still caused political outrage with my Colin Kaepernick jersey. Hell, even most recently, I was speeding through breaking news and police reports at KSL TV 5. However, through coffee orders and customer service, smoke breaks and shackled aprons, one position approved my application into oblivion — one that’s still governed by the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Services (DABS).

I reluctantly applied a few weeks after my 21st birthday, when peddling waterproof fitted caps was just not cutting it as a decent stream of income. I naively thought working at a liquor store was bottom of the barrel. I was expecting washed-up go-getters and ex-cheerleaders to be coming in every Saturday to rub in my face how productive and beneficial their lives has been, while I was brown-bagging whatever rot-gut swill they’d soon be shooting. How awful of me to assume such dramatic bullshit? Although I did see my fair share of high-school-peaked personalities, the job itself wasn’t half bad.

I worked at the Cottonwood Liquor and Wine in Cottonwood Heights. Its sterile flatness made me think of a strip mall urgent care with its tinted, sliding glass doors and IV bag red lettering. Inside, I did a bit of everything: organized shipments of booze by categories, stocked shelves and racks routinely. I even had to unclog public toilets from whatever dehydrated tar pits the town drunks left for me. However, the true oddities were whoever came through the checkout line.

Every person who laid their bottles on those granite countertops was certainly a character. I remember a regular who resembled a yellowing Charlie Day, sputtering his words for a pint of Barton vodka. When he pulled out a fistful of quarters, a severed porcelain doll arm tumbled out. His reply: “I’m saving that puppy for later.” Another one was a woman with Coolio dreads and an oversized tie-dye hoodie, who came crawling in on all fours. Before refusing service, I had to ask why she was on the floor. “I have no legs,” she says soberly… If it wasn’t customers that kept me on edge, it was the relics they left behind — a snifter glass filled with a galaxy of pharmaceuticals from the parking lot, a dimebag of cocaine dropped at the entrance, a roofing hammer smashed into the back dumpster lid — fragments from after-afterparties refusing to call it quits.

The stories were entertaining and the friends I made were complete legends like prolific author Freddy Bartlit and his skilled tattooing wife Sydney (both are dear friends of mine to this day). However, my breaking point came during the COVID pandemic. When a blue-check asshole pretending to be DABS went to Twitter claiming that all Utah liquor stores would be closed until further notice, you could imagine the shitstorm that caused. Lines of trembling customers stretched across the street, while fights of “getting too close to one another” broke out. The strangeness got worse, with some customers decked out in full hazmat attire. Above all, the cake topper to this madness came in the form of a lady dressed in only a bathrobe who looked like she fell in a bush… covered in blood. Police later said it wasn’t blood, but that she had a bit of an “accident.”

The liquor store was a highlight that constantly brings up bizarre memories. That’s the thing about the world of customer service — it’s not the 25-cent promotion or the actual working you remember, it’s the $4,000 Rémy Martin dropped rock-bottom on the concrete by some rich dumbass. The job market sucks now, but if you’re able to land something passable, in the great words of Huey Lewis, we’re all “workin’ for a livin.’”

Read more bizzare features by Alton Barnhart:
Salted & Pickled Salt Lake Specimens: Y2K Edition
My Worries Remain After Watching The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist