Via iStockphoto / @beccatwoey TikTok
Pennsylvania friends discovered what their bartender nicknamed them. This practice of identifying customers is pretty common.
Everyone likes a little peek behind the curtain. Whether that means what the kitchen does when you send an overcooked steak back, how the manager decides who gets a great table or what the bartender thinks of you.
It’s kind of cursed knowledge, because once you know, you can’t ever unknow. So when one group of Pennsylvania friends finished their night at RJ’s Pub and Grill, they got some deep knowledge.
How Common Is This?
Becca Twoey (@beccatwoey) posted a short yet deeply eloquent TikTok video, which now has over 94,000 views. The camera scans over three bar tabs slowly enough to read what her friends had for dinner (wings are popular). It’s also slow enough to read what the bartender has called them to identify them.
In descriptions so brief and muscular that Hemingway would be proud, they’ve been out basically as short just character sketches.
“Headband,” reads one.
“Blonde” says another.
But the most ruthlessly effective one just says, “Bald Dude.”
Bartenders and customers weighed in in the comments section. And, as it turns out, this practice of identifying customers is pretty common.
“If they printed tab name out at my bar I would pass away,” @chandra.schuyler said.
TikToker @beardojon2 shared a photo of his receipt and accompanying description, “Hawaiian shirt beard.”
“I do this all the time. it’s an epic yet terrible habit,” a bartender admitted.
Another said, “As a bartender those are much ‘nicer’ names than I use.”
Why Do We Always Want To Know What People Think Of Us?
It is evolutionarily hard-wired into humans to care what others think. “When our ancestors shared the planet with woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers, no one wanted to get left behind. Group inclusion was necessary for survival,” writes Michael J. Formica for Psychology Today.
These days, connection is still necessary for survival. Especially since “we aren’t born with sharp fangs to hunt or own food, or fast limbs to seek shelter,” notes Dr. Kyler Shumway of Deep Eddy Therapy. In order to survive, he says, “We have to stay connected.”
The idea that what others think matters—or we’re at least curious about—is an ongoing attempt to reconcile who we authentically are.
It can also give our friends roasting material for the rest of our natural lives—a different kind of knowing for sure, but still a way of belonging. Even if now you’re saved in everyone’s phone as “Bald Dude.”
BroBible reached out to Becca Twoey via TikTok direct message and with a comment on the post. We will update this if she replies.