A Rich Man Walks Into a Bar

An overly obvious metaphor for an overly obvious situation.

Photo by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash

A rich man walks into a bar. The bar is famously shitty - basically known for annoying arguments and brutal fights. Sometimes there’s a great drink on the menu. Sometimes everyone in the bar breaks into song. Usually not. The bar is a dive, but the regulars are used to it being a dive, even if they’d say under oath that they wish the bar was cleaner. 

Some regulars don’t even buy drinks - they just enjoy watching drinks get tossed in the faces of others. Bouncers do their best to throw out anyone causing serious damage, but half the time they throw out the wrong people. It’s far from perfect, but few bars in the town are. 

Above all else, the rich man does not want to be mocked.

Still, the rich man likes the bar. Sure, it can be rough, but he enjoys roasting the drunks and won’t say no to a spirited argument. The bar may suck, but it makes him feel like a normal working human. While this is happening, a lot of people who want his money follow him into the bar to tell him how great he is for even being there. They call him a visionary. They try to shout over people who say otherwise, which is their right. The rich man resents the people who don’t praise him and really resents the people who do praise him.

In this bar, even existing means that someone - the regulars, the bartenders, a stranger, your best friend - is going to give you shit. That’s what the bar is. It’s not always pleasant. It can be downright cruel. It’s certainly not healthy. Some people mean well but come off like assholes. Others don’t mean well and come off like assholes. It’s hard to distinguish the difference even if you’ve been in the bar for years.

Above all else, the rich man does not want to be mocked.

Despite being born into a wealthy family, the rich man truly believes he’s earned every dime he has. True, he’s invested wisely in businesses created by other people, but his stroke of genius is always paying enough money to take credit for any good press. Rather than a businessman, he styles himself a great thinker and innovator. Some of his businesses do - or at least intend to do - good for the world. The rich man considers this a down payment on allowing himself to be an asshole without any counter punches coming his way.

But this is a dive bar. Everyone is all knees and elbows. The rich man likes insulting people. He likes making them feel bad. He only insults people that he believes deserve it: critics of his business, employees asking for better working conditions, safety inspectors, unhappy customers, celebrities that won’t date him, rescue workers who rejected a plan he pitched. He imagines himself like Zeus throwing lightning bolts at small minded people afraid of the world changing. 

Some people throw lightning bolts back.

Above all else, the rich man does not want to be mocked.

The snide comments and angry remarks start to get under his skin. The sycophants try to cheer him up. They say the regulars are losers. They’re cheating to get their insults heard. Other insults - the good insults from righteous people! - are being drowned out. The rich man agrees that it doesn’t seem fair. In a fair world, he would be complimented and praised far more than he was insulted and criticized. He believes the primary reason he’s not being worshipped is that the bar is censoring the real people who belong there.

So the rich man says he wants to buy the bar.

The owner of the bar is psyched. He’s hated the bar for years. The people at the bar make fun of him whenever he comes by for a drink. It’s miserable. Even the bouncers who kick out the worst of the worst hate him. He only hangs onto the bar because it raises his profile and it’s the one time he’s actually had a business that lasted. That said, he fucking despises the bar and is more than happy to walk away from it and drop it on some other hapless idiot.

The rich man makes an offer for the bar way above its value. Everyone knows this. Even the rich man’s lackeys tell him this. But the rich man likes to show how rich he is, so he signs a contract promising to pay what he offered. In the subsequent few days, the rich man gets buyer’s remorse. He tries to break the deal by claiming he didn’t know the bar had a mouse problem despite having spent hundreds of hours hanging out there and commenting on the mice when he saw them.

Doesn’t matter. The rich man now owns the bar, whether he wants it or not. He has to take on a lot of debt to complete this reluctant deal. Investors in his other businesses worry about this.

The rich man pretends he wants it this way because his reputation is that he’s always playing five dimensional chess. He’s never wrong. It’s all part of the plan. 

Regulars and bartenders begin leaving the joint and are vocal that it’s his fault. The regulars who basically lived at the bar. The bartenders who came up with the holiday parties and karaoke nights and the inside jokes that made it feel like a community. A shitty community, but still a community. The rich man pretends he doesn’t care that he’s the reason they’re leaving. He says he can take it. He’s rich! He’s been criticized lots of times! He’s actually the one laughing, he tells everyone with fury on his face. 

In order to soothe his ego, the rich man fires most of the bouncers and asks the remaining bartenders to pay him money to serve drinks. A few bartenders say yes. Most say no and are told they’re no longer welcome behind the bar. They can be regulars, but they can’t be bartenders. No skin off the rich man’s back - lots of his friends say they’d love to pay him for the right to serve drinks. The rich man sweetens the deal by saying anyone who gives him money gets a microphone so they can be heard above everyone else. His friends test the speakers by screaming the n-word over and over as loud as they can.

But at least they’re not mocking the rich man.

Above all else, the rich man does not want to be mocked.

The bar gets even worse than before.

Local businesses decide they don’t want to sponsor trivia night anymore. Sure, the bar used to suck, but now the companies are worried potential customers will associate their brand with the people screaming racial slurs into microphones. It’s not a good look for the local bookstore or Italian restaurant or pool supply shop. A man selling knives out of the back of his truck buys cheap ad space in the bathroom.

Photo by Edgar Chaparro on Unsplash

The rich new owner of the bar blames the regulars for the place bleeding money. He knew it always bled money, but now it’s gushing. It can’t be his fault. It’s never his fault. He cannot fail, he can only be failed. He brings over employees that were nice to him at his other companies. Even though they know nothing about how a bar operates, they’re loyal to him, which means they’re probably good at what they do. 

They’re not good at what they do.

Worse, the remaining regulars and bartenders are still making fun of the rich man. The rich man promised that people in the bar could say whatever they wanted. It’s part of his sales pitch to get people to pay up for that microphone. He even invites back heavy drinkers who were 86’d from the bar and had to go to even shittier dive bars. He says nobody will ever be permanently banned again. The rich man thinks that if everyone could say whatever they want, the bar would be more profitable and even his critics would realize that he’s actually benevolent.

Still, most of the people at the bar make fun of him. The jokes are even meaner than before. Every decision about the bar is shredded to pieces. He feels like he can’t do anything right. He wonders if these idiots know that he alone can save the bar despite the fact it’s rapidly crumbling around him. He gets angry. His friends and fans get angry. They defend him, but he still hears every  joke about him. He could shut the door of his office, but he can’t help but listen. He has to listen. He bought the bar because he wanted the people at the bar to love him. 

If that doesn’t work, the rich man figures he can at least make everyone at the bar feel as bad as he does. 

And, sure, a lot of the people do feel bad. That’s why fewer and fewer customers show up. The people yelling into their microphones about the Jews are starting to just scream it at each other at full volume. Some of them love this. They thought it was unfair that other people in the bar got to be mean but they got in trouble for threatening someone’s life. It was a joke! Nobody can take a joke anymore. Comedy is finally legal in the bar, the rich man says.

One of the older regulars does an impression of the rich man. A couple more join in on the gag. The bartender promised that patrons could now say whatever they wanted, so some of those people begin to bring up things the rich man has done in the past. They do an impression of him talking about his business failures. They do an impression of him talking about people who were killed by his products. They do an impression of him talking about his long-term friendships with pedophiles. They do an impression in an Italian accent for some reason. Everyone else knows it’s a joke. 

Above all else, the rich man does not want to be mocked.

His free speech mandate suddenly ends. He says people aren’t allowed to do impressions of him unless they start every sentence saying it’s an impression. He bans people who follow these rules anyway. Despite his earlier promise that nobody would be kicked out forever, these people are in fact kicked out forever. The rich man’s fans say it’s not nice to use free speech to imitate someone else for mockery. They then return to shouting into the microphone about women that won’t fuck them. The rich man claps and cheers and hoots and hollers while tilting his head back to hear what everyone else is saying about him.

The bar gets emptier. Sure, new patrons come in and some formerly banned customers come back. But it’s not enough - not for the business and not for the rich man. Despite fearing criticism, the rich man worries that anyone in the bar who’s nice to him is doing it because they want his money. For once, he’s right.

People will still drink at the bar. There will still be fights. There will still be games. Hell, there will even still be holiday parties. But the bar that the rich man wanted to rule over no longer exists. The regulars he wanted to love him are replaced by kissasses he doesn’t respect. He smiles at every insult thrown at the old regulars - the fake bar flies! - but he’s still mad all the time. All this effort, all this money, and he’s still not being worshipped by the people whose bar he ruined. 

Now the rich man is stuck with the bar and people are still making fun of him in it.

Unfortunately, above all else, the rich man does not want to be mocked.