Viewers are coming after a bartender in the comments section of a viral TikTok he posted that delineates how a woman, who fooled the bar he worked at for years, got banned from nearly every watering hole on the west side of Cleveland, Ohio on her 21st birthday.
Davey Francis (@daveyfrancis) uploaded a clip where he shared the story of a young woman named Tracy who managed to fool bartenders since she was 18 years old into thinking she was 21. Then, when she decided to go out with her friends to celebrate her actual 21st birthday, she thought that the bar would’ve just tossed their hands up in the air and said, “Good work, well, the past is in the past.”
According to Francis, however, this wasn’t the case.
“Don’t celebrate your 21st birthday at the bar you’ve been drinking illegally at for three years,” he advises viewers before telling Tracy’s story. “Back in 2013, I watched a woman get herself 86’ed from just about every bar around the west side of Cleveland.”
When Francis got hired at the bar in question, he says Tracy was already a regular.
“She’s such a barfly around these parts that when I’m getting a tour of the place, the GM noticed her and says, ‘Hey, that’s Tracy, you’ll see a lot of her.’ I assumed that everybody’s already done their due diligence on carding this woman and ascertaining she is of legal age to drink in these establishments. You know what they say about assumptions, right?”
Francis goes on to say that he didn’t know Tracy was an underage drinker until about a year into his working at the bar when she decided to get together with some gal pals and celebrate her 21st birthday.
“We’re all working a busy a*s Saturday night and in comes Tracy with a bunch of other questionably aged young women and they’re celebrating a birthday. A 21st birthday. ‘Whose 21st birthday?’ I hear you all silently screaming through my phone. Yeah, it was Tracy’s,” Francis reveals. “Tracy was turning 21 and apparently had been drinking at all these bars since she was about 18 years old. Now I don’t know what Tracy thought the response was gonna be in this situation, maybe she really thought all the bartenders are just gonna be like, ‘Ahh sh*t you got us.’ That’s not how people reacted.”
While Francis claims to have simply rolled his eyes at Tracy’s actions, he says the other bartenders were incredibly upset. This led Tracy to get kicked out of the bar. Then the bartenders spread the word to workers at other establishments that Tracy frequented.
“People started making phone calls and other people got pissed,” he says. “Those other people worked at other bars and when Tracy and her birthday party reached those bars, she was denied entry. In one night, Tracy went from being a person you would see two to three times a week to being a person that vanished.”
It’s understandable why management at Francis’ bar was so mad at Tracy: because businesses that serve alcohol to minors can be subjected to heavy fines and the individual who provided the liquor to said minor can also be tossed in jail for the offense. When it comes to Ohio, Francis’ state, the specific legalities surrounding underage drinking are intimidating.
According to the Maher Law Firm, “The maximum statutory penalty for selling alcohol to an underage person is 60 days in jail and a $500 fine.” The establishment found guilty of providing the alcohol to said minor could have its liquor license suspended, effectively putting them out of business. Additionally, the firm states, in many cases the employee who served booze to the minor would more than likely lose their job.
Local Cleveland news outlet KOCO 5 reported in March that out of 11 bars surveyed in the Cleveland area, police discovered 8 of them were serving alcohol to minors. The Maher Law Firm writes that businesses can defend themselves from any charges of wrongdoing when serving alcohol to a minor if the establishment can prove that they checked IDs and were duped by a fake provided by the minor in question.
@daveyfrancis BARTENDER STORYTIME! A piece of sage advice for the youngs. #storytime #bartender #bartenderstories #happybirthday #21stbirthday ♬ original sound – Davey Francis
Some commenters who responded to Francis’ video seemed a bit confused as to how Tracy was able to get away with not being caught for underage drinking for so long.
“Don’t you have to card people every time they visit the bar and regardless of age? I mean I get carded as part of the 1900s clubs,” one user wrote.
Others thought that the response from the bar Francis worked at, and other bars in the area wasn’t cool.
“So they were mad at her for them not being able to do their jobs?” one viewer said, arguing that the onus was on bar staff and not the underage drinker.
“I’ve never known a bar tender to care after someone turns 21,” someone else penned.
“We told our local bartender when we actaully turn 21 and all he did was laugh and told us how good we were at faking it,” another person wrote.
It seemed like there were a lot of folks who were Team Tracy.
An additional viewer said, “I’m so confused… so she wasn’t carded and then she turned 21 and she’s denied entry..? yall should have been carding her for those 3 years.”
Another TikToker replied that despite being 23 years old, they’re almost never carded when they go to drinking establishments. “I drink *occasionally* at a bar I go to and it is SHOCKING that none of the new bartenders have ever carded me. I’m 23, they should be carding me,” they said.
The Daily Dot has reached out to Francis via email for further comment.