Hey all! I've been inspired by the recent influx of stories from cigar shop employees and wanna dip my toes into sharing my experiences! Just a little background on me - I have rolled cigars & made pipe tobacco professionally for the last four years. I've been an event roller (entertainment), rolled and sold at TRF (largest Renaissance festival in the US) in the campgrounds, and worked for a while at a small Cigar/Pipe/Tobacco shop, as well as having sold under my own brand. I think the best/wildest story I have is relatively recent, and moderately short so I'll start with that one and move to more if it's well received 😂

So at the cigar lounge I rolled at, there was a BYOB policy (as is mostly the case in lounges), and it was in a fairly accessible part of town, with several major hotels within walking distance. One weekend evening, we had our entertainment going (piano), the TV on, some free beers being sampled from the local home-brewers, and an all around good vibe. I always sat at the desk right by the door in front of the huge window, so people could see me rolling as they walked by. In walks "T," which is the name he actually gave us. It's about 6pm, not too late, and this guy is boisterous! He asks a million questions about the cigars, buys a few sticks, and helps himself to a few beers. Well-behaved at this point, but very outgoing and loud, sings for a while with the piano player, smokes his first stick, and is all around decent, if odd and over-sharing what I would consider personal info, but hey. He leaves and on his way out says he'll be back later, he's going to his hotel. Fast forward to about 9pm, party is still going at the lounge, very mellow, everyone having a good time, I'm wrapping up my work and starting to clean my desk, and guess who STUMBLES in? T. And he went and got LIT. I don't generally deal with the public, but I got to listen to all of his drunken rambling. The boss tolerated him, and he bought a few more sticks. He's getting loud, drunk as hell, and accidently puts the lit end of his cigar in his mouth, more than once. We tell him he maybe needs to calm down, take a sit, drink some water. He sits down with no arguing, and almost immediately falls asleep with a still-lit cigar in his hand 🙄 a while later, he needs to go, so we try waking him up. What's he immediately do? Gets up, starts dancing and shaking his butt to the music and singing just nonsense sounds, and then almost immediately falls completely over bc he can't even stand up. After a bit of convincing, he gets up and crawls back to our chair, and we call him an Uber. We thought he was still sober enough to get that, and at this point most other customers have cleared out, and we are cleaning up before close. We took our eyes off of T for two seconds! and he escaped. I look out the window up front, and see him peeing in the flower beds about two yards from our doors, and when he was done, he wandered off into the night.

So if you're reading this T, that was a dick move.

Not my wildest story by far, but it's the one that I still have so many questions about! Hope y'all enjoyed!