It was a Wednesday night and it was buzzing like a beehive. If you’ve ever seen a video of the interior of a beehive then you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, think a heavy metal mosh pit, or a sale at Walmart, it’s pretty much all the same.

Author William Self once posited that “sometimes the crowd is the madness — at others it is the absence of the crowd that is,” and anyone who has worked a restaurant business rush understands that. But crowds often take on a life of their own. And if you’re in charge of managing that, you cannot let things get out of control, whether it’s that mosh pit, beehive or sale.

“My friend is parking the car,” said the man, rearranging the water glass the bartender had just sat down.

He moved it and its coaster over, indicating pretty clearly that he intended to save the seat next to him.

“There’s no saving of seats,” said the bartender, pointing at the sign hanging overhead.

“He’s in the parking lot right now,” said the man.

It was a lie. He certainly knew it when he said it. The bartender, however, wouldn’t know for sure for some time.

Customers lie to people in the service business all the time.

• “I know the owner.”

• “You must have lost my reservation.”

• “We were here before them.”

It’s often shameless. And its always self-serving. My favorite was the guy insisting that he knew the owner to the owner himself.

“We know each other,” said the man.

“We do?” replied the owner. “Because you’d think I’d know that.”

Funny thing is that the lying man didn’t back down — ever.

But that’s the problem with a lie, if the liar won’t admit it themselves, then at what point do you just move on knowing that it is, or was, in fact a lie?

I guess that’s why we need laws and courts; the lying just can’t continue indefinitely. And if it were up to the liar, it would.

Ten minutes seemed to be the appropriate amount of time for this lie, because 10 minutes later the bartender removed the water glass and its coaster, much to the chagrin of the man sitting at the bar, and let someone else sit down.

“If my friend gets here and he can’t get a seat, we’re going to leave,” said the man.

“Look sir, I have eight people waiting to sit at the bar,” said the bartender.

“I’m not kidding, we’ll leave,” threatened the man.

“Maybe you didn’t hear me, I have eight people waiting to sit, meaning that if you and ‘your friend’ do leave, I will still have six people waiting,” said the bartender.

Sometimes a threat isn’t quite as threatening as some people would like it to be.The beehive continued to hum. And the lies just kept coming.

“Do you like my hair?” asked the woman.

“Of course,” said the man.

“Can you notice my bald spot?” asked another man.

“Barely,” responded another woman.

Those were white lies, lies designed to spare feelings. A little deception never hurt anyone, right?

“We have an open relationship,” said another man.

“Does she know that?” asked another woman.

“Well, we haven’t really talked about it,” said the man.

These were more of the gray type. Lies of omission always are. Much like a missing wedding ring, only someone who is deliberately blind doesn’t notice the mismatched tan line. But the dance of deception is often known full well by both parties: both the liar, and the recipient of that lie.

“That wasn’t my boyfriend,” said another woman.

“It wasn’t?” asked another man.

“No,” she replied.

“Then, who was it?” he asked.

“Just a friend.”

A friend who dropped her off, picked her up and left his credit card. Must have been a particularly good friend.

“OK,” said the man.

Bars are often full of lies: some overt, some subtle, some white and some grayish. And there’re some that don’t fit into any of those categories.

“Hey, bartender, have I ever taken a woman home from this bar?” asked a man, seemingly looking to impress a friend.

“There was that brunette a few weeks ago,” replied the bartender.

“No. The answer is no,” retorted that man angrily, clearly trying to make a different impression.

Leaving me with these thoughts:

• Tell a lie once and all your subsequent truths become questionable.

• “There’s no such thing as an innocent lie,” once opined Friedrich Nietzsche.

• “There are lies, damned lies and statistics,” said either Benjamin Disraeli or Mark Twain, or Mark Twain about Benjamin Disraeli.

• “No, I haven’t seen (insert name here),” said every bartender at one time or another.

• “With her I’d the most honest relationship I’ve ever had with a woman. The only thing I lied about was my name,” said Steve Martin in 1982’s “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid.”

Jeff Burkhart is the author of “Twenty Years Behind Bars: The Spirited Adventures of a Real Bartender, Vol. I and II,” the host of the Barfly Podcast on iTunes (as seen in the NY Times) and an award-winning bartender at a local restaurant. Follow him at jeffburkhart.net and contact him at jeffbarflyIJ@outlook.com