“May I get you something to drink?” I asked the standing woman, just like I had asked the previous three standing people who had been in front of her.

One chardonnay was ordered, poured and served. Everything was as it should be.

“That’ll be $16.75,” I said to the woman — as simple and normal a transaction as ever there was.

“I’d like to run a tab,” she said. “I’m waiting for a seat.”

Completely normal. It’s a request we get, literally, a dozen times a night. We are prepared for it and have policies to expedite it because while it may be a customer’s first time in our bar, it certainly isn’t ours.

“Sure,” I said. “We just need to hold a credit card to run a tab.”

Again, simple and normal — and the third time in a row that I had made that request. And I knew that woman had seen at least two of those times, if not three, which is why the next comment came as a bit of a surprise to me.

“I’ve never been asked to do that before,” she said.

I said it was a surprise, but it wasn’t a shock. As I’ve already said, we have a set of policies to deal with things just like that.

“I’m sorry,” I said, not really feeling sorry, but still being polite. “It’s company policy. We have to take a credit card to run a tab for people not seated.”

The logic of that statement was self-encapsulated. Imagine how hard it is to keep track of a single person in a three-deep crowd that ebbs and flows. Unless I know you personally, it’s going to be hard to identify you. And imagine this: What if a person, after being found, decides to say that they paid already? I don’t have to imagine that because it has already happened. In fact, it has happened enough that we have enacted a policy to make sure that it doesn’t happen, leading us to the present conversation.

“I come here all the time, and I’ve never been asked to do that before,” she said.

When confronted with an inevitability, people often adapt. It’s when things are not inevitable that they work the angles. It’s like being refused service in a bar. If it’s final, it’s final, and that’s it. She reluctantly gave me her credit card, and we went on from there. I secured her a place in line for a seat at the bar and went on taking and filling drink orders. I also went on collecting credit cards for tabs for the people standing, just like every night I work. Just another normal day.

Eventually, it was her turn for a seat. I waved her over to it. She sat down and ordered a salad with the dressing on the side, which, when it comes to salads, is a pretty normal request — so normal, in fact, that we have a special button on the computer to fulfill that request. Again, while it might be your first night here, it certainly isn’t ours.

“Do you think you can handle that?” she asked.

“And you already have my credit card,” she added.

“What’s the last name on the credit card?” I asked, which is a standard practice when one has 10 different credit cards behind the bar.

“I just gave it to you,” she said, ignoring the fact that she gave it to me 20 minutes ago. And in the interim, I took four more credit cards to add to the six that I already had.

“I understand that,” I said. “But I also have several other credit cards. I just need to make sure I use the right one.”

One might think that one would appreciate some due diligence, especially when one is concerned about one’s credit card. But one would be wrong.

“Ma’am, it’s company policy; I don’t know what else to tell you,” I said after another diatribe.

Finally, she requested her bill, which I ran and presented to her after specifically acknowledging it was her.

“I just want to thank you,” she said, leaving me some hope, before she continued and destroyed any chance, “for not buying me a drink.”

“Beg your pardon?” I asked.

“You could have bought me a drink for the inconvenience,” she said.

The manager just happened to be walking by.

“Jack, can you speak to this woman, please?”

“What seems to be the problem?” Jack asked.

“Your bartender is an a——,” she said.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, we don’t use that kind of language here,” Jack said.

“Oh, so you’re an a——, too?” she asked.

Leaving me these two thoughts:

• One truism in the restaurant business is that if you call the manager an a——, you’re going to be leaving — and never coming back.

• Sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to just let a person keep on talking.

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