The Regular, the Rookie, and the Parked Car

Ranked, most exposed first:

1. The service decision itself. Four doubles in two hours to one person, with no documented check on how he looked or behaved. This is the core question: was he visibly intoxicated when the fourth drink went out?
2. Training that cannot be evidenced. A 20-minute video on day one, with no competency check, no refresher, and nothing in writing. A licensee that cannot produce training records has to argue from scratch that it did anything at all.
3. The house policy is unusable as written. 'Cut off anyone who seems drunk' gives a nine-day server no criteria, no authority, and no escalation path. 'Seems' is not a standard anyone can apply or document.
4. No floor supervision. Nobody with authority was watching service pace on a busy night. Cutting off a regular is exactly the decision a new server should not be making alone.
5. The tolerance myth. 'He's a big guy, he can handle it' is not a defence anywhere - tolerance changes appearance, not impairment - and it reads badly because it shows the server had noticed something and reasoned her way out of it.
6. No exit control. Nobody considered keys at 12:00 a.m., which is when the risk actually materialises.
7. Regular-customer bias. Six years and good tips is a real pressure on a new server, and it is the licensee's job to neutralise it, not hers.

Do, in this order:

1. Preserve evidence before it disappears. Pull and copy the POS tab and the security footage for the lot and the service area now - many systems overwrite on a short cycle. Note the names of everyone on shift.
2. Take a written statement from the server the same night, in her own words, without leading her. What she observed, what she served, what she was trained on, who she could have asked for help.
3. Write the incident report factually: time the customer left, drinks served, the reported collision, what the manager was told at 12:20 and by whom.
4. Notify the owner and follow the insurance/notification policy. Do not post about it, do not discuss it with other customers, and do not discuss fault with staff.
5. Cooperate with police if they attend, and provide records on request rather than volunteering conclusions.
6. Check on the damaged car - a note to the owner or a report, depending on store practice - and do not let staff move the story in either direction.

Do not:

• Tell the server what to say, or 'fix' the report to read better. An altered record turns a service failure into a credibility problem.
• Have the conversation with her in front of other staff.
• Retaliate against her tonight. The training gap is a management failure; the discipline question is separate and later.
• Speculate about how drunk he was in a message or email.

The standard is what a reasonable server should have observed, not what this particular server believed. 'He seemed fine' is a conclusion offered with no supporting detail, and on its own it carries very little weight.

What would strengthen it:

• Specific observed behaviours at each service: he was steady, speech was clear, he was eating, he walked to the restroom and back without incident.
• An account of monitoring - that she checked the table between rounds rather than only when he signalled.
• Evidence that she would have cut him off: a record of her refusing someone earlier that week, a manager she can escalate to, a policy with actual criteria.
• Corroboration from another staff member who saw him.

What weakens it:

• The barback's account that she had already registered something - 'big guy, can handle it' - which suggests she observed indicators and explained them away.
• Four doubles in two hours with no documented observation at all.
• Twenty minutes between his last drink and his departure, with nobody watching the exit.
• Training records that show she was never taught what to look for, which helps her personally and hurts the licensee.

Practical point: the strength of this defence will be decided by what was written down on the night, not by how sincerely it is delivered a week later.