10,000 Men of Harvard Tried to Use a Ladder To Steal the Grille Sign

Though most shared a few tales of wanton drunkenness, from the convenience stores and pizza joints to the pubs, managers and busboys alike were quick to insist that Harvard students were above all “polite,” “well-mannered,” “tame” and even “boring.” Are we failing to live up to the standard of obnoxious college drunks across the country? Judge for yourself.

Tommy’s Pizza

“They’ve run away with the Open/Close sign and stolen some chairs when they were mad that there wasn’t any more food being served...About once a month a student vomits right in the restaurant.”

—Sunny Gill, owner’s son

Tommy’s Value

“Students will start fights. They say bad things like, ‘You want to fuck me?’ Then they call their friends to watch the fight. I tell them, go home, get rest, why do this now?...When a guy is with a girl, he’ll say ‘keep the change’ when other times he complains about how expensive things are...Sometimes students are rude. They throw money at me, so I throw the change back at them.”

—Tashdeep Singh Chahan, cashier

7-Eleven

“Harvard students are funny. They’re unique. Sometimes they mess up stuff. Sometimes they steal merchandise.”

—Anteneh, cashier

Pinocchio’s

“The students are never out of control. They’re very well-educated, we’re proud of them. But sometimes out-of-town people try to steal drinks when the place is crowded.”

—Octavio Aguilar,

manager

Grafton Street

“The Harvard Law School girl from Redline, the one with the billionaire parents, was here also; she threatened to close us down for some stupid reason...At the beginning of the year they’d try to jump in through the windows when there were lines to get in. Now we close the windows during busy hours.”

—Alan Mooney, manager

John Harvard’s

“During the Harvard-Yale game two years ago, five guys came in wearing Harvard shirts and trying to conceal five entire cases of beer. The underage ones always want to drink with the other people here. Sometimes we’ll catch them pouring the contents of a flask into their Coke bottles.”

—Michael Tady, bartender

“Harvard kids are sort of boring. They’re always having pseudo-philosophical discussions and attempting to use big words like ‘pseudo-philosophical.’”

—Neil R. Taylor, server

Redline

“This guy and girl got it on in the handicapped bathroom…All we could see was a set of pink panties through the window. Apparently they were trying to have sex...They’ll hand me IDs they’ve gotten as hand-me-downs from people I know, and I’ll ask them to ‘say hi from Rich’...A customer tried to make out with me last night. She was from Tufts...Once, I saw these guys bringing a ladder over to the sign for the Crimson Grille which used to hang outside the bar. I waited until they put it against the pillars and tried to take down the sign with a toolbox, then I got a bunch of guys together to run out and yell at them. All but one of them ran, leaving the ladder and the toolbox. The guy who was left just stood there paralyzed and asked if this would show up on his record. We let him go...A Harvard Law student came in once and picked a fight with me when she said she had made an order that had never been put in. When I tried to explain what was going on, she said, ‘Do you know whom you’re speaking to? My parents are billionaires.”

—Richard E. Laporte, bartender