A veteran of The Lads' Holiday, John Caffrey has put together a hitlist of significant characters that you are guaranteed to meet on your summer testosterone trip.
So, after about ten seconds of deliberation, and many hours of discussion of how cool this is going to be, you’ve decided to go on a lads' holiday. Don’t forget to actually do the difficult part, and book hotels and flights, and all that less cool shit. Assuming you’ve managed to do that with only minor disasters, you’re going to want an idea of what to expect, so you don’t end up like those sorry bastards that wrote the reviews of those shitty hotels you managed to avoid. You DID manage to avoid the shitty ones, right? Good.
Now that you’ve done the hard part, here’s a sample of two types of people to avoid, and two types that you’re definitely going to want to get a hold of. In fact, let’s make it a checklist while we’re at it. If you manage to check off the entire list, then you can consider your holiday utterly complete. If you don’t, then you’ll just have to try again next summer. I know, it’s a terrible punishment for failure. Just do your best to keep an eye out for (and avoid);
1. The not-to-be-fucked-with hotel Manager.
Seriously, don’t fuck with your hotel manager; he WILL kick your drunk ass out. Now, don’t get me wrong, I absolutely do not mean you have to actually have to behave yourself, or anything crazy like that, I just mean that you have to keep the wanton destruction of your hotel to a concealable minimum. Also, if personal experience is any indicator, try to hide the kitchen knives from the insane one of your group. Managers tend to frown on amateur lumberjacks practicing on their property. Seriously, this actually happened. If you’re lucky, your interactions with this character will be kept to a bare minimum for the duration of your holiday, because, the cruel fact is, he hates you. Right down to your very bones, he despises you, even though he won’t even meet you for another few months. This guy wants quiet, respectable, older couples for guests, and he knows that your group is about as far from that as your mam’s cooking is from the crap you’ll be sustaining yourself with on the holiday (Seriously, you will be willing to do terrible things for one of her roast dinners by the time this holiday is done).
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2. The Sound Hotel Worker.
This guy can most easily be found during the night shift, playing Call of Duty on the staff computer behind the desk. You forgot your key, and don’t want to have to pay for some stupid fee for a new one? This guy has got you covered. Need a token for the cigarette machine? He gives it to you for free. Need that dead hooker cleared out of your room before your roommates get back? You’re on your own for that one, you sick bastard. He probably won’t call the police, though. Pretty much anything else, particularly things that you think its bullshit that you have to pay for, like the Wi-Fi access code, for example, is fair game for this guy. Because this guy has one rule, and one rule only, and that is to never, ever give a fuck about anything ever. Like I said, though, you only get one of these in your hotel if you’re lucky, so don’t count on him being there. If this guy is the rare one on this checklist, then the next one is more common (and annoying) than an itch in your ass-crack at a formal occasion (No? just me? Really?)
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3. The Club/Bar Reps.
You might think that these guys are cool the first time they pull you off the street to tell you about these deadly drink offers at this deadly place that’s absolutely deadly, and since you seem like a bunch of deadly lads, they’ll do you a deadly deal, yeah? Seriously, by the end of your holiday, you will have perfected the soul-burning, hateful, don’t-even-fucking-think-about-it glare that is necessary to keep these bastards from harassing you on the way back from KFC at 3 P.M. (told you, those eating habits are going to be something else). Oh, you don’t think they’ll be out that early? Wrong. Reps do not need sleep. Reps do not need food. Reps only need you to come into their pub, and they don’t give one good god-damn what time you do it. Seriously, there was one rep, who I saw standing outside his chosen cave of evil every time I passed it, which was at least 10 times a day, over literally the entire course of the day and night. At one point, he tried to get me into the pub “for one last drink” at 6 in the morning. After I had passed by him at 3 P.M the very same day. These reps may not sound so bad, but believe me, you will soon see for yourself. It’s important to note, that even after they begin to recognise you, as did my sleepless zombie rep, they still won’t take the hint. You can walk by these guys 5 times daily, and tell them that you’d rather walk across broken glass barefoot and then have a tequila footbath than set foot in their barren wasteland of a pub, and they will still try just as hard the 11th time. You have to admire their persistence, or at least you would if they weren’t so fucking annoying. However, there is one vital exception to the rule that all reps are barely people, and that is this;
4. The ONE Sound Rep
Now this one is important, because this rep is going to be representing the bar that you’ll be doing the majority of your drinking in before the club. This place is going to become your home away from home. There is two parts to finding the perfect drink-nest for your holiday, and the first part is time. Obviously, you’re going to need to hit as many bars as possible on your first couple of nights, and I wish you luck with that. But once you come to the realisation that most of the pre-club bars are pretty much the same, you’re going to want to start hunting. Personally, we found ours straight across from the biggest nightclub in Magaluf, (The club is BCM, the bar is called Panama Jacks, tell ‘em John sent you) but you never know where you’ll find yours. The main thing to keep an eye out for is, as previously mentioned, the sound rep. this is like looking for a needle made of diamond in a haystack made of already digested hay, but it’s worth it. Once you befriend the rep, you can look forward to such benefits as drinking off the preapproved cheap drinks list for the same price, or simply a larrup of free drinks as soon as you walk in. And even better, the bigger your group is, the better these perks get! Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the sound rep is really your friend though, he or she IS still just after your money, but that’s okay, because they’re less obnoxious about it than the other ones.
This is just a taste of what to expect on your lads holiday, but take it from me, it's solid advice. And most importantly of all, you shouldn’t listen to a god damn word of it, after all, isn’t the whole point of a lads holiday to completely ignore all of the most basic advice you’ve been given all your life? Instead, just try to remember this one piece of advice; try not to die out there. Shipping bodies is expensive.
