“This is the new Double Deuce,” says Frank Tilghman. We are at the start of an all-hands staff meeting, and Tilghman is pointing to the concept art for the bar’s redesign. But standing nearby is his latest hire, Dalton. It is through Dalton, with Dalton, in Dalton that the new Double Deuce will be achieved. Dalton embodies the new Double Deuce. He is its future.

When Dalton takes over as cooler he becomes more than just the chief bouncer. His role is not to handle a series of discrete incidents, but to institute sweeping reforms that will eliminate such incidents forever. “It’s going to change,” he states—not a threat, not a promise, a fact. His bouncers, too, must change for this to take place. As below, so above.

Bouncing on the Dalton Path is a matter of following “three simple rules.”

This, for the fourth time, is the third.

3. Be nice (continued)

“I want you to remember,” says Dalton, “that it’s a job. It’s nothing personal.”

Thus far, Dalton has explained the third and simplest of his Three Simple Rules in comparatively painstaking detail. He has articulated its Great Commandment. He has preached the Parable of Someone Getting in Your Face and Calling You a Cocksucker. He has emphasized its communal nature. And now he says it’s nothing personal?

I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce you to a man named Gyp Rosetti.

ROSETTI: “Bone for tuna.”

TONINO: What?

ROSETTI: “Bone for tuna.” What the fuck’s that’s supposed to mean?

TONINO: Oh. The kid’s Irish. The pronunciation was off. I think he meant—

ROSETTI: I know what he meant. Who the fuck is Nucky Thompson to wish me good luck? And in Italian, no less, like he’s mocking me? He’s real cute, I’ll fucking tell you. Sets me up to lose, pulls our whiskey deal at the last minute, then it’s buon fortuna like he’s rooting for me to get back on my feet. Push me off a cliff, why don’t you.

TONINO: Sure, I mean—

ROSETTI: Good luck flapping your arms on the way down! Am I right?

TONINO: Sure, I mean—

ROSETTI: Real attitude on him. Scrawny Irish prick. I need his blessing to make my way in the world?

TONINO: He w—

ROSETTI: I need him? To lecture me? “Nothing’s personal”? What the fuck is life if it’s not personal?

So you can see Dalton’s dilemma. Here he is, new in town, new in the job, new to these men, whose job it is to physically fight, restrain, and eject other men. His first order of business is to fire two of their coworkers, neither particularly well-liked, but each emblematic over his power over their employment and thereby their lives. He’s told them It’s my way or the highway and rattled off a list of undesirables who frequent the bar, a state that’s going to change. The implication is clear: His way is superior to theirs, which has demonstrably failed. From there he launches into a disquisition on bouncer conduct that is rife with paradox and contradiction as well as comprising a nearly diametrically opposed approach to the craft than that which they have heretofore pursued. After all this, after telling these violent men how to do their violent jobs by moderating their interactions with other violent men under the threat of termination, Dalton has the temerity to tell them that when the time comes and they are being pelted with verbal and physical abuse and they must decide whether and how to strike back, that all of this is nothing personal? Doesn’t he see how they would take this? Doesn’t he know it reads as insanely pollyannaish at best, insulting at the most reasonable, and downright dangerous at worst? When confronted with well-meaning advice by someone with whom you are at odds—and what is a worker if not at odds with the boss—even the most anodyne bromide, like wishing an associate “good luck” in his native language when a business deal goes south, feels like fighting words. Doesn’t Dalton realize that telling these men in this context that this job is nothing personal is tantamount to throwing down the gauntlet and fucking daring them to take it personal?

Yes. Yes he does.

If you think this sentence is confusing, then change one pig.

(to be continued)