Some bar and restaurant workers have trouble dealing with last call when they're off duty and at somebody else's place

Update: Board found no violations for either incident.

A downtown bar and one in East Boston had to explain fights that erupted when off-duty workers from other joints violently acted out at closing time, at hearings before the Boston Licensing Board this morning.

At Scholars, 25 School St. downtown, a staff party on the second floor that the East Coast Tavern Group had thrown for its employees at bars including Scholars, the Dubliner and Carrie Nation on Jan. 29 was going so well that one of the managers left a little early - and got home around 2 a.m., just about when police were being called there when a doorman at one of the group's bars was going berserk, according to testimony from police and the bar.

The guy, who worked at an East Coast bar besides Scholars, reacted poorly to being told it was time for the party to wrap up, the bar to close and everybody to go home. "It just kind of escalated with us telling him the party was over," a manager who stayed told the board. The man grabbed one woman by the hair, as other party goers started trying to grab and punch him to get her away from him. And then he jumped the bar and began trying to punch the bartender, who, having run out of room in which to hide, got out his pepper-spray canister and sprayed the attacker right in the face.

Police arrived around 2:09 a.m. by which time most of the melee participants had fled, but officers could still hear screaming from the second floor as some workers, now downstairs, waved them in and told them to hurry upstairs, one officer told the board. Upstairs, he said, officers found one man had locked himself in a men's room to try to protect himself. In another men's room, they found the alleged berserker, lying on the ground, screaming in agony, both his eyes swollen shut, from a combination of the pepper spray and all the punches he'd gotten - which also opened up a gash above his right eye.

The bar's attorney, Andrew Upton, asked the board not to hold the bar responsible, because "it was an unforeseeable outburst from a belligerent man" and staffers did what they could to protect the woman he'd grabbed and stop his bull-like rampage through the joint.

Upton said the doorman had previously passed a CORI check and had never caused any problems at his own bar.

"It appears that he just snapped and attacked a woman and attacked the bartender," he said.

And while the bartender was acting in self defense, he was disciplined for carrying and using pepper spray, Upton said, adding East Coast has updated its staff manual to specifically bar workers from carrying weapons of any kind while in duty - including pepper spray.

Also, he added, East Coast has decided it will no longer hold staff parties.

Separately, La Gran Manzana, 22 Central Sq. in East Boston, had to account for a group of suddenly fighty employees of a pair of restaurants - in Revere and Lynn - shortly before closing on Jan. 23.

According to police and the bar's owners, the group of workers, having an employee celebration, decided to close out their night by dropping in at the East Boston bar around 12:30 a.m.

They were having a gran time until around 1:30 a.m., when they couldn't agree on how to pay for the drinks and voices got louder, insults were exchanged, in particular between one man and woman, and soon so were fists. The man who was exchanging mal mots with the woman - and her boyfriend - got punched to the floor, after which she began kicking him - to which he responded by biting her leg, severely enough that she eventually sought treatment at the East Boston Neighborhood Health Center.

Inebriation may have been involved. The A-15 detective who investigated the melee interviewed the down-on-the-floor guy, who conceded he didn't remember many specifics because he was "very drunk." But, the detective added, "he did admit he was biting one of the legs that was kicking him."

The detective added it was up to a clerk magistrate at East Boston Municipal Court to determine whether either of the two would face criminal charges - the man on the floor for assault and battery, the woman for assault and battery with a dangerous weapon - her shod foot.

In both cases, the licensing board could decide at a Thursday hearing whether the incidents warrant any sanctions and, if so, how severe.