You Are A Bartender, Part II

[Dear Booze]

By 8:00 P.M., the bar is full of people waiting for a seat in the dining room, or who have just finished dinner, or those who are there for a good time. It's clear that you are in charge. You are the captain of the ship. You are also the activities director, the psychologist, the referee, the librarian, the judge, the traffic cop, and the pimp. You control the mood, the tempo, and the degree in which inebriation escalates.

The crowd is three deep at the bar and everyone wants a drink, wants to pay, or wants to ask some stupid question. A lesser bartender would fold under this pressure. He would be in the weeds with no apparent way out. But not you. You are in your full element. You are constantly scanning the room. You are looking for empty glasses, full ashtrays, and fights. The place is loud with laughter and excitement, and greetings, and orders, and stories. Yet, you hear everything and choose what you will ignore and to what you will react. You are able to decide, immediately, which of your next moves will take priority over what you were just about ready to do. You are in a groove. You make people laugh, and put people at ease.

Throughout the night, you will have at least one person misplace a phone, or a wallet, or a credit card, or a purse; at least one person will send back a drink because it’s not the same color as the one they were served at some other place while they were on vacation; at least one person tell you that they had been a bartender while they were in college and offer to get behind the bar to “help you out”; at least one couple who are on a first date; at least one couple who are on the verge of an argument; and at least one person ask you for a drink “on the house”. “Whose house?” is your standard reply. “I don’t own this place. When Giuseppe comes by, ask him.” You know this answer will shut them down. You always say the right things with confidence. At times like this, you have the ability to tell someone, anyone, to "fuck off" and they would smile and say thank you.

You love your job. Several years ago, you got a job at a restaurant as a busboy. You eventually became a waiter and realized you were really good at taking care of your customers. You made it your mission to transform grumpy people into happy customers. But it was more than the job that you enjoyed; you were attracted to the lifestyle that accompanied the food service industry. There was a comaraderie that came with your job. You had a built-in group of friends that you shared a bond with and with whom you would spend late nights and early morning hours. To some extent, it’s sort of necessary that those sorts of relationships form. Much like soldiers or sports teams, you spend a large number of hours together dealing with customers in an industry that no outsider could possibly understand. And your off hours are at a time of the day when none of your other friends are available. And there’s not much to do during the middle of the night except drink. Sure, there were 24-hour bowling alleys open, but somehow the main activity was to get loaded. “Why not just go home and sleep?” people ask. Well, if they have to ask, then they just won’t be able to understand.

So you ended up leaving that first restaurant for a better one, where the tips were better and the customers were better looking. That place had a bar and you, as a waiter, were required to learn a little about the bar business. You were required to know how to garnish every drink and to know the difference between Wolfschmidt and Calvert. You had to know how to upsell. If a customer ordered a Vodka Tonic, you needed to be able to instinctively ask if they’d like Absolut, Kettle or Grey Goose. The difference between any of those and the shitty well vodka could mean the difference of several dollars. And you understood that those dollars added up. And since the customer would leave a tip based on a percentage of the entire bill, this meant more money in your pocket. This all came naturally to you.

During your time as a waiter, you also learned a lot about people. You learned how to be prejudice – something you’ve been told to NOT be your entire life. You justified this by telling yourself that you were simply profiling. When you think about it, your parents, teachers and the entire politically correct society has been sending some pretty shitty mixed messages to you for your entire life. When kids are little, they are taught to not touch hot stoves, approach strange dogs and to take candy from strangers. It was an attempt to keep you safe, but you were also taught to NEVER prejudge people based on their appearances. How fucked up is that?

The restaurant industry has taught you how to generalize based on culture, color and religious background. You learned some very basic and general rules about people:

• When given the choice for deserts, Asian people are more like to order some sort of fruity item. Fruit topping, fruit pies, fruit cobbler - some sort of fruit over some sort of chocolate, fudge, or butterscotch topping.
• Smokers tip better than non-smokers.
• Drinkers don’t scrutinize over the bill.
• The folks who you wait on after church on Sunday are terrible tippers.
• Mexican and Black people are terrible tippers too.
• Black people are more likely to be more about show than substance. They are more likely to order something expensive than something that’s good. For example, they will order Courvoisier and Coke, which you know is a tremendous waste of money. If they’re going to mix it with coke, why not just order a brandy and coke? You’ve even asked the customer this very question, but have never received a good answer. So you gave up.

So, like your approach to a stove, a pit bull or some crazy-eyed stranger in a van, you view customers and understand the possible outcomes of your pending interaction before it actually takes place. Sure, you are sometimes wrong. But you are often right.

By the time you were 21, you had landed a spot as a barback, and within six months after that, you were picking up daytime shifts behind the bar. It came natural.

[oldsmartskunk]

Two good installments. I enjoy the way you write. Will there be more?

[oettinger]

Good writing again DB!
How comes you appear in the mag and I don`t? Conspiracy brewing!

[Dear Booze]

Good writing again DB!
How comes you appear in the mag and I don`t? Conspiracy brewing!

No conspiracy here. I simply submitted a few quotes packaged together with a crisp one hundred dollar bill, and a hardly used bottle of Hudson Baby Boubon.