Bartender Blues

July 2, 2018 7:38 PM

A List of the Many Things Stressing out Your Bartender.
posted by storybored (36 comments total)

Interesting.
1. Tipped wages always sound like a nightmare.

2. Some of these issues could be solved with more comprehensive Responsible Service of Alcohol laws. They're not perfect, but seems like y'all could do with a few more.

3. So much stuff about expectations of people getting hit on while they're working, or having to pretend to be customers friends. A la this:
12. Another bartender’s girlfriend, boyfriend, or spouse showed up, and now the bartender's killing the bar’s vibe by acting like a completely different, way-less-fun person.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 7:59 PM on July 2, 2018 [5 favorites]

That gave me some insight into my son's life.
posted by M-x shell at 8:23 PM on July 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

63. A customer who’s trying to pay rent by writing internet listicles for a young audience is incessently asking you questions in order to meet a deadline tomorrow.
posted by midmarch snowman at 8:26 PM on July 2, 2018 [39 favorites]

As a permitted server, here's why a lot of bartenders are REALLY SUPER STRESSED OUT about serving rules that not many people know about:

In my state and many others a licensed server is PERSONALLY, LEGALLY, CIVILLY LIABLE FOR DAMAGES WITH NO LIMIT and as far as I know "bartender's liability insurance" isn't really a thing for individual servers.

So, if someone drives drunk and plows through a busload of kids and/or nuns, every single parent/family/party can individually sue the server for overserving.

So, when someone comes up to a bar I'm working and says something really dumb like "I'm so drunk/stoned/driving home/took a bunch of pills" and/or is simply just an asshole who looks/acts like a liability - they are 100% cut off and I will refuse to serve them.

And that's actually the job of a bar tender and totally within the rights of a serving permit. There's a whole section in the class and test on how to spot and deal with people abusing prescription meds, or people that are so tired they really shouldn't be drinking, etc, and in the end even the test and class tells the server to trust their instinct and reinforces that it's their choice and judgement call because as the licensed server on duty they are liable for a large number of consequences for overserving, including being directly fined by the liquor control board.

TL;DR is that overserving can be more than just a slap on the wrist. It can utterly end a bartender's financial future and effectively their life. Not entirely unlike a drunk driver plowing into someone.

Bartending is pretty serious business. Be nice to your bartenders.
posted by loquacious at 8:31 PM on July 2, 2018 [52 favorites]

64 - one of your boots has fallen apart because the cheap ass goth bar you're working in has big puddle behind the bar that you have to stand in all night.

65 - one of the patrons has just peered at you drunkenly through the one eye they can still manage to keep open and asked "are you a little girl?" and the bouncers are nowhere in sight.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 9:08 PM on July 2, 2018 [5 favorites]

Customers are breaking stools, chairs, paper towel holders, TP dispensers, doors, mirrors, glasses -- or just stealing the glasses, because people love stealing glasses.

Oh my god the dispensers. Why do frat boys hate paper towel dispensers? Fuckin' things don't make it a week, it seems like. I realize it's easier to tear a thing off the wall in the relative privacy of the bathroom (not to mention, there are no cameras), but what, did a paper towel dispenser somehow kill your childhood pet?

16. Someone’s been asking uncomfortable questions, like:
How much money do you make? How much money does the bar make? What else do you do? Will you make out with my friend? Will you make out with me? Can I have your number?

One of my closest friends is a female bartender who definitely makes more money because she's pretty and knows how to act a little flirty without it really meaning anything. Someday this is going to completely backfire when some jackass doesn't want to take no for an answer. I worry about this all the time.
posted by axiom at 9:25 PM on July 2, 2018 [4 favorites]

I worry about this all the time.

I have for decades worried about service workers I have known who use the flirt to get better tips. It's charming, but it's also hanging out a lure, and I have a bad opinion of customer behavior because of years of hanging out in bars.
posted by hippybear at 9:31 PM on July 2, 2018 [3 favorites]

Truth, but there are those who are whack no matter what and those who aren't whack until they have what they feel is encouragement and enlarging the pool of creeps isn't something anyone should welcome.
posted by hippybear at 9:47 PM on July 2, 2018 [2 favorites]

This is veering into some weird blaming women for shitty men’s behavior territory, can we not, thanks
posted by palomar at 9:49 PM on July 2, 2018 [31 favorites]

No, it's blaming men for being shitheads who can't tell hospitality from come-fuck-me. Or at least that's my take and I'm the one making the point.
posted by hippybear at 10:02 PM on July 2, 2018 [8 favorites]

K, then the comments about hanging out a lure and encouraging them need some clarification
posted by palomar at 10:06 PM on July 2, 2018 [5 favorites]

Like, what you describe as a woman baiting a man into behaving badly may actually just be a woman doing her damn job and being friendly to a customer.
posted by palomar at 10:08 PM on July 2, 2018 [13 favorites]

63. A customer who’s trying to pay rent by writing internet listicles for a young audience is incessently asking you questions in order to meet a deadline tomorrow.

63b. You are trying to make rent and supplement your meager bartending take-home by writing internet listicles for a young audience. The website "editor" tells you when you submit the list that he assumed you knew you were doing it for the exposure.
posted by Celsius1414 at 10:08 PM on July 2, 2018 [9 favorites]

This whole list could just as easily be titked “The Many Things Stressing Out Darkstar” whenever I go into a bar.

The shitty drunk clientele behavior, the fraught social dynamics around mating rituals, the shitty drunk clientele behavior, the strangely inert environment if alcohol were removed, and the shitty drunk clientele behavior.
posted by darkstar at 10:10 PM on July 2, 2018 [6 favorites]

I read hippybear’s comment in the context of servers intentionally using the “flirt” with patrons. (I.e. not just being hospitable.) Hence, the whole context of his statement about setting out a lure seems quite apt.

Without that context, I think the “victim blaming” accusation would be appropriate.

Anyway, I think this is heading into derail territory, so...
posted by darkstar at 10:12 PM on July 2, 2018 [4 favorites]

It's about perception. Women are friendly and doing things to make a customer feel comfortable, men see this as a lure and that the woman wants sexual contact.

I mean, I'm gay, but I'm a male and I know how this works. I've watched it happen a zillion times. (See my previous comment about having watching things in bars across decades.)

I'm seriously not trying to start a thing about how women lead men on or whatever. i'm talking about how men perceive things and how that can be a bad dynamic. I thought that was clear earlier, but apparently was not, but I hope it is now.
posted by hippybear at 10:13 PM on July 2, 2018 [3 favorites]

hippybear - from your experience, how are things different or the same in a gay bar, re: bartender (flirtatious) behavior and how the customer "reads" it or the expectation?

Could we be looking at systems problem (power, service, in a hierarchal-hetero-encoded interaction) and not a blame-the-any-individual-participant?
posted by Silvery Fish at 10:32 PM on July 2, 2018

To one extent or another, a lot of these are things anyone working in any branch of food and beverage service has to deal with. But a bartender has it worse in some key areas. A certain percentage of your customers are going to be mentally impaired by the substance they're there to consume. You have to be able to tell just from observation when any given customer has had too much, and deal with the consequences of cutting them off which for some people includes violence. As mentioned above, you are liable for the safety of everyone who comes and goes, even if it's physically impossible for you to be the one who keeps them safe. And, while some people in the dining room will try to get free food out of you, that number is a drop in the bucket compared to the number of people trying to get free drinks.

I tended bar a total of twice, and that was more than enough. The actual preparation and serving of drinks was simple enough, being able to do all that other stuff just takes a certain kind of person that I'm not.

(I did learn to make a pretty good Manhattan, though. That's pretty much all the Lions Club drank during their meetings in the private room. You had to have a big tray of them ready at regular intervals.)
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:25 PM on July 2, 2018 [2 favorites]

The reason I posted point 12 is that it seemed to me that it indicates an expectation that staff put themselves out, "flirt" or behave more openly to customers than they might naturally be comfortable with. That that expectation is even reinforced by coworkers if there's a pooled tips situation.

Seems pretty terrible to me, and if anyone should be blamed for supposed "tipseeking" behaviour it's bosses, for setting up and condoning tipped wages.

If "flirty" staff are at increased risk, it's the patrons who put them at risk and bosses who expect behaviour they know might endanger staff who are to blame.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 11:55 PM on July 2, 2018 [3 favorites]

Between the insistence that your fellow bartenders need to at least pretend they're not married because otherwise they're less 'fun' and make less tips for the tip pool, and the 'it's 100% worse when [the person acting maudlin and crying] is a dude' statement, this left me feeling icky. I was a bartender for years. Lots of this stuff is true, if kind of obvious. Lots of it is just stupid and the article as a whole is pretty unimpressive.
posted by cilantro at 12:17 AM on July 3, 2018 [10 favorites]

I kept getting hung up by how the writer kept referring to bartenders as he/him. What is this, 1952? Annoying.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 3:41 AM on July 3, 2018 [9 favorites]

Also the use of girl/dude was weird and annoying. Like a) those are not equivalents and b) just say person? Not that hard to be inclusive in your writing (I guess this is also what editors and house style are for)
posted by (Over) Thinking at 4:20 AM on July 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

Oh my god the dispensers. Why do frat boys hate paper towel dispensers? Fuckin' things don't make it a week, it seems like. I realize it's easier to tear a thing off the wall in the relative privacy of the bathroom

One of my neighborhood bars, during the high point of the college party zone in our neighborhood in the 80's, redid their mens room in "Early Prison Cell". EVERYTHING was made of steel. Urinals, Toilet, Sink, Mirror... Everything.

Yeah, it's weird, but I totally understand their motivation.
posted by mikelieman at 4:28 AM on July 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

Mod note: A couple deleted; let's please drop the flirting derail now.
posted by taz (staff) at 6:31 AM on July 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

hippybear - from your experience, how are things different or the same in a gay bar, re: bartender (flirtatious) behavior and how the customer "reads" it or the expectation?

This is an interesting question. I've spent WAY more time in bars that are not gay bars than I have in gay bars, but a quick generalization would be that it seems that bartenders and servers dress MUCH more provocatively in gay bars but hold their customers at more of a distance. I also have never personally seen a customer at a gay bar be as aggressive toward waitstaff as I have at a not-gay bar. So perhaps it is a systems problem, as you suggest.

Let's just say, I've never at a gay bar had a server ask me to pretend to be their boyfriend in order to fend off an overly enthusiastic customer, but I have played this role twice for female servers at not-gay bars.
posted by hippybear at 6:46 AM on July 3, 2018 [3 favorites]

I used to work a student union bar and unfailingly on a Saturday night someone would vomit into the trough in the gents, others would keep pissing in it, it would block then overflow and the whole room would be a puddle of piss. Sometimes they would vomit in the sink then leave the taps on. Furnishings were pretty basic as a result.
posted by biffa at 7:14 AM on July 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

I once worked security at an off-Bourbon dance club in New Orleans, the kind of place that opens at 9PM and closes at 5AM. By the end of the night, the women's toilets would have mounds of paper, feces, and tampons rearing up several inches above the height of the seats, like some kind of obscene shit-volcanoes. The floor would be literally awash with foulness. For some reason the men's room was only regular-bad, but the women's was something from a whole other dimension of nasty.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 7:26 AM on July 3, 2018

Want to know about stressful? Work at a bucket of blood bar where you are the bartender and the bouncer. Having to go around the bar to physically 86 an asshole, knowing that at least one other 'patron' is eyeing the register or the tip glass? That's stressful.
posted by Splunge at 9:38 AM on July 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

Actually, my most stressful gig ever was volunteering to check IDs for a 4th of July beer garden in a town with a generally Boomer shaped median age and attendance rate.

Maybe 1 person in about 5 actually had their IDs on them, if not less. And you try keeping a flood of Boomers from the beer garden just because they don't have their ID why that's just preposterous who do you think you are?

And of those people who had no IDs, maybe 1 in 10 of those wasn't a total asshole to me about not having their ID. After fifteen minutes of that I was nearly hissing through clenched teeth "For fuck's sake, just show me something, anything, wave your Elk's Club card at me or something."

For reference, I have been a bouncer at server at totally illegal speakeasy clubs serving way outside of serving hours and allowing BYO whatever, where I dealt with stuff like visitors winging glasses or bottles around in the dark "because they thought it was a squat and seemed like that kind of a place." More than once I've had some drunk combative idiot grab on to my hair like that's a good idea or it's going to slow me down, and it just helped me carry them the heck outside.

The beergarden and utter lack of IDs on so many people was worse and more stressful. Technically every single person there needed to have valid ID on their person. Hell, a lot of these people owned bars and restaurants and knew better. Some of them even served on the board of the org throwing the party and beer garden.

Did I mention LCCB was on site? No? Yeah, they tend to show up at large festivals with beer gardens to make sure IDs are being checked, because you're serving in public in unusual circumstances and all that stuff.
posted by loquacious at 10:36 AM on July 3, 2018 [3 favorites]

Yeah loq, I have definitely had to deal with people trying to get into places without their IDs and it was super obnoxious. At least where I worked, I knew that management had my back and that I could be a total asshoke about it if necessary, including by calling in a couple more bouncers for backup if the person was causing a scene or wouldn't step out of the entry line. That place had a lot of problems, but at least I can say that they were consistent about checking ID and they meant it.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 11:26 AM on July 3, 2018

And winterhill, I totally hear you about how much of a pain it can be to get served at a bar, especially if the stools are all full. I have learned how to deal, but to be honest I can hardly ever be bothered anymore and will just walk away from a crowded bar rather than play the rudest-person-wins game. In New Orleans, the rule was that if you were out on a holiday you just brought your own booze and drank (perfectly legally) out in the street because it would be a squeeze just to get in the door at any of the clubs, let alone getting served. The street was where the real party was anyway. We used to bring a push-cart with a pony keg of champagne in it.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 11:34 AM on July 3, 2018 [7 favorites]

#5 is THE reason I never order draft beers, ever and recommend that others always order from a bottle (or if they must, a can).

This is especially true if you want something less popular, where the keg is going to be changed less often.
posted by Delia at 5:03 AM on July 4, 2018

Let's just say, I've never at a gay bar had a server ask me to pretend to be their boyfriend in order to fend off an overly enthusiastic customer, but I have played this role twice for female servers at not-gay bars.

While buying a bottle of bourbon, I was chatting with the clerk ringing me up, and she mentioned that she was working today ( July 4 ) at her regular gig bartending.

"I'm so sorry. People are horrible" was my response.

She concurred.
posted by mikelieman at 5:40 AM on July 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

I've sold alcohol in an off-licence capacity in the UK and a number of these seemed painfully familiar (i.e. not the tips ones or some of the on-site ones, definitely the responsibility for tracking others' intoxication or problems ones). I'm sure a lot of them apply more broadly to other customer facing roles too. I absolutely refuse to say how many of the bad customers described I may have been in my time (read: more than zero).

#56 made me laugh.
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 7:56 PM on July 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

Doing time as a grocery cashier, it always pissed me off when people claimed not to have any ID with them when buying beer. It's like, Dude, I know you drove here. Are you really telling me you go out driving without a license? With American cops all over the road?
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:06 AM on July 5, 2018 [2 favorites]

I don't drive myself, but as I roughly understand it here in the UK you don't technically have to carry your licence but can present it at a police station within seven days or something. Realistically, everyone carries their licence except THAT GUY. It functions as part of the national myth that "Papers Please!" is un-British, even as we require government approved photo ID to open a bank account, rent a property, purchase alcohol, access free healthcare or participate in civil society in the most minor of ways.
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 7:49 PM on July 8, 2018