Tag Archives: Bartenders

Bar Etiquette: How to Keep the Bartender Happy

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Occupational hazards are a way of life no matter your profession:  doctors are required to be in the presence of the sick and dying, construction workers are on the constant lookout for falling cinderblocks, Alaskan king crab fisherman must avoid being washed overboard by a giant swell.  Sure, bartenders do not walk the same perilous lines as those people, and in fact you might call our cross to bear something closer to “occupational burdens” than hazards, but let’s not split hairs.  In the service industry our burdens come in the form of recurring gripers and complainers and downright assholes.  If the food isn’t undercooked then the music is too loud or too soft, or the drinks are not strong enough, it’s too cold, it’s too bright, the people are ugly, and on and on and on.

I once worked with another bartender who preached that nobody should be able to eat out in a restaurant until he/she worked in one for at least 6 months.  This comes straight from the “walk a mile in my shoes” ideology.  Imagine the compassion we would have for others if only we worked their job for awhile.  I know a few teachers who would love to trade places with the psycho parents they deal with on a day to day basis.  With that said, I have never been a teacher and can only vouch for the bartenders of the world, so let’s call them unwritten rules, call it common courtesy, call it what you want, but here’s a list of bar etiquette for you and your friends to learn before you attend another drinking establishment that will make your bartender happy and hopefully get you good service:

On Getting my Attention:  First and foremost, I am not a dog and I’m not a five year old interrupting you while you’re talking on the phone.  Do not snap at me.  This little attention-getter is second only to throwing things at me, which will get you tossed out on your ear.

On Cheapness:  If you order a vodka cranberry and leave me a quarter, don’t act all befuddled when my eyes glaze over the next time you are trying to get my attention or when your next drink turns out to be cranberry juice with a splash of vodka.  I’m sorry our society has created this bizarre culture in which you tip people for pouring liquid into a glass, but they did, so if you want good service and a decent drink, abide by it.  If not, enjoy your cranberry juice.

On the Strength of Your Drink:  You would not go to a pizza place and ask them to bring out another half pizza for free because the one you ordered wasn’t “strong enough”.  Do not order a drink and tell me to “make it a good one” or say “I can’t even taste the alcohol”.  This is not a garage sale, you cannot negotiate the amount of liquor for the price.  I know how much liquor goes in a drink.  If you want me to make it a good one, order a double.  And if you can’t taste the alcohol, you’re either an alcoholic or you don’t tip well enough.

On Being Prepared to Order:  Here’s an oldie but goody.  I am whipping out drinks left and right, and while doing so I can see you out of the corner of my eye down at the other end of the bar waving and jumping up and down like a chimpanzee on hot asphalt.    I feel bad that no one has attended to you yet, so I hustle down to the other end and when I get there and ask you what you want, you turn around and ask your six friends, “What are you drinking?”  They all look around and say, “Ummm, I don’t know, what are you having?”  Sorry, but I’m gone.  I don’t have time to wait around while your friends all ask each other what the other is drinking.  If you’re going to wave me down, you’d better be prepared for a rapid-fire order.

On Starting a Tab:    When you order a Budweiser and give me a credit card and ask me to close it out, I assume you’re done for the evening.  Do not come back five more times and order one drink and close it out.  Start a tab.  Be assured, I do not want to steal your credit card. You will get it back.

On Being a Girl:  I don’t intend to offend, but seriously, girls, what the fuck?  Why can’t you just buy your friend a drink?  Friday night, 11:00 p.m. and a group of you walks up to the bar, orders four cosmos and hands me four separate credit cards.  This takes time to close out credit cards separately.  Then, ten minutes later you are all back again.  Four drinks, four credit cards, and everyone’s wondering what’s taking so long to get a drink.  Guys buy rounds of drinks for their buddies.  Why can’t you?

On Being my Best Friend:  Just because you know me does not mean we are friends.  Do not abuse your familiarity with me by pretending we shared a prison cell together so you can get a drink faster and impress all your friends because you know the bartender.  I have lots of friends, but they don’t yell at me when they want a drink.

On Free Drinks:  I don’t care if it’s your birthday, I don’t care if you’re gorgeous, I don’t care if your dog just died.  Don’t ask me for a free drink.  It’s tacky and rude to assume that you are important enough that I will risk my job so you can have something for free.  If you need some money to go out with, ask daddy for a raise in your allowance.  It’s not like I come to your place of work and ask for a free root canal.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure you’re all lovely, wonderful people, but really the only bond you and I share is the drink sitting on the bar between us.  So let’s make an arrangement:  you express the type of cocktails that appeal to you, whether you like them sweet or sour or somewhere in between, and I, the craftsman, will concoct some sort of medley based on that information.  I will also provide some conversation and entertainment, perhaps lend an ear, and you go ahead and kill your brain cells and either become a happy-go-lucky drunk or a belligerent, unruly mess.  I will egg you on if you’re happy and subdue you if you’re not.  Your job is to be relatively civilized and respectful, and if you can do that, you just might end up with a nice strong drink.

Cheers, until next time.

The RB

Fucking With Drunk People

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 I’m not sure why, but lately I’ve become more irritable about the fact that I spend five nights a week in a place where I’m sober and everyone else is flying high and yuckin’ it up.  I understand that it’s my job, but after awhile it feels like I’ve been invited to a party but when I arrive, I’m told I should stand out front and wait for guests to arrive so I can park their cars.  I hate it I hate it I hate it!!!

Let’s not dilute the facts, being drunk is stupenderrific!  You’ve all been there, you know how it is:  that sensational feeling of perceived invincibility you experience after five or six drinks.  Even better is if you compound that experience by drinking with a group because the camaraderie shared between buffoons slopping alcohol on each other can only be compared to that of championship sports teams.

That’s why bars are so popular, because being drunk with a group is so much more badass than being drunk alone.  Everything is hilarious and fun and no matter what fucked-up shit you’re dealing with in your every day life, at this moment you and your drinking clan are downright convinced of your indestructibility, so much so that you find yourself discussing scenarios to prove it. In fact you’ve all agreed that, under the right circumstances, if you had a titanium body suit, a utility belt, and a Peter Pan-sized boy with a yellow cape to watch your back, any one of you could easily transition into the role of Batman.

On the other hand, being sober around drunk people is like trying to fit into a clique you were never invited to join, except this clique has the maturity equivalent of nine year olds.  Disorderly nine year olds.  With brain damage.  That’s me, every night (the guy-hanging-out-with-disorderly-drunks part, not the brain damage part).  We bartenders are like matadors armed only with one of those flimsy piece of crap Zorro swords trying to hold off a ring full of dazed, irritated bulls.  Except replace “sword” with “bar rag” and “bulls” with “vomity, cursing drunks”.

Being sober around drunks is boring, which provokes me to spice up the action, which is why I have a serious problem that some of you may have identified already, and it’s that I can’t help fucking with people who take things too seriously (See “Peta Girl”).

I can’t decide if it’s a disease or a superpower, but I do know that I’m addicted because every night before I go to work I choose some mantra to repeat to myself that might help me overcome my problem (something along the lines of, “Bar patrons are my friends, not toys for my amusement”) but every night I somehow become misaligned and betray that mantra which means I have to start my 12 steps over again and apologize to people I’ve wronged and make amends with Jesus in a non-sarcastic way that shows him I’m not fucking with HIM.

I try to leave people alone, really I do, but please remember that I work in a bar with drunk people and telling me not to fuck with them is like placing a ribeye in front of a tiger and saying, “Now when I get back, that steak had better still be there, mister.”

Yes, I understand that drunk people are vulnerable in their state of cheery befuddlement, but you should know that I leave 98% of them alone, the ones who are lovable and considerate and sometimes even offer to buy me a shot.  It’s the 2% that I fuck with, the ones who are determined to destroy everyone else’s good time.

This brings me to Artie, a decidedly irate and spiteful individual who enters my bar about once a week so he can try to drink enough to kill whatever’s inside him that he hates about himself.  I won’t waste your time with too many details except to say that Artie is the type of man that I imagine pulls the wings off butterflies for the pure joy of performing reverse evolution.  Sometimes I want to stab a pacifier into his mouth because I’m fairly certain he would immediately and innately start trying to suck all of his anger out through the rubber nipple like a teething baby.

Like most people who have issues with the world, Artie communicates his problems without bothering to pay attention to what anyone else has to say, which manufactures entertaining conversations where he attempts to recruit misery to accompany him at the bar and I do my best to derail and distract him.  This is what happened that last time Artie stumbled to the bar, already a bit schnockered, trying to tell me about the car accident he had that day:

Me:  How’s it going, Artie?

Artie:  It’s going shitty.  Some jackass smashed into my Porsche today.  Three months off the lot, and he totaled it.

Me:  Wow.  That’s too bad.  Were you alone or by yourself?

Artie:  I was…what?  I was by myself.

Me:  What happened?

Artie:  Asshole ran a stop sign and smashed into my passenger side door.

Me:  How did he smash into you if he was at a stop sign?

Artie:  No, idiot.  He ran through a stop sign.

Me:  I thought you said he was driving.

Artie:  He WAS driving.

Me:  You just said he RAN through it.

Artie:  That’s what you say when you drive through a stop sign without stopping.  What the fuck is the matter with you?

Me:  I don’t know.  My father used to hold me under water for long periods of time…

Artie:  ANYWAY…I jump out of the car and I’m getting ready to beat this punk’s ass.  He’s like 18 years old with tattoos all over the place, and he starts running for these stairs…

Me:  What kind of stairs?

Artie:  What?  What do you mean?

Me:  I mean did they go up or down?

Artie:  They’re stairs…what the fuck? They go up and down.

Me:  Come on.  How do stairs go up and down at the same time?

Artie: Are you retarded? It wasn’t an escalator. They’re just STAIRS!  FUCK!

Me:  Don’t escalators have buttons and sliding doors?

Artie:  Can I finish?

Me:  I wish you would.

Artie:  So then I chased him up the stairs into an office building.

Me:  So they were “UP” stairs (I cleverly used my quotation fingers for this).

Artie:  Will you forget about the stairs, for Christ sakes?

Me:  What stairs?

Artie:  Are you serious?  What the fuck?

Me:  No, you don’t understand.  You said “forget about the stairs”, so I was like, “What stairs?” like I already forgot about them.  You know, like when someone says, “Promise me you won’t tell Jane about the secret passage way,” and you say, “What secret passage way?” because it’s like you’re telling them you’ll pretend you know nothing about it. It’s a clever way to say that I’m on board with you.

Artie:  Jesus, forget it.  I’m done talking to you.  You’re missing out on a goddamn good ending too.

Me:  I know, it sounded like a good plot.  What was the name of it?

Artie:  The name of what?

Me:  Hello?  The movie you were just telling me about with the guy running up the stairs.  Did you forget already?

At this point Artie slammed what was left of his Sierra Nevada down and started to stomp out the door, but I reminded him that he hadn’t paid yet so I ruined his dramatic exit because he had to rummage through his wallet for some time before he found the right credit card.  The great thing about Artie is that he drinks so much he usually doesn’t remember what he’s mad at me for and I’ll see him again in a week when he’ll tell me some other story about how everyone in the world is an asshole except him.

I know what you all are thinking and you’re right, I need help.  I’m going to ask Jesus* to guide me.

*By Jesus I mean our dishwasher, not the real Jesus.  He’s studying psychology at the junior college so maybe he knows some stuff about “fucking-with-drunks syndrome” or whatever.  Again, I’m talking about our dishwasher, not the main Jesus.  I assume the real Jesus already has psych figured out pretty good which is why he mind-fucked everyone by allowing them nail-gun him to lumber instead of using his superpowers to turn them into salamanders.

Cheers, until next time.

The RB