Ask a Bartender a Question

A Simple Introduction
Hey there! I work in a bar as a bartender. I have been doing this for [2 digits] years. In this unsolicited post, I will give you, the best and brightest, a slim look into the world of working at crappy dive bar in a mid to small sized midwestern city next to a big river.

It is a small bar with no kitchen. Food is for restaurants. We serve booze and contempt. Since that is all we do, you must be 21 to enter the bar, and, frankly, 21 to read this post.

I am not a writer in any way. This post will be the longest thing I have written since I was in school. In other words, my Pulitzer is not in the mail.

I will also try to cut out as much of the potty mouth as I can. I flog our mother tongue to it's fullest and bluest extent.

If you are a bartener, or otherwise work in the service industry, this may not match your experiences. In many ways my bar is very much like a small town bar, and is out of place even in this big-ish town.

I will sometimes refer to the bar where I work as "my bar." It is not, strictly speaking, my bar. I do not own it. I would never want to own a bar. It seems like nothing but an un-ending parade of asshole customers and rapacious city/state officials reaching into your pockets.

A Short Word About Bartenders
I work in a small bar. Therefore, I am the only person on the payroll during my shift, and my only back up is a phone call to the cops (who currently don't give a damn). We were selected for the ability to work on our own. As was explained to me when I started, it is "my room."

Despite what you see on TV and the movies, bartenders are not hired to make drinks. Anybody can do that. We used to train our children to make drinks. I was hired to babysit drunks. I am here to protect our liquor license, the customers, and myself. I was hired to tell grown-ass adults "no," and occasionally show them the door.

Many people cannot do this.

Make no mistake, I do want people to come in and have a good time. When everything is going well, this job can be fun. I enjoy the relationships I have formed with our regulars, and many will be friends for the rest of my life. This essay will make me sound like a real prick, and in many ways I am. But if you come into my bar and act like an adult, I will go out of my way to see to it you have a good time. If you do not act like an adult, I will treat you like total shit in the very short amount of time I allow you in my room. I will risk our liquor license for no one. I am selling booze, and things can go south real quick, and people can get hurt. That is the nature of the business.

Laws And Your Role Within The Framework
The booze business is highly regulated. There are many ways for me to get the bar and myself into trouble. Each city and state and county has it's own, often arcane, laws about selling booze to the public. And it generally begins with the liquor license. A liquor license is a magical, super-expensive piece of paper issued by your city that allows you set up bar. Like many unicorns, they come in many flavors. There are licenses for restaurants (less than 50 percent of revenue comes from booze), short term licenses for special venues (crappy beer in plastic cups at your local art festival), another license for caterers (think weddings or conferences), licenses for liquor stores (a think some grocery stores can get these as well, they generally allow for sales before/after a certain AM and PM), and finally licenses for bars.

Around these parts, licenses for bars come in 2 flavors: on premises and on premises with carry out. We have the latter. Technically, I can sell you a bottle of Jim Beam to go, just like a liquor store. It would just be wildly expensive. Our license also stipulated that nobody under the age of 21 is allowed on premises. Since we sell booze and nothing else, this is fine. Licenses like these (non-restaurant) are expensive and hard to get. The can also be taken away if you break too many laws.

Laws like selling to under 21s. Selling to underage kids will result in a fine for the offending bartending and a large fine to the bar. You are usually given a few strikes on this one, since we all make mistakes. However, too many underage sales will result in the dissolution of your liquor license, and the closure of your bar. I have known of bars that were shut down because of this.

I card hard. I once carded a dude born in 1968. I don't want underage people in the bar, and I certainly don't want to sell booze to them. Young people are terrible customers, and cause all kinds of trouble. Frankly, I'd rather the minimum age be 35. The city will often set up stings, where they send in some haplass kids to try to get some booze. Thankfully, it's pretty obvious- they aren't trying to trick us.

An aside: if I ask for your ID, and you don't furnish it, I am legally obligated to tell you to fuck off. So don't forget that ID. I've refused service to people I am pretty sure were old enough, but they didn't have their ID on them. Out the door they went.

Another legal obligation: I cannot get you drunk. Really. I can serve you drinks, shots even. But I can't get you drunk. You see, in this state, it's illegal to be drunk in a public place. And, a bar (or a pub), is a public place. So. I am the judge of whether or not you are too drunk to be served.

Short aside: this is why a bartender can kick you out of the bar for any reason. That reason is that you were drunk.

So I watch how people walk, and how they speak. It gets to be second nature. I am judging you by every move you make and every word you speak. So you better be good for goodness sake. Your Captain and Coke just may depend on it. I've had people that could barely walk try to get served. Out the door they go.

And The Drinks
Most people around here get beer. The gals will usually get vodka and x, where x is cranberry. People from the county will get Captain/rum and coke. My bar does not have many mixers, so we cannot make many drinks people consider pretty normal for a bar. For instance, we do not have vermouth. It goes bad before we sell 2 servings of it. Not enough demand. No foofy shots; we are basically a beer and a whiskey joint.

Aside: when you walk into a bar, take a look around. Read the room. And adjust your order accordingly.

If you order a drink I don't know how to make, I'll look it up or ask you what's in it. If we can make it, I will.

However, I do judge you by your drink order. We all do. I give all respect to the patriots that drink their liquor with no mixer. Whiskey on the rocks- not all heroes wear capes. I don't trust rum drinkers, they don't like booze. A good buzz should be earned, not delivered in a sugar slurry.

When you order, know what you want. The longer I wait, the more women's softball I'm missing on TV.

Your Clientele
I work at a drinking man's bar. That is, it's a bar where people who drink a lot go to drink a lot. We make most of our money off of a fairly small group of people. We try to keep things quiet. Our crowd is mostly male, between the ages of 30 and 60, and includes lots of service industry people. The best kind of crowd. It also skews a bit to the blue collar segment.

This type of crowd is also largely self-policing. If somebody gets out of hand, the regulars will often take care of it.

Dealing with customers is a lot like choosing a check out line in the grocery store. Even the most liberal bartenders will become flaming racists and misogynists. Now, service industry workers of all types are excellent tippers (the entire reason I do this). Civilians, however, tend to fall into their forbidden stereotypes.

A Few Words About Tips, Whereupon The Author Opines On The Human Condition
Tips are the entire reason I, and most other bartenders, do this job. All that garbage you see on youtube about enjoying meeting people or whatever is just that: garbage. Drunk people are terrible, even the good ones. It's all money. And the lion's share of that money comes from tips.

This job, at it's black little heart, is terrible. I've been threatened, had stuff thrown at me, I've had to clean vomit off of the bar, the floor, the ceiling and the walls. I've cleaned human (I guess) shit out of a bathroom sink, and people will pee on your floor if you're there long enough. I've watched with dread as bachelorette parties walk up to the door, and dealt with morons trying various methods to get free drinks.

An aside about birthdays: do not try get a free drink on your birthday. I know of no bar that gives away booze. Plus, you are an adult. Nobody cares about your birthday. Why middle aged women see fit to make such a big deal about their birthdays, I don't know. But I do know it's nothing to be celebrated.

Anyway, tips. If a customer does not tip, we will remember it until the heat death of the universe. Service will be rendered accordingly. This is true everywhere. I have to be bribed to like you. But once bribed, I will do whatever it takes (will not risk that license) to keep you happy. When I'm bought, I stay bought. Sounds pretty mercenary doesn't it? You're damn right it does.

All of this leads to something kind of strange. I've talked to other people about it, and a few bartenders have even brought it up to me. After a while, you start to develop a contempt for your customers, even the ones you like. It's a tough thing, helping people make the same mistakes over and over again. I don't juggle bottles for pretty people. I get working stiffs, many of them very lonely, very drunk.

So I need to be paid to do this. And under our system, that means tips. On a good night, I can walk out with a couple hundred in cash. On a slow night, I can walk out with 5 dollars.

So tip your bartender and waitress. It may look easy, but there is a whole host of stuff you don't see.

The Cold War Goes Hot
When I cut someone off (refuse service), 95% of customers take it in stride. As John Connor says, no problemo. It's that 5%.

If I render a judgement, it is binding. There is no recourse. I cannot be reasoned with. It is not a debate.

An aside: I have only reversed myself once. The guy was legally blind. And sober. So.

I all other cases, when I feel a customer is now too drunk, that is it. Now, 5% percent of those people will take issue with my wisdom. Most call me names, insinuate that I am a homosexual or that my parents were never married or that I am displeasing to the eye. Often, all of those.

Meh, no big deal. Sometimes I have trouble keeping a straight face, which doesn't help. And if their insult is a good one, I'll let them know. Good one. There's the door. I treasure creativity in all of it's forms. After all, Allah loves wonderous variety, and so do I.

And then, there are threats. Every bartender I know has been threatened. From big beefy guys to tiny little gals. Threats are a whole different ball game.

Spoiler alert: don't worry, exactly zero threats resulted in anything beyond words. This post is rated R because of salty language and sex, not violence.

Threats results in lifetime bans, and in some cases calls to the local constabulatory.

Threats come almost exclusively from young men. Women will call me names, but one has yet offered to beat my ass. Once, a gentleman announced that he was going to hop over the bar and kick my ass. This is not wise. At the time I was cutting limes, and was literally holding a knife.

People, amirite?

You Get What You Let
If you allow customers get rowdy, your bar will attract people that get rowdy. Word will get around. If you have a bartender that will sell to minors, one day you will wake up and your bar will be full of 19-year olds. For a few months after the smoking ban, some bartenders would still allow smoking (albeit on a much more limited basis than before), which predictably resulted in a bunch of people that expeected to be allowed to smoke. I was yelled at several times by customers who expected this service from me.

Once again, I will risk a fine for nobody.

Right now our town is having issues with people walking around with open beverage containers, and bringing them into bars. This is illegal (I am not in New Orleans). This probably started because 2 bars were letting people bring their own booze into beer gardens. Sadly, the police do not seem to care about this until giant block parties form in the streets. Many fights have resulted, and last week there was a shooting. Something that started small is now a huge problem, all because you let what you get.

I gather this is happening all over the United States on a different scale. Lax enforcement has consequences.

Our bar has been known for having asshole bartenders, but in all the time I have worked here, I have never seen a fight.

Entertainments or Why I learned to Love Contemplative Silence
My bar has had a jukebox, dart machine, and a single pinball machine since the Age of Sail. We have a couple of TVs that generally have a baseball/football game on, depending on the time of year. This is fairly common, although many bars do not have a jukebox, and will have music chosen by the bartender playing in the background.

These "coin-op entertainments" are the provenance of gaming companies, which hold rather suspicous monopolies in their respective region. A deal is worked out with the bar, whereby a revenue split is decided, and the machines are wheeled in and plugged in. Every week/month a check arrives with the bar's share of the proceeds.

I generally consider these items mere noise, and not worth the trouble. Back in the olden days, jukeboxes were unique to the bar they lived in. There were punk jukeboxes, country jukeboxes, classic rock jukeboxes, and many had local music as well. Your jukebox would help in curating your clientele. In this modern era, all jukeboxes are the same: the internet jukebox. This robbed each joint of it's own flavor and feel. Now you will have the endure the same garbage music in every place (mostly everybody plays the same stuff ad nauseum).

Strange note: what version of a song will often depend on the license the jukebox company has for that song, and how many times it has been played. Songs will appear and disappear as this mystic x-factor is reached and changes. Some songs may never appear on these boxes because of license issues.

Further note: our jukebox runs on Windows XP. So does our ATM. I often wish for a magic button that would blue screen the box. You know, for the lulz.

Personally, I feel the public has no business in picking the music for a room. People that play "I Love This Bar" need to be thrown into internment camps.

I have surprisingly little control over the jukebox. I can bong (skip) a song, and kind of adjust the volume. I do not have access to the current playlist and cannot tell you when your song will play. People that use the app on their phones know more about what is going on with the jukebox than I do.

I never expected to have strong feelings about jukeboxes, but thousands of hours of listening to "Me and Bobby McGhee" will cause opinions to form and harden, much like cosmic rays cause tumors and low sperm count. I am dumber because of this.

On The Calling Of The Bar Seeking Information
There is no reason to call a bar. Ever. Seriously, people, stop doing it. I'm not going to tell you if somebody is here or not, and all bars in this town close at the same time.

People calling about closing time generally want to come out right before close. These are third tier persons, deserving of scorn and obscene tax rates.

Wrap It Up
That's the story so far. If you have any questions about bars, drunks, and booze, I'll be happy to answer them. Thanks so much for reading this meandering rant.

Edit: added effort tag.

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