Katie Lauren on Why Katie Lauren is no Longer a Bartender
Post #3 on "a Post a Day Till' Christmas"
Katie Lauren on why Katie Lauren can no longer bartend…
I’ve been going strong for about ten awful years in the service industry. Like any job it has it’s ups and downs. The up, being the money, the downs, being countless. When I first started serving I was anxious to bar tend. The art of bartending made once cool by Tom Cruise in Cocktail and continued by douche bag after douche bag seemed it own kind of glamor. You stand behind a bar all day, flirt with men, and bring in cash. Getting paid to handle booze and talk. One would have thought this job was invented for me.
Everywhere I have ever worked restaurant wise has had it’s own kind of class system. Bussers, at the bottom, servers in the middle and bartenders at the top. Like only the cool of cool, the masters of smart could ever remember that a screw driver is vodka and orange juice.
Some bartenders I know have endless lists of shots they can pour any drunk twenty something on a binger. Often they claim to have made most of them up, giving them names like Assbag, Fuckerupper, Tits on Ice, and Drunkskunk. Not me though I just ever had one specialty shot. “Red”. Because let’s face it people drunk enough to decide they not only need to drink more, but it needs to enter their body at lightning speeds are far to drunk to know what’s in anything. So I just make them “Red”- ingredients? Who the fuck knows just make it red and they will drink it.
I gave up long ago attempting to do any, as they call it, “Bar Flair.” Not because it isn’t super cool and all to have your only life talent be the ability to flip around a shaker or catch a bottle in the air but because I know when I go to a bar I don’t want to see you spin shit, shake shit, or light anything on fire, I want to see one thing and one thing only… you (bartender) making my drink.
On a side note perhaps flair should make its way out of the restaurants and bars and into our normal lives. Like next time I do laundry I’m going to throw my socks in the air while simultaneously drinking half the bottle of laundry detergent (liquid of course.) To finish the act I will vomit up the detergent, light it on fire and catch the socks on my tits. Or next time I cook dinner I’m going to submerge my entire head in the soup pot while giving myself an upside down French braid as I peel onions with my toes and crush garlic with my stomach. Just imagine the flair fun you could have while changing your baby or visiting your elderly grandma.
Seriously though there is nothing cool about bartending. I mean sure maybe if you work a high volume place in Las Vegas shit might be cool, but St. Louis Missouri at the corner bar, or the Red Robin this shit isn’t cool.
Here is what I have learned about bartending. You don’t get paid to talk you get paid to listen, and there is a BIG difference. You will hear people’s life stories, and generally not those of interesting lives but those who are depressed enough to be sitting at a bar at noon on a Monday. (Not knocking anyone because I’ve been at many a bars at noon on a Monday) You will hear about how terrible their kids are, their neighbors, their health problems. Most of all though, most irritating of all you will hear stories of how much money they have or how many business they have owned. Most folks never come out and say “my life sucks, I’m at a bar on Monday afternoon.” Rather they tell you how they finally took a day off from earning their millions to have a fast drink with you. Then they will tip you a dollar.
Number one life lesson I learned from bartending, people who talk about having money generally do not.
The worst part is that unlike waiting tables you have no where to go. You are a captive audience. It’s like being forced to watch shitty infomercials on repeat, only the only thing these people are selling is the hope that you will think they are someone.
The real talented bartenders are the ones that can put up with this. Not me, there is no amount of money in the world that’s going to make me want to hear about how your brother stole your construction business, you spent three years in therapy getting over it because you feared you were going to kill his wife and eat his babies, and now though you are “OK” because you know that the best revenge is getting rich and you are so rich you poop Benjamin’s.
And after you are finished I certainly am not going to hug you, let you touch my ass, or ask you to come back. Only the true talented ones can do that.
I would prefer to bring you a burger, talk about you in the kitchen, take your money and send you packing. I’ll leave the flair and the listening up to a professional, and be glad to no longer call myself a bartender.
Katie Lauren
Katie Lauren on why Katie Lauren can no longer bartend…
I’ve been going strong for about ten awful years in the service industry. Like any job it has it’s ups and downs. The up, being the money, the downs, being countless. When I first started serving I was anxious to bar tend. The art of bartending made once cool by Tom Cruise in Cocktail and continued by douche bag after douche bag seemed it own kind of glamor. You stand behind a bar all day, flirt with men, and bring in cash. Getting paid to handle booze and talk. One would have thought this job was invented for me.
Everywhere I have ever worked restaurant wise has had it’s own kind of class system. Bussers, at the bottom, servers in the middle and bartenders at the top. Like only the cool of cool, the masters of smart could ever remember that a screw driver is vodka and orange juice.
Some bartenders I know have endless lists of shots they can pour any drunk twenty something on a binger. Often they claim to have made most of them up, giving them names like Assbag, Fuckerupper, Tits on Ice, and Drunkskunk. Not me though I just ever had one specialty shot. “Red”. Because let’s face it people drunk enough to decide they not only need to drink more, but it needs to enter their body at lightning speeds are far to drunk to know what’s in anything. So I just make them “Red”- ingredients? Who the fuck knows just make it red and they will drink it.
I gave up long ago attempting to do any, as they call it, “Bar Flair.” Not because it isn’t super cool and all to have your only life talent be the ability to flip around a shaker or catch a bottle in the air but because I know when I go to a bar I don’t want to see you spin shit, shake shit, or light anything on fire, I want to see one thing and one thing only… you (bartender) making my drink.
On a side note perhaps flair should make its way out of the restaurants and bars and into our normal lives. Like next time I do laundry I’m going to throw my socks in the air while simultaneously drinking half the bottle of laundry detergent (liquid of course.) To finish the act I will vomit up the detergent, light it on fire and catch the socks on my tits. Or next time I cook dinner I’m going to submerge my entire head in the soup pot while giving myself an upside down French braid as I peel onions with my toes and crush garlic with my stomach. Just imagine the flair fun you could have while changing your baby or visiting your elderly grandma.
Seriously though there is nothing cool about bartending. I mean sure maybe if you work a high volume place in Las Vegas shit might be cool, but St. Louis Missouri at the corner bar, or the Red Robin this shit isn’t cool.
Here is what I have learned about bartending. You don’t get paid to talk you get paid to listen, and there is a BIG difference. You will hear people’s life stories, and generally not those of interesting lives but those who are depressed enough to be sitting at a bar at noon on a Monday. (Not knocking anyone because I’ve been at many a bars at noon on a Monday) You will hear about how terrible their kids are, their neighbors, their health problems. Most of all though, most irritating of all you will hear stories of how much money they have or how many business they have owned. Most folks never come out and say “my life sucks, I’m at a bar on Monday afternoon.” Rather they tell you how they finally took a day off from earning their millions to have a fast drink with you. Then they will tip you a dollar.
Number one life lesson I learned from bartending, people who talk about having money generally do not.
The worst part is that unlike waiting tables you have no where to go. You are a captive audience. It’s like being forced to watch shitty infomercials on repeat, only the only thing these people are selling is the hope that you will think they are someone.
The real talented bartenders are the ones that can put up with this. Not me, there is no amount of money in the world that’s going to make me want to hear about how your brother stole your construction business, you spent three years in therapy getting over it because you feared you were going to kill his wife and eat his babies, and now though you are “OK” because you know that the best revenge is getting rich and you are so rich you poop Benjamin’s.
And after you are finished I certainly am not going to hug you, let you touch my ass, or ask you to come back. Only the true talented ones can do that.
I would prefer to bring you a burger, talk about you in the kitchen, take your money and send you packing. I’ll leave the flair and the listening up to a professional, and be glad to no longer call myself a bartender.
Katie Lauren
posted by KatieLauren at
5:57 PM
1 Comments:
I really liked this sentence: "It’s like being forced to watch shitty infomercials on repeat, only the only thing these people are selling is the hope that you will think they are someone."
Post a Comment
<< Home