Nonprofit Service Sector
I worked as a bartender every Saturday night for eleven years. I loved every minute of it. It featured live country/rock bands, each of which had their own following. The bar itself had its own regulars as well. I got to go out to the club every Saturday night, dance as much as I wanted to, go home with more money in my pocket than I left with, and not wake up with a hang over. It was heaven!
What you might not know about working in a bar could probably fill a few volumes. It looks easy. When I was on the other side of the bar, before I started tending bar, I had no idea what it was like. It didn't take long to find out how little I knew.
If you are a good bartender, you get to know your regular customers quickly. They don't have to ask for their drinks, you see them coming and you have it ready for them when they get there. I rarely knew my customers by name; I knew them by what they drank. That was what allowed me to make more money in tips on Saturday night than I made at my day job working all week.
I got stage fright before I went to work every time! It would make me nauseous. I would swear that I wasn't going. I shook like I had Parkinson's. I knew that I was going to be standing in front of hundreds of people that night, rated by the men and judged by the women. It was terrifying until I got to work. Once our customers started coming in and I saw all those familiar faces smiling at me I was fine.
When you see your customers out in public, you don't speak to them unless they speak to you first. You never know if they were supposed to be in the bar or not. So, you have to assume that people don't want to know you until they speak to you first. You don't want to get someone in trouble and lose a customer or create problems in a relationship.
The bar owner's goal is to make as much money as possible. The bartender's job is to try to help the bar owner's goal in as personable a manner as possible. However, in the U.S., a bartender can be prosecuted for selling alcohol to someone who is already intoxicated. Therefore a bartender is responsible for determining when their customers have consumed too much and cutting them off.
This is a bad time for a bartender, especially if it's a favorite customer. We become diplomats at that point. It's a hard line to walk. We have to try to make our customers happy about our stopping their drinking while still getting them to want to return to the bar the next time they go out.
These are just a few of the things you might not know about working in a bar. There are a million others. All in all it's an outrageously fun job under the right circumstances. I wouldn't trade one second of my time tending bar for all the coffee at Starbucks!
