When you start out tending bar you’re usually going to be a bar-back.
In my case the company I applied to thought I looked sufficiently young and desperate to take one of their low paying assistant manager jobs which meant working 14 hours a day, but Mr. Reyes (my Monday to Friday day shift bartender) had to take off once a week to get his allergy shot, so I worked for him one day a week, which was cool. That was a foot in the bartending door anyway, and I got to make some tips.
The office building the restaurant and bar I was in (on the corner of 38th and Madison) had a Curtis elevator, and a fairly huge elevator repair man (the old elevators use pretty heavy counterweights, and lots of them, so it takes some muscle to do the job in those tall old buildings).
The office building had three female elevator attendants.
Two of these elevator attendants were twins with red hair who were minor celebrities because they were Wrigley’s Doublemint Gum Twins seen by everyone on TV everywhere in the country. The third woman elevator attendant was also red headed, and she was a slightly older version of the other two (I thought they were all sisters). It turns out that she was the mother of the twins. She must have worked hard at keeping herself young looking that because if she came in alone and I had no one to compare her to, I often made the mistake of taking her for one of her daughters.
Ok, so that’s the premise and major characters. Now quickly to give you the scenario right away:
- They all wore identical Kelly Green uniforms.
- They didn’t come in every time I was there. I saw them maybe once or twice a month at best.
- They did not tip
- Each of them drank some form of Scotch and a clear mixer
The first time I met them the mother and one of the daughters came in together. …Scotch rocks, splash of soda for daughter, Dewars rocks, splash of water for mom. I turn around, twin number two sits down and now there are three of them. Red hair, green uniforms, “What’ll it be?” “Dewars rocks, splash of soda”
Right then the alarm bells should have gone off. I was a kid, what did I know? Ok. …
Round two. Was that Dewars and water or Scotch and water or Scotch and soda for you? … Week two. Week three. Month two. Rinse, repeat… Wait a minute, wasn’t the one on the left over there before? Did they just change seats? …She’s alone this time, is she the mom? Two were there, then one would arrive and they’d all get up and change seats around… or one would come and the other leave…
I screwed up their drinks about 95% of the time. But only their drinks. The mother and one of the daughters SWORE I did it to them on purpose. The other one was easy going and friendly. So what if I upgraded her Scotch to Dewars for free I guess, right? (only sometimes she got water instead of soda.) The mother in particular liked to go ballistic on me. She also went ballistic if I asked each time I saw them once every few weeks “What are you drinking?” so asking didn’t help. Either way I was in trouble. I don’t know why I didn’t nail a picture of the three of them on the wall with their drinks on it at the time, but I didn’t. Each time it happened again I felt like an ashamed little kid caught wearing wet diapers. And why shouldn’t I feel bad? After all, they were major movie stars (and their mother) and I forgot what they were drinking. Death was too good for me. I probably should have disemboweled myself with the fruit parer now that I think about it. Each time it happened again I condemned myself further. I deserved it.
What made it worse was that the office building had a full time elevator mechanic on staff who had to listen to their constant bitching until his head was ready to explode, so he’d come over to the bar and yell at me too. I think he liked the mom a lot, but it was obvious he was looking out for all three of them. One day he came over to the bar so pissed off at me that I couldn’t get their damned drinks right that he threatened to take off his artificial leg right then and there and beat me to death with it. I can’t state strongly enough how relieved I was to finally get out of there. To this day I think that was the worst situation I ever put myself into by not figuring out a way to memorize who’s who and who’s drinking what… I blame myself. Only wait a minute, wasn’t the one on the right over there on the left before?
Anyway, that’s my story about one set of Doublemint Twins girls.
I had a second set of Wrigley’s Doublemint Twins girls I served at the Hilton on a pretty regular basis. They were fun and they never brought their mom with them.
Site Author, David Jonathan Curtis: David Jonathan Curtis, a seasoned professional in his fifth decade of bartending and bar management, began his career in Midtown Manhattan, NY, tending and managing bars before diving into Manhattan’s bustling nightlife scene. Over the years, he has mastered high-volume, high-pressure bartending as the lead bartender in both iconic Midtown clubs and Wall Street bars, generating over $1,350,000.00 annually in personal drink sales. He has since extended his expertise to establishments in Georgia and now Tampa, Florida. David’s roles as a Bartending Instructor at the American Bartending School in Tampa, while maintaining a second job bartending, and his years experience of managing bars, and working as a Brand Ambassador along with his extensive professional library of over 1,000 bartending books, highlight his dedication to continually refining his craft. He holds a diploma in Bar Management and is BarSmarts certified by Pernod Ricard.
