Tending Bar Today – “Professional Bartender” or “Jack of All Trades, Master of None?”
Where else to find current work leads but Facebook?
Always looking for the Bigger Better Deal (BBD), trying to find that sweet spot location of a fully stocked and well equipped liquor bar where I can run behind the bar all night, be able to make and ring up that magic number of drinks putting thousands of dollars into the register (and hundreds in my tip cup) without delays – and focus on my bar guests wants and needs.
The web is full of fake bar jobs where the owners have a bar, but it’s in addition to a restaurant and the bartender is what they term “Bartender/Server” (a food server/runner/busser who in addition to food at the bar is often assigned a bunch of tables to serve “water with lemon” and food too. …Then slap on the job of answering the phone to take and ring up the orders “To Go” and voila! They may as well shove a broom up our ass belt and a window washing rag in our “free” hand while they’re at it).
Abhorrent. Absolutely disgraceful. And at $5.03 an hour – waiter pay – “plus” tips, as if being a fully qualified mixologist bartender were a freebie charity service to the business owner to be heaped as sidework upon an unqualified / underqualified server – to tend bar, so that the bartender becomes the owners’ own special punk bitch. No wonder I’m seeing so many American bartender groups on Facebook where the bar guests are having the Faketenders’ aggressions taken out on them because the Faketenders are too afraid of losing their jobs if they tell their bosses where they can stick it.
Telling them where to shove it may have been the issue leading up to why more and more bar owners who are much more afraid of dealing with men prefer to hire women bartenders because they’re a lot easier to abuse and not as much is expected of them by bar guests when each one of the guest’s drinks arrives at different strengths, and not measured exactly so that each drink tastes exactly the same as the last one with precise ounce, three quarter ounce, half ounce, quarter ounce, eighth ounce etc measures, and so sticking to beers is safer (more on why sticking to beers is safer later on below). Face it, if the world’s best chefs are men (and they are!) then why not the world’s best mixologists, because if that’s the case then why on earth would most bartenders hired today be women unless they came from the ranks of waitresses? I digress.
Working on the “Chain Gang”
Job Search Results – Lots of Big Chain Franchises looking for Faketenders but actually seeking Servers who are familiar with liquor.
The Big Box Franchise Restaurant/Bar chains are the worst. Tips may be alright, but the respect for the profession isn’t there and the lack of equipment is often appalling. I say this based on both observation and personal experience. One Christmas season I took on a third job and worked at Manhattan’s TGIF in Rockefeller Center at Christmas for the lighting of the Christmas Tree by the Skating Rink. The “Bartenders” (cough cough) were all former waitresses thrown behind the bar with TGIF corporate recipes (all wrong – wrong glassware, wrong ingredients, wrong garnishes – mind you, I have several vintage reference books from early bartending plus my own many years of tending bar behind me to know what a drink should and shouldn’t have in it). These bartenders (Faketenders) tossed the dirty ice (with limes and sip sticks) into the new clean ice bin rather than do so properly in a sink. They then served new guests using this filthy tainted ice. I swear its true – I was there, I saw it myself, and when they went on break I quickly emptied and cleaned out the entire bin, refilled it with fresh ice, and IMMEDIATELY upon returning the two Faketneders looked at the ice, then at me, sneered (you’ve got to imagine this – actually looked down their noses at me and sneered) and immediately to spite me threw a used Gin and Tonic (lime, sip stick and all) into the fresh ice and then began again making drinks for the guests at the bar. I have NO idea how come the NYC or NYS Department of Health hadn’t shut them down before then. None. At anaother chain I worked for (which shall remain nameless) I caught a worker peeing in the ice bin. I won’t work for any of these chains ever again, and my past experience with them has led me to be VERY careful when and if I eat or drink in one. Merely talking to the Faketender behind the bar isn’t enough. I have to look and watch closely for a while before I’ll order anything but a beer.
Bartending Shift Work Pays Well, is Just Liquor Service, and Fast POS Systems with Tips!
For fair pay ShiftGig is a good option – while the bars aren’t always full liquor and mixes, they’re not always wet bars with all the desired equipment, and the bartender won’t be showing off making Rum Runners, Caribbean Rum Punches, Bahama Mamas or any of the other myriad of drinks separating the men from the boys, ShiftGig IS a very good work option. The POS systems are fast and uncluttered, which means the bars are set up to make real revenue, and there’s no food service expected from the bartenders. The bartender is a bartender, gets paid properly, and the tips tend to be good.
People expect a certain reaction from a business, and when you pleasantly exceed those expectations, you’ve somehow passed an important psychological threshold. —RICHARD THALHEIMER, FOUNDER, SHARPER IMAGE
The Professional Bartender’s Dream Bar where the profession is respected as it once was is just around the corner – but just how far away that corner is is anybody’s guess.
Bonus: Meal of Your Life: Mixologist Tony Abou-Ganim on the romance behind crafting drinks. The ‘godfather of cocktails’ chats with Billy Dec, Jul 31, 2017
Site Author, David J. Curtis: David Curtis, a seasoned professional with decades of bartending and bar management experience began his career in Midtown Manhattan, NY, tending and managing bars before diving into Manhattan’s bustling nightlife club scene. Over the years, he has mastered high-volume, high-pressure bartending as the lead bartender in iconic Midtown clubs and tended bar briefly in the Wall Street area, generating over $1,350,000.00 annually in personal drink sales. He has since extended his expertise to establishments in Georgia and now Tampa in Exclusive Platinum Service Awards Clubs, 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.
