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I would say welcome back, but I'm out of the fold myself still, I just hang out in the thread like the college guy who still goes to high school parties when he's home for the summer. But hey, enjoy it!
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Aug 8, 2012 15:41
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Frozen Horse posted:Welcome back, thread and inhabitants. What would it take for you to actually permanently cut off a regular for their own good? Have any of you done so? Permanently? Damaging/destroying venue property without paying for it Harassing staff (as in, following them out to their car - not just hitting on the bartenders, obviously) Stealing alcohol or cash (from tip jars) Consistently disputing or refusing to pay tabs Anything illegal beyond public intoxication (spiking a girl's drink, public indecency) Fighting, beyond a shoving match (that would get you bounced for the night, not permanently) Bringing anything illegal into the bar There's a ton of other stuff I'm not thinking of I'm sure, but you get the gist of it.
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Aug 8, 2012 21:08
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Nth Doctor posted:Am I a loving weirdo for drinking the Old Fashioned? Well over half the time, the bartender looks at me like I grew a second head. Around a third of they time, they lack either bitters or sugar. at 99% of bars in the US, that drink is ordered very infrequently, if ever. You're not a loving weirdo, you're just part of the 1%.
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Aug 9, 2012 05:38
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for the bartender roll call: Shooting Blanks: Former high volume night club bar manager
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Aug 11, 2012 05:01
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Tom Rakewell posted:My guess is that's also tied into the size of the specific market too. In other words, in most of the large cities I've visted have bars with exclusively Hispanic or immigrant support staff, whereas smaller-medium cities, like college towns, will hire non-immigrant barbacks with the intent of promotion. Then again, I work in the same market you do, and I started as a barback.
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Aug 11, 2012 16:54
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Holy gently caress, I'm 28 and I thought the only person in this thread significantly older than me was James Woods and maybe Sheep Goat.
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Aug 11, 2012 22:54
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If you are salaried, you shouldn't be pulling tips, period. Your company's gently caress up, not yours, but a salary implies that you have specific full time obligations to the company. If you were hourly, you could literally clock out as a manager and back in as a bartender for your bar shifts.
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Aug 13, 2012 14:24
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The two most important parts are grenadine and communication - if the rest of the bar staff doesn't know what red ice means, it's pointless. I once had a new barback that had never had to burn a well before, and twice in one night before I caught him did the guy just hose the grenadine off with the soda gun. Not his fault for not knowing, but be sure to communicate what red ice means, and what to do about it. Edit: ^^ Because it's very high in sugar content, it sticks to the ice very well, and your ice well will turn bright red. Any bartender will look at it and immediately realize that SOMETHING is wrong with the ice in that well. ^^
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Aug 15, 2012 02:11
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1 - Jeans and a polo or button down are probably perfect - barbacking is manual labor, if someone applied with me to barback and they were wearing slacks, a button down, and a tie, I'd assume they aren't going to last because they're unaware of the nature of the work. IMHO, dress one level nicer for the interview than you would for the job. 2 - Yes, be honest about your lack of experience. 3 - If asked, tell them right now you're just looking for work. If that turns into bartending down the line, great, but right now you're looking to barback. Emphasize that you know barbacking is hauling trash, hauling ice, stocking beer, racking and cleaning glassware, sweeping up, cleaning, etc., basically that you're aware it's manual labor. Bars can be reluctant to hire white barbacks because too often they try to start bartending immediately (whether or not they've done it before) because barbacking isn't "fun." Seriously - I've never let go of a Hispanic barback before, but probably half the white guys I've hired either quit or were let go quickly because they would show up and either bitch constantly, not work at all, or try to start bartending every shift when we were already fully staffed. Edit: VV This is also generally good advice, however as a white guy that started as a barback in Houston, it's not impossible. One thing I would add is that you might have better luck getting a barback job at a place that's very new - that's how I got started. VV Shooting Blanks fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Aug 15, 2012 |
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Aug 15, 2012 21:22
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Sheep-Goats posted:LA is the worst city in the world. QFT. The main downside to starting at a brand new place is the risk: The risk that the money or management will be terrible The risk that you'll pick up bad habits that make it hard to hire you The risk that you'll get burned out or feel locked in because the atmosphere/culture are awful On the other hand, if you DO get lucky and you get hired up to barback at a new place, you might wind up bartending within 6 months as the crowds build, and it might turn out to work out perfectly. Either way, good luck!
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Aug 15, 2012 21:53
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Bash Ironfist posted:Question: What is a busser? Someone who cleans tables? A busser is to waiters as a barback is to bartenders, basically. A busser generally has cleanup responsibilities on the floor of a restaurant, including moving dirty dishes to the dishpit, wiping down tables (and possibly resetting them), sometimes keeping water/tea pitchers full, and generally cleaning up the floor and bathrooms. A barback is a better chance to get behind the bar, if you have the option of only making it to one of those interviews, I would go for barback. BWW's tends to have reasonably high turnover (at least in Houston), so there's a good chance you'll wind up bartending there.
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Aug 16, 2012 01:02
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Bash Ironfist posted:Well thanks! I'm going to go to the BWW open interview then. Nothing to do with race, but bartending and working in the service industry in general DO put you more at risk of getting mugged if you're not careful and aware of your surroundings. You will frequently be out late at night with cash in your pocket following a shift - not a great combination, especially if you've had a few safety meetings. Not trying to scare you away, but it is something to be cautious about.
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Aug 16, 2012 03:49
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Perdido posted:Moving swiftly/quickly behind the bar? Sure. I am firmly with nrr on this one, I just wish I would have seen it happen.
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Aug 16, 2012 21:56
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If you need to take a loan for it, don't have liquor. Do beer and wine only - buy enough alcohol for everyone to have 4-5 drinks (there are 4 glasses of wine per bottle) and call it a day. You can cover the whole cost for like $750, easy, even if you're buying microbrew beer and wines other than Kendall Jackson. Edit: VV Did they tip? VV Shooting Blanks fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Aug 17, 2012 |
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Aug 17, 2012 15:15
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Nah, I'd have called the cops and filed a lawsuit as well. That's incredibly hosed up, and quite possibly a felony depending on where Perdido is (I think Canada).
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Aug 17, 2012 22:37
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Bash Ironfist posted:haha what? A quarter a drink? The gently caress is that? I'd be willing to bet that whatever they were drinking cost $X.75, and they just told him to keep the change each time.
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Aug 18, 2012 20:36
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Daric posted:She also somehow lost a guest's credit card. We don't really keep them to run tabs because we're a restaurant and we're not usually busy enough to warrant it but this guy gave it to her, she sat it on top of the till like we always do and it was there all night. Up until it came time to give it back to him, where it mysteriously disappeared. We cleaned the entire bar and it was nowhere to be found so I'm betting someone snatched it when we weren't looking. You will find it 3 weeks later in the weirdest spot. I once lost a guest's credit card - I dropped it as I pulled it out of the card box we used, went to catch it, and the thing just disappeared. Thankfully, the bar had slowed down since it was after 1AM and the guest was in no huge hurry, so I comped him a drink while I looked for the card. I had it in my hand, so I knew it hadn't been given back to the wrong person. After about 45 minutes of searching, I eventually found it - when I went to catch it, I actually knocked it horizontally between the till and the shelf it sat on. There was about 1/4" of space between the two but it happened to be just the right timing and angle.
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Aug 20, 2012 07:40
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Tom, you forgot about the Sprite...
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Aug 22, 2012 04:45
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nrr posted:gently caress everyone who says they're going to tip you well. At some point. In the future. Not now, but, y'know, like, I'm totally gonna take care of you bro. I've had it happen exactly twice in memory. Both times, they threw down a cash tip on the first round, while giving me a card for the drinks. I don't remember specific totals, but the tip wound up being at least 50% of the bill in both cases. That's twice out of literally thousands of tabs I've run, probably tens of thousands. Either way, it's exceedingly rare, and as a rule, people who say they're going to tip well are generally assholes.
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Aug 24, 2012 04:54
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That's when you order a beer.
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Aug 26, 2012 17:14
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FaceEater posted:I've met all my beer and liquor reps personally, and while I'm 90% sure that most of them don't have a clue who I am, I believe them all to be mostly decent people and honest tradesmen. You probably don't do enough volume to get any significant discounts or free products. Look out for things like them trying to sell you niche products that won't move (flavor-of-the-month tequila, alco pops), promising you that if you buy extra this week/month (so they can meet their quote and get a bonus) that they'll take care of you in the future, and them trying to take out competing products by offering you piddly amounts in cash or promos (if you stop selling Absolut and exclusively carry Smirnoff vodkas, I'll buy you a pack of gum!). One thing that always irked me personally was every time a rep offered to pay for printing up drink menus if it meant he got to pick the menu. That said, these guys have a job to do as well, so a certain amount of this you'll eventually just have to shake your head when they start asking stuff of you. Jabel posted:So a family friend has a smallish vineyard and is looking for a sales rep/vendor in the area I live and asked if I was interested in doing that for them. I have very little knowledge of wine but between my parents and them I'm sure I can learn everything I need to know. Kinda curious as to a bartenders point of view of reps/vendors and if it's at all worth pursuing. You won't be selling to bartenders, you'll probably be selling to managers. I don't know your market, but wine vendors that rep a small number of products can be very collusive - you sell your wines to someone and bring in another vendor to fill some holes you can't, and they'll do the same. You will probably be asked to come in and train their staff on your wines (and if you aren't asked, you should offer). Most importantly - ASK your customers/prospects what they want. Wine is a weird business compared to liquor, it is very much relational selling since there are so many wines on the market. Questions you might ask in an initial meeting: Do you have any needs right now that aren't being met? How can I make your job easier (inventory, deliveries, scheduling, training, product demos)? How do you buy wine - do you have a set number of wines on your list, do you try to keep a well rounded list, are there any specific holes you have right now? What will it take to get the opportunity to earn your business? Wine can be much easier to replace on a menu than beer or liquor, so the key is to keeping the restaurant owners/managers happy. One other way of doing this is, when you do land an account, show up there every once in awhile to eat. Pay full price for your meal, tip generously, and bring people with you. I was much happier to buy wine from the rep that came in twice a month with a couple friends, than the rep who walked in once a week to drop off the wines he was selling at the moment. Lastly, be semi knowledgeable about your product - know what a varietal is, a vintage, a blend, what wines complement what foods (generally speaking), etc. You don't need to be an expert on everything wine, but knowing enough about wine to speak intelligently about the products you're selling is a good idea.
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Aug 29, 2012 03:12
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I am fully convinced that blue curacao bottles are inherently evil, and refill themselves when you're not looking. That poo poo is awful.
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Sep 7, 2012 14:56
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I once got called out for drinking a Negroni, by a guy who was hitting on a pair of girls at a really small hotel bar here in Houston. I offered to let him try my "faggy pink drink" and after a bit of goading, he took me up on the offer. And promptly spit it out, not realizing how bitter Campari is (the bartender, a friend, had a good laugh at that). I wound up taking the girls back to their room at a different hotel, left the dude behind  I did not, however, get laid. And I still don't understand why not.
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Sep 8, 2012 04:06
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Respekt posted:Is it legal in California for an employer to cut out 20% from all CC and automatic 18% gratuity tips from the employees tip pool? It is legal for management to dock CC tips the same amount they're paying in CC fees. That's typically about 1.5%, maybe as high as 3% if you have a really lovely processor. 20% is outrageous, though, there is no way they're paying that much. It sounds shady and/or lovely, but that is literally what the bar pays to the CC company. It's one of the few times I'll side with the bar rather than the employee - there is no reason that the pain shouldn't be shared, nobody likes paying those drat fees. If they're hitting you with 20%, you should ask how much their CC fees are.
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Sep 8, 2012 14:46
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Daric posted:Let's go drinking some time I'm game...
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Sep 9, 2012 03:37
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Very, very few bars actually stock Campari (and very few will have sweet vermouth that isn't spoiled). It's relatively well known, but your best bet for ordering one will be a hotel bar, unless you're in an area with a decent number of cocktail bars.
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Sep 9, 2012 04:59
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Vegetable Melange posted:I just took a lowboy door to the dome. Careful out there. I have 2 favorite injuries. The common one was raking my arm across a speed rack, with every Spill Stop 285 pulling some skin off. Enjoy your drinks, guys! As for a particular injury, hands down it's the time another bartender dropped a bottle inside our 90" horizontal. Reached in and got a 3" sliver of glass up my middle finger - used a whole bottle of skin glue trying to stem the bleeding. Didn't help that I'd chugged 3 Red Bulls and couldn't stop shaking. Then again, I also know a guy that nailed himself in the eye with a champagne cork. Great guy, too.
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Sep 16, 2012 06:14
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nrr posted:Coupled with the downside to leaving these degrees on, you've got to add in the upside too. Which if you're straight out going for a bartending job, there really isn't going to be many. No one's going to look at your resume and think, hmm doesn't look like he's what im aft-woah hold on a second, a philosophy degree? He's our man. Philosophy could be useful, just mentioned that when you were growing up, you saw Dalton from Road House as a personal hero.
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Sep 18, 2012 01:33
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Coolguye posted:Yeah, but unlike the steam hammer though this entire idea has a lot of human integration problems that I'm not sure you can overcome with good engineering. At least not in a cost-efficient way. To really be useful you'd have to do something that enhances the bartender's ability to interact with the customers without interfering with their normal flow. And since the normal flow ideally involves pouring your customer's liquor your drat self the only thing I can think of that might remotely be useful is a sort of auto-gun for sodas and sours so the bartender can focus on pouring the liquor. You can already get sour mix on your standard soda gun - it's not premeasured, but frankly that stuff is so cheap there's no need to add an extra layer of complexity to the system. If you spill some on the mat, no big deal.
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Sep 20, 2012 18:26
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The biggest issue I'd have is whether or not they'd pour consistently. If they do that, and they're not too expensive (spouts get lost, broken, or damaged constantly as is - add electronics and it just gets worse), then I have no problem with the system. That said, I still maintain that a well run bar will net good money for the owner, manager and employees alike - eliminating reasons to steal for anyone but habitual thieves. I don't think a system like that should be necessary, but if it's cheap enough I can see the attraction.
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Sep 22, 2012 01:41
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Yeah, Utah wouldn't be a fun place to bartend. I was there for work once, had to drive to Nevada just to get to a drat strip club. I think the place that will hold the crown for weirdest liquor law though, will be South Carolina. Until a couple years ago, bars were required to use airplane bottles for all liquor drinks. There was no freepouring, there were no mixed drinks with different quantities of alcohol...it was all mini bottles. Want a Cosmo? Mini bottle of citrus vodka, mini bottle of Cointreau, lime, splash of cran for color, shake and serve.
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Sep 23, 2012 01:56
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leica posted:My response is "I can make you a well Scotch and water, I bet you'll taste that" I once had a customer ask me for a dozen shots, without specifying anything - not even a base liquor or if the shots were for a group of guys or girls. I poured rail tequila straight, no salt or lime. I didn't even get a complaint, surprisingly enough. Caveat: We were slammed at the time, and this guy had been annoying us all night long. I figured if I asked him what kind of shots, it would be 10 different kinds, all either rimmed or layered or something else stupid.
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Oct 8, 2012 08:09
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Fontoyn posted:Anyone have any advice for a college student applying to bounce at a downtown bar? I'm submitting a resume and cover letter and am looking for advice on how I ought to present myself. Physicality is a good thing in a bouncer, however needing/wanting to use it is not. Are you submitting in person or electronically? If you can, submit in person and see if you can get an interview on the spot. In the interview, rather than focusing on your MMA training, ask them about their dress code. If you can get some insight in how to spot fakes (seeing as it's a college town), that would also be good to mention. Similarly, ask them how proactive they'd like you to be in stopping problems before they begin. There will always be idiots spilling drinks on each other, but if someone is there immediately with a towel so they can wipe themselves off, it's much easier to defuse the situation. You could also ask them how many bouncers they typically have on any given night, and what the bouncer/patron ratio is. Personally, I'd probably leave the MMA stuff off the resume/cover letter - that makes you sound like a trained fighter (which you are). You want to emphasize your ability to resolve situations without resorting to hitting anyone, instead separating problem individuals, identifying people who need to be ejected before they're an issue, etc.
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Oct 10, 2012 01:03
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James Woods posted:High Thujone content Absinthe does in fact have a hallucinogenic property to it but you'd be hard pressed to find it anywhere but the Czech Republic. The stuff sold everywhere else has 2mg of Thujone per liter whereas the Czech stuff has 10mg. Absinthe is also over 100 proof so were you to drink enough of the exported stuff to trip you'd be black out drunk. I smuggled a couple bottles of this http://www.originalabsinthe.com/absinthe-absinthe-king-gold-p-56.html back from Prague last time I was there and I can assure you that it is the real deal and you will trip like a madman. That website even insures against confiscation from customs. That's the same stuff I brought back from England several years ago as well, at least the name is - label looks a bit different. I don't know if I would say if I hallucinated on it, but it was a *very* different kind of drunk, and this is coming from someone who routinely calls bullshit on the people who say they turn into a mean drunk when they drink X, or they always party harder when they drink Y. Most of the old time absinthe stories trace their roots to a Swiss farmer named Jean Lanfray who got rip roaring drunk on wine, brandy, and a bunch of other stuff, and maybe 3 glasses of absinthe, after which he killed his wife. At the time, absinthe was the drink of choice for the Bohemians in France, and so the ban (which originated in Europe and quickly spread) became a predecessor of Reefer Madness, Prohibition, and even the current ongoing War on Drugs in the US, as it was thought to be the primary cause of moral decay in youth. Also, technically speaking, any absinthe with 2mg/liter of thujone or less should be labelled absente instead, although this is often ignored for marketing reasons.
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Oct 11, 2012 23:33
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What the gently caress is a picklejack?
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Oct 15, 2012 16:04
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Der Luftwaffle posted:I love printer/computer malfunctions. One night I had all the kitchen chits redirecting to my printer and mixing with my orders so I'd be fighting a sense of mounting horror all night as the thing kept spitting out paper, collecting in rolls on the floor and tripping people. I once worked at a place that used an older POS system whose software hadn't been updated in years. It was full of really weird errors, but my favorite was one time when one of the bar printers ran out of paper (the printer we used the least, in fact), which somehow managed to shut down the print server - kitchen wasn't getting tickets, servers couldn't print receipts. Took us a little while to figure out what happened. Edit: The only time I ever really had an issue with the kitchen was when they'd just come behind the bar and start pouring poo poo for some special of the day or whatever. I don't mind ordering booze for the kitchen to cook with, but don't gently caress with my inventory! Shooting Blanks fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Oct 15, 2012 |
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Oct 15, 2012 21:28
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How does someone leave it both a mess AND unstocked, is there no manager to spot check that poo poo?
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Oct 18, 2012 16:17
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James Woods posted:Why'd I ever stop doing this? Because you value your sanity/liver/rosy outlook on life? (pick one)
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Oct 20, 2012 01:24
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navyjack posted:Why do I find that accent on a woman oddly hot? Because you've only ever heard it on TV?
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Oct 22, 2012 04:49
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 16:38 |
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Tom Rakewell posted:If you've worked in the service industry more than a year and still have an accent fetish, you are a total glutton for punishment. I still have dreams about customers with hot accents so thick I can understand their orders, but nothing else they say. Those are pleasant dreams.
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Oct 22, 2012 14:59
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