Bartending

i was going to suggest doing it once a week as a special on a manageable night.

Sell 'em by the batch/carafe...?

I rarely make frozen drinks but I sometimes pull out this recipe for a frozen banana daiquiri - just blend everything together (I use one of those small Magic Bullet-style blenders):
1.5 oz rum
0.5 oz Grand Marnier
1 banana
juice from one lime
1 tsp sugar
handful of ice

Wednesday was so, so bad. We were at 110% capacity near as I could tell, with only me at the bar and everyone wanting drinks that took a while to build – margaritas, Sazeracs, sours – rather than just highballs or beers. I will start looking for an escape route from the job before going through too many more of those. So last night, a night off, I went to the bar and just sat and had a beer so I could experience the place without hating it or feeling like my hair was on fire.

WmC, where are you bartending that the bar gets at capacity during a pandemic?

Northeast Mississippi, where pandemic precautions are something we strongly consider and then totally ignore.

damn dude. hope yer double-masking it and that we all get outta this hellscape soon.

Had a covid denier in last night, a trucker who's stuck in town for a couple of days while he waits for tie-down equipment to be delivered by other truckers (who are in the middle of their mandated 34-hour reset in Knoxville). Anyway, he was nice enough but completely convinced that covid is a hoax -- the medical community is using it as a massive cash grab. "Lung cancer? Call it covid and get real paid. Pneumonia? Call it covid and get real paid." etc. I was pretend-smiling and shooting eye-lasers at him and said "Ohhh, I should tell my mother about that -- OH WAIT I CAN'T, BECAUSE SHE DIED FROM IT." Didn't faze him a bit, he just kept rambling on. But he did change the subject pretty quickly.

You have the patience of a saint.

anybody who pisses off the person who make them drinks is an unintelligent person

In all other respects, he was a nice guy, tipped well, which in a way just pissed me off more. They're out there! The pod people! They look just like our friends and neighbors! Don't go to sleep!

WmC, i only just found this thread and read the whole thing. it's a great read! glad you've stayed healthy--would read a book full of your bar thoughts.

also i'm so sorry about your mom

would read a book full of your bar thoughts.

same

what did you end up doing with the pomelo juice?

??? pomelo juice ???

that bitter orange thing?

I'm still drawing a blank. Something from another thread or Facebook? I did find a jar of grapefruitcello last year that I stuck in the pantry 2 years earlier and forgot.

Keep waiting for the other shoe to drop on WmC's trucker:

"Did he... did he mention waiting on trucks in Knoxville? Oh, God. That's the guy who shows up here every February 24. Turns out, it's the anniversary of his dying from typhoid out on Highway 278!"

"But yes, at least he does tip well."

lol

He said he lives out of his truck and just has a little storage unit in Missouri for some personal effects, so whenever he finds himself with mandated idle time, he finds a bar/restaurant and just stays there all day long until closing time. He said he's going to remember Amory and be back at our place someday. ("SOMEdayyyyyyy")

I have been bugging the shit out of Kroger's produce people about when rhubarb would arrive, but since I never catch the produce manager it's all "sorry, dunno." Then I remembered I had 3 vacuum sealed packs of it in the freezer. So now I have rhubarb syrup to play with for a while. Gin + rhubarb syrup in almost any formulation is Instant Classic.

my bartending trick was putting a pint of blueberries in a plastic container, then filling it with gin and letting it sit overnight, then serving like five or six of them in a ramekin as an amuse bouche

When I worked for Wetherspooons in my 20s (very much not bartending, but still) I once got called up in front of management because someone had called head office complaining about the Deicide inverted pentagram I'd drawn in the top of their Guinness. Still the most metal thing I've ever done.

Was that a common practice of yours or were you serving satan?

I had been practising it a bit. This was Hallowe'en so it seemed OK.

i agree!

xpost Ha.. I once got called in at a winery for writing Black Sabbath in a layer of frost on a fermenting chardonnay tank... "We have tourists coming through here, you know.." etc.

I thought I’d seen some Andy the grasshopper tags in Oakland

there's a whole lotta tags in Oakland

Cinco de Mayo is the worst and stupidest thing in the world for a bartender. I went through 4.5 liters of tequila last night in a four-hour shift. I told the owner "you bit off more than I could chew" and I wasn't smiling when I said it. He apologized for not trying harder to get a 2nd bartender for the evening. I woke up from a making-margaritas nightmare at 2:30am and just chewed out my dayjob client. Bad, bad night that will take a few days to recover from.

Cinco de Mayo feels like months ago now.

The other bartender gave notice. I couldn't be sore about it -- she has a new boyfriend a year after an ugly divorce, and coaches both of her boys on their baseball teams, so ditching the bar job was an easy choice. Plus she doesn't drink, has little interest in drinkcraft. I'm doing a bartending training session Tuesday for the new bartender and all the waitstaff. The Imposter Syndrome is kicking in hard for me. How can I go from starting my first bar job to training bartenders in less than a year?

Ingredients-wise, I'm keeping rhubarb syrup available all the time now, and the rhubarb martini is starting to get a solid rep. I developed a riff on the Trinidad Sour (called the Tobago Road) using Amaro di Angostura instead of the bitters, and it might be the drink I'm proudest of. I have an idea for making orgeat using toasted pecans instead of almonds, and sweetening it with a blend of Golden Eagle syrup and dark Karo instead of regular sugar; in theory it'll have the flavors of pecan pie. That + bourbon or dark rum = ?

How can I go from starting my first bar job to training bartenders in less than a year?

because you know yr shit, ask for a raise ;)

lol, the owner/GM hasn't deposited his last eight paychecks yet, I should tread carefully there.

A couple of weeks ago I dealt with a bunch of early-20somethings who come in regularly for loads of Bud Light and Vegas Bomb shots. This time they were clearly fucking with me when I was trying to take a break, getting a round of pints and then calling for a round of shots as soon as I finished getting those, and then getting another round of pints as soon as I finished the shots. One of them said "get us another round of shots, ok?" and I turned around, told one of the owners "I need a break. I NEED a break." and walked out the back door and sat on the curb in the alley for a few minutes.

So they all came back in this past Saturday and tried to do the same routine. I heard the word "shots" while my back was turned; turned back to them and said "Vegas Bomb shots are for children, drink your beer." So they hoovered up several dozen wings and chicken strips and more beer, and paid up like nice little kids. I guess I passed some toughness test, because the main instigator tipped better than usual.

WmC, i only just found this thread and read the whole thing. it's a great read! glad you've stayed healthy--would read a book full of your bar thoughts.

― horseshoe, Sunday, March 14, 2021 4:34 PM (two months ago)

also i'm so sorry about your mom

― horseshoe, Sunday, March 14, 2021 4:34 PM (two months ago)

Thank you! Also, it was rude of me not to acknowledge this sooner, I apologize. I do wish I'd kept better notes over the last year.

How do you guys deal with the music question ? Or is it pre determined my Mgmt

Sp0t!fy business acct, owner picks the playlists.

https://i.imgur.com/6UPb4sO.jpg

I bet Death & Co. never gets straight-up garbage from their citrus suppliers.

yikes

Uggghhhhh! I can imagine how nasty that smells

barf emoji

I inhaled a lot of mold today. Washed and juiced what I could of the limes, washed/dried and moved the lemons out of cardboard -- they weren't in as rough shape, but they smelled worse. On the bright side, one of the new bartenders is doing great and I get two nights off this week.

I would raise holy hell with whatever company delivered that nonsense (not yr job but still)

i've heard of scratch and dent sales but that's basically frame damage

Lol, I'm having flashbacks. My first job was in the produce dept. of a grocery store and had to sort through stuff like this sometimes.

I would raise holy hell with whatever company delivered that nonsense (not yr job but still)

― sleeve, Tuesday, June 8, 2021 7:30 PM

The owners sent the pic to their sales rep and I think they got credit for that case. I should have known these cases would be crap -- the previous ones were nearly perfect, 3 limes and zero lemons lost to rot.

i don't know your bar's receiving set-up WmC, but someone ought to be around to check stuff in and make sure stuff doesn't get delivered like that. like it's kind of critical imo. that is terrible that you had to work with that and it didn't get sent back/replaced (am not dissing you at all, obvs, it's not your bar). It makes me think there must be other things being delivered that are not being done "up to code" as they say. I worked as purchaser/receiver for a few years and i can see how a mistake like this could happen from a reputable distributor. mistakes get made. also, if a company knows nobody is every gonna check their deliveries, *maybe* they might try and pull this shite.

Some of our deliveries involve the driver having a key to the back door, stashing fridge and freezer stuff and locking up on the way out, with the GM/owners not seeing the produce until he gets in a couple of hours later. They're a bit lax about the quality of bar citrus because I usually make do without complaint, but maybe that will change after this week.

The owners have discovered flavored vodkas. On one hand, that's some more bullshit I have to make room for in my life; on the other hand, I can batch up raspberry and blueberry lemon drops, booze and all, and just fill a chilled glass from a chilled bottle and be done.

Fridays are our busiest night -- last Friday I worked my ass off, a long shift including prep, and there were five ones, a quarter and three dimes in the tip bucket. I changed it to a clear beer pitcher so it's harder for people to hide their sinful behavior. Or maybe I'm just a bad bartender, I don't know.

I doubt that very much <3