About 10 times a year, during special occasions we call “holidays,” a terrible mistake is made in which people who normally shuffle about their lives in sober contentment are foolishly allowed to venture out to drink and interact with people who take the boozing lifestyle seriously.
You know who I’m talking about: bar amateurs, whose only reason for going out is because everyone else in the world is going, too, so why not them? The idea of celebrating by way of intoxication is more pleasing to them than the actual celebration itself. It’s essentially an excuse to relive their high school proms so they can go out and buy a new sparkly dress or silk tie and take lots of flashy pictures with big white teeth. Years later they will look at those photos and say, “Looky here, kids, proof that your parents could really shake things up.”
Amateurs are easily identified the moment they walk into a bar because they look fresh and gleeful, like families entering Disneyland on their first day. For them, those beers on tap and that wall of booze and wine are like the limitless possibilities of rides. The biggest problem they face is deciding which one they want to try out first.
Unbeknownst to them, they are intruding on the professionals’ home turf. By that I mean people whose main pursuit in life is to remain eternally sedated and to attack their livers from all angles. People who feel “out of sorts” at work if they aren’t hung over. People whose breath you can still see in July. Unlike the angelic faces of the amateurs, these professionals have faces of chiseled purpose (think Terminator 2 and the bad terminator who looks like a cop), and if you rile them you will discover that they can be quite territorial.
Don’t get me wrong — amateurs can be entertaining as hell. It is their God-given, American right to get as spectacularly schnockered as the rest of us but, more often than not, at some point it simply becomes tedious for those of us required to serve them.
It has been my longstanding belief that people should not be allowed to go out to restaurants or bars until they work in one, or at least until they take a course and pass a test, sort of like a 16-year-old does for driving before he is allowed to endanger all our lives with two tons of steel and glass.
If holidays are the magnet that attract the hapless and unaware party-goer, then New Year’s Eve is the hyper electromagnet, which inspires me to provide a field guide to you amateurs whose normal weekend nights consist of a Words With Friends tournament. It should also inspire my fellow bartenders to confiscate as many keys as possible that night so that we may minimize the number of morons driving who at one time swore that they were just “fine.” With that said, here are 10 rules you should follow if you go out to a bar or restaurant on New Year’s Eve:
1. Pay attention. Don’t ask what we have on tap while trying to peer between the beer handles to see my face.
2. Don’t ask me to make your drink strong. If you want it strong, order a double. Your request simply screams that you are cheap and want something for free before you tip me a quarter. Drinks cost what they cost. I don’t come to your work and ask you to give me a root canal on the house.
3. Don’t ask to have your check transferred to the restaurant after you have been drinking at the bar for an hour and I’ve muddled 12 drinks for you. You might as well say, “I’d like to give your tip for this $90 tab to the server for the work that he/she has not done.”
4. Don’t stand and snack on the garnishes like it’s an all-you-can-eat buffet. Guests don’t want olives or cherries in their drinks that have been pawed at for 10 minutes by your disgusting hands.
5. Don’t snap your fingers or wave your hands to get my attention. I am not a taxi. For bartenders, this is at the top of the “bad bar etiquette” list. If you do this, you might as well pull up a stool, because you will be waiting awhile for a drink.
6. Do be ready to order. The only person more annoying than the guy snapping his fingers and waving his hands is the guy who snaps his fingers and waves his hands and, when I finally rush down there to take his order, turns around to his five friends and says, “Do you guys know what you want?”
7. Do buy a round for your friends. Don’t be the group of people (girls, pay attention) who orders six drinks and pays for them with six different credit cards.
8. Do tip. Seems obvious, but this is, after all, a guide for amateurs. When ordering a quick round of drinks, $1 per drink is just fine. If you are sitting at the bar for a long period of time taking up space, like one does at a table in a restaurant, you need to tip 15 to 20 percent on your tab as you would when dining. You are, in essence, renting space.
9. Don’t tell me that you’re a good tipper or that you will “take care of me.” You are the same liar who promises to call a girl after you sleep with her.
10. Don’t ask me if I’ve seen that one movie where Tom Cruise is a bartender. If you think this is the first time a bartender has heard someone reference the movie Cocktail, your amateur status immediately plummets to “just fell off the turnip truck.”
I know I’m coming at you a bit harsh, but the next time I come into your place of work and ask you what an annuity or escrow is, you can roll your eyes and go in the back with your co-workers and laugh about what an idiot I am.
What it comes down to a matter of territory and respecting other people’s professions. I am not suggesting that I am any better or worse than the bar amateurs that come to visit, just different. If you were to ask me what would win in a fight between a tiger and a shark, I’d ask if they were fighting on land or in the ocean. We are all most comfortable in our natural environments where we know and define the rules and etiquette.
Just remember, when you come into my bar this New Year’s Eve, I’m the shark and you’re swimming in my waters. Don’t spill any blood (use bad etiquette) and I won’t attack in a frenzied, swarming manner. Follow the rules and we can all toast a very happy new year (before you, the amateur, go home and throw up in your living room planter).
Happy New Year and cheers, until next time.
The Barman
Follow me on Twitter @TheRealBarman
