Big Ass Party

 Yesterday I had my first event as a bartender. The event was a party celebrating the life of a woman who died some months ago. Before her death she expressed impatience with a traditional, somber memorial service and said that instead she wanted friends and family to hold a "big ass" party. She got her wish. The big ass party sprawled across an expansive lawn and had about 200 people in attendance, some of whom had come long distances to be there. Beyond that, I don't think I can describe the specifics of the big ass party without the permission of its organizer.

There were three other bartenders involved in the event, as well as our boss Vanessa, who supervised getting things set up and remained until about 2:30 pm, when she left to go attend to a second large event.

Our principal station was a square of tables, two sides of which were for serving the guests, the third as a cache for wine and soft drinks, and the fourth open so that we could retrieve cans of beer from Hoof Hearted microbrewery nearby; also White Claw; something else whose name escapes me; and Modelo and Miller Lite.

I didn't have time to associate the varieties of Hoof Hearted beer and their rather zaftig names with the images on the cans, so all afternoon I found myself retrieving the can with the grim reaper, or the one with a man in a cage, or the one with the couple making out in the bell of a saxophone. I also found myself heartily wishing I could have one of those beers, because the day was beautiful but sweltering and even more sweltering beneath the tarpaulin that shielded us from the overhead sun but notched up the temperature by a few degrees.

A constant in anything having to do with bartending is that it involves a hell of a lot of ice. You can never have enough, and the coolers on hand, although in deep shade, were no match for the temperature. At one point Vanessa sent me on a quest for ice, which fortunately I found without much trouble, and returned in a few minutes with 84 pounds of it.

The crowd was thirsty but friendly and we were prompt about serving them and thus things were busy but not stressful. I bantered with quite a few guests, and that kind of human interaction is what differentiates hospitality from mere service. In reading books, listening to podcasts, and reviewing YouTube videos made by bartenders, the single most frequently recommended book is Dale Carnegie's justly classic How to Win Friends and Influence People. The most famous adage from the book is that a person's favorite word is their own name, but what that really means is that people like to be visible. They like to feel treated as human beings and they like to be treated by other human beings, all with the warmth of life being lived.

This is something that Danny Meyer, a legendary restaurant entrepreneur in Manhattan, emphasizes in Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business. His staff evaluations weight technical job performance at 49 percent and "emotional job performance" at 51 percent. Emotional job performance is defined as "how staff members perform their duties and how they relate to others on a personal level."

We'd arrived at 10:30 am to get things ready and finished up at 4:30 pm. The four of us divided up our tips; I walked away with $165. But since I'm not in this for money (although it's not as if I would give it back), the main reward was the privilege of playing a role in making that "big ass party" happen. It was one of the best feelings I have had in a long time.