Why the Bartender Must Always Be Right

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This sign is ubiquitous in bars and I used to think it was supposed to be humorous.  It isn’t.  There’s nothing so much like the captain of a ship as a bartender behind the bar, particularly in terms of cutting someone off.  I’m glad I knew this before working the Latino Festival yesterday.

The festival itself was a marvel of color, positive energy, great food, and wonderful live music.  I would have liked to have been out among the crowd drinking in all of it.  Instead I was one of three bartenders serving beer—mostly draft beer but also the occasional can of beer—to a thirsty throng.

Ninety-five percent of our patrons were terrific.  The remaining 5 percent were problematic, usually in entertaining ways.  One fellow gave me a number of orders and counter-orders, all in a rapid stream, and cumulatively intended to bamboozle me into giving him 2 (or more) beers for the price of 7 tickets, which was the going price for a draft.  I finally just gave him the stare of the buck sergeant I once used to be and he just grinned.  No harm in trying, he said cheerfully.

One guy, however, could not get it through his head that 12 tickets bought him 2 cans of Tecate (canned beer was 6 tickets instead of 7).  He thought he should be getting more—just how much more was hard to say.  He spoke no English but other patrons explained the situation to him in Spanish.  He still didn’t get it, and he wouldn’t move, and it became obvious he was three sheets to the wind.  Finally I told him he was cut off, and to move on, and when he didn’t leave, I told a manager of the festival beverage service, who happened to be nearby, to get one of the numerous cops who were keeping an eye on things.  The cop soon came.

“I’ve cut this guy off,” I said.  “He’s paid for the two cans that are open.  He can keep those.”

“On your way,” the cop said to the man, who went without a word (but with his two cans of Tecate, which the cop let him keep).  And I got back to serving the patrons standing thirstily and patiently in line.

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