The New Bar(tender)
The beginning of the end seems to be upon us in the United States. Well, the beginning of the end of the pandemic. Bars and restaurants are increasing their capacities, relaxing mask restrictions, and adding more business hours. With an increase of time, space, and guests comes an increase in staff. More bartenders, servers, wait assistants, managers, cooks, prep-cooks, dishwashers, cleaning crews, delivery drivers, beverage ambassadors, sales representatives, and a host of other positions - oh yes, I forgot hosts - that I’m sure I’m missing, are needed.
Bartenders and servers, however, have changed, will change, and might not be coming back.
Now, before I go on, I’ll remind you, dear reader, that if you are reading this, you are most likely NOT who I am talking about. If you’ve attended one of my cocktails classes or ordered a drink from me at the bar, chances are, we are friends, you are an amazing customer, and I cherish you. Thank you.
So let my rant begin…
Upon leaving abusive relationships, the abused person becomes aware of the abuse that was occurring. Bartenders and servers have been, and are regularly, abused at their work by the customers who are essentially paying their wages. We are called names (“Hey, slow-poke”), receive personal insults (“Dude, you are weak”), receive indirect insults (“When are you going to get a real job?”), receive a pay cut if we abide by the rules (“Sorry, I can’t serve you past 2 a.m.” “Then you’re not getting a tip. Let me sign out my tab.”)women are routinely told to “just smile for once.” Black people make less, on average than white people for doing the exact same work, and most of us receive no stable or affordable healthcare. If we do call in sick, we take a pay loss and sometimes a loss of another shift (I remember friends working at an establishment where if you missed a Friday or Saturday shift, you would lose another weekend shift), and we are regularly expected to work for free (I know cooks who would cut onions unpaid the night before a shift to ensure they made it through their prep lists).
We are treated illegally. For example, if a guest walks out on their tab, we are expected to pay it out of our pockets (which is illegal), if we ring in the wrong food order in many instances we are expected to pay for the mistake order (also illegal).
Put all of this on to a backdrop of a system that rewards theft. Guests tip more and visit your establishment more often if you give them things for free. A free cocktail, amuse-bouche, free dessert (I can’t count how many people have yelled at me because I worked in an establishment that didn’t give free stuff to a guest because it was her birthday?), half-price this, “I don’t like my wine, so I’m not paying for it,” or “There’s no alcohol in here, I want a new one,” “This is too sweet,” and “This isn’t sweet enough.” I think you get my drift.
Bartenders and servers have realized the mediocre pay we receive for dealing with a large amount of abuse. Aside from the abuse, we learned that if a pandemic happens, we won’t get paid to stay at home and work remotely - no yoga-pant-uniforms for us. We realized that the politicians we depend on, from both sides of the aisle, are more interested in social media clicks, shares, and engagement than boot-strap-sleeve-rolling government work. Compromise? No, someone might see that. As we listened to our non-service sector friends complain about having too many Zoom calls and gaining their Covid 15, we were wondering if our runny nose was a bad enough symptom to warrant us staying and home and foregoing pay (and all that wonderful abuse). Yes, you heard me right, a runny nose might cost us 1/5 of our weekly pay (if you were even lucky enough to get five shifts), try losing 20-80% of your pay for a week, month, or year and tell me how excited you would be to return to work.
Some of us, like me, were lucky. We have savings, spouses, and seasonal luck (winter) that we were able to start companies and create unique avenues of income.
Most of us, now, need to return to work at the restaurant. We return only to find out that all of the talk at the beginning of the pandemic regarding necessary restaurant structural change is gone. Owners simply need to open the doors. Everyone needs to generate income. Those higher prices, healthcare options, guaranteed sick days, 401k plans, and shift stability options are a thing of the past. Yes, the restaurants that used to offer their employees those options still are. But no, every restaurant is not offering them.
So we bartenders and servers are going back to work with a new perspective. We know that many of our guests will whine, complain, and verbally abuse us if we ever need to ask them to help protect our health and follow policies beyond our control. We know that public officials will limit our access to finances when they ask us to close for the health of the community (can you believe someone from a different political party has a different perspective?). We know guests will thank us for being open, but still only leave us 20% -and if we enforce a 20% gratuity, we have to word it correctly so we don’t get sued. We are having to post signs regarding the harassment of our hosts. Can you believe this? WE HAVE TO POST SIGNS SO OUR EMPLOYEES DON’T GET VERBALLY ABUSED.
This is the new perspective bartenders will come from and have to adapt to. Bartenders must change knowing what potentially awaits us from our guests. As a bartender for over 25 years, I routinely enforced the rules at my bar of: NO RELIGION, NO POLITICS. 99% of the time, guests were totally cool with it. One percent of the time I had to talk to the guest an extra five minutes and he would be fine. The fine art of bartending in knowing how to steer guests in the right direction must return. Bartending and servers will need to develop a whole new skill set. We need to remember to bite our tongues and pay attention to the flow of the bar. We need to keep our environment a safe place where guests can meet new and different people. Names are important. Questions are important. Listening is important. Be interesting and interested. This skill set holds monetary value. We pay managers and chefs outstanding salaries for their outstanding skillsets. It’s time to pay outstanding bartenders and servers, outstanding salaries as well. Good food costs more money. Good service should too.
What do you think bars of the future will look like?
