Bartender 101

"You're on the schedule as Vegetable Girl," Miss Head Bartender said when I walked in at 5pm. I'd freshly showered, plucked the tag off my black Salvation Army shirt, dusted the soil from my jeans, and had biked to the Brew & Stew.

It was my first night bartending.



How about that for things your young self never thought you'd be doing. The young self so introverted the social interaction of checking out library books was challenging. Or even the Just Moved Here self who'd come to this pub for the first time this May, to sit in a corner and garner free wifi.

I hadn't applied for this position, and there wasn't even a help wanted sign on the door.

Since that night of the lonely wifi I'd been coming routinely for Buy One Get One Wednesday Nights, and each time I came in--not just to sit and drink a beer alone--a conversation or connection so remarkable would happen that I'd walk out the door making my happy noise. I am fascinated by strangers--it might have been all those people-watching lessons with my father as a little girl--and coming there alone I somehow effortlessly inserted myself into people's conversations. Wanting to engage with people, talk to someone else besides my four-leaf clovers, make people laugh, and listen and learn about them. I also enjoy their faces if I get to share about playing the pipe organ or bicycling across Cambodia.

There were the two entomologists (I'd heard them say "soil science" and I basically pounced on them; then we talked about ovipositors for some time), the two Navy divers who told me about working in life-edge situations everyday (who then followed me out the door and insisted on buying me dinner), the entire club soft-ball team, a British couple (discussing the difference between pubs in the US and UK), and the very friendly and flirty gay men who were all about Halloween.

I'd bring in my own homemade popcorn (Mr. Flirty and Friendly came up with the name for my curry-honey variety, "Curry Up, Honey.") for nibbling and sharing, and then vegetables from the farm when there was surplus. "Wait, I thought you were the Popcorn Girl", one server asked me once, when Miss Head Bartender explained, "We call her the Vegetable Girl."  A bouquet of cilantro for the cook, an eggplant with a nose for the owner, tomatoes for the servers, purple peppers for my bar-neighbors. Eventually it became not Buy One Get One night for me, but Get One Get One night.

So after all those conversations with strangers, and popcorn, and vegetables, Mr. Owner asked me if I wanted a shift or two.



So this first night was allegedly training. But it wasn't so much training as, "Here's the computer system and here's the glasses and Oh! we have customers, go!" But Miss Head Bartender was patient with all questions arising in the moment. Where are the wine glasses? Is the Miller Lite in this cooler? Sure, I can bring you more ice! Yeah I can get you a water. A local beer recommendation? Certainly!

Bartending is about double tasking (filling a beer, washing Mt Glassmore, checking for the food order, remembering the face that goes with that tab), being efficient and quick in movements, and basically playing a tenser and more public version of The Memory Game--a board game to remember pictures on little pink over-turned cards--but instead finding the Samuel Adams in that huge cooler of bottles. All of this very briskly at times, with the awareness that your movements are very public.

Bartending is also light flirting on the clock. "Yeah, when we first met you we thought, 'She's on the wrong side of the bar'", said Miss Softball Team tonight when I was finally behind the bar. 


Have you ever watched a server enter an order into the restaurant computer system, deftly and instantly tapping the burger-no-mayo-side-of-fries and house-chardonnay into the screen? The ever shifting menus of colored buttons. The lengthy list of sandwiches. The perplexing options of sides. They go: taptaptaptapTAPtaptap, and a perfect order is effortlessly flourished off to the kitchen.

I was: tap    tap tap       tap     um  tap OOPS NOT HORSERADISH.

My learning this system was a study in quick learning, in picking up patterns, in watching my brain struggle to find the mayonnaise button. But soon I watched myself learn and remember that the wine button needed scrolling to be found and the condiments button was in yellow.  I was reminded of the process of learning a new piece on the pipe organ; Conscious Effort: C# in left hand here in tenor! And then eventually and imperceptibly it happens without the clenched focus.

There was a pleasure to be had pour a beer all full and rich-colored, carrying it over, setting it in front of a face, looking the face in the eye, and wishing Cheers! The night went very quickly; I consumed a Mistake Sandwich from under the heater in the kitchen, feeling like I was on a time trial but happy for it. I left with my back pocket a-flame with $84 in cash tips.