10 Things Every Bartender Absolutely Hates About You

[WilliamPitt]

I remember the first day I stepped foot in my bar. I had just gotten laid off from the job that made me pray for a subway crash every morning, and was drinking free on the dime of a family friend who was a bartender there. It was Halloween. I was dressed like a Victoria Secret Angel. I was 22. I had never so much as made a martini or poured a beer from a tap. When I was offered a job hostessing one day a week that day, I didn’t think I would ever parlay it into a four-year stint that has given me more opportunities and money than I could have ever imagined.

But here I am, four years later, possibly on the verge of leaving and finally putting my English degree to use writing TV shows in L.A. And the bar/restaurant that I call second home in New York City has taught me a lot of life lessons. I’d like to pass those lessons on to others because I genuinely feel like I owe it to all my other bartender friends to try to educate the masses as I go.

10. I am a bartender, not an escort.

Funny how a lot of guys in suits seem to mistake the two, but just because I get you a beer and have a vagina while doing so, it does not give you the right to grab my ass or say inappropriate shit to me. That’s assault, brotha. If you think grabbing a girl you don't know's ass is a good icebreaker, maybe you should reevaluate your life. I am not being paid to flirt with you or your friends. I do not get paid nearly enough to pretend I am remotely interested in 98 percent of the bankers, traders, stock brokers and other finance guys who roll through my little bar during the week. And for the guys in my bar who already crossed that line, if you think I haven’t thought about messaging your wife on LinkedIn about how I had to have her husband thrown out because he put his hand up my skirt, you’re greatly mistaken. It’s always on the backburner as an option. Treat me with respect, and you will not be forcibly evicted from my bar. Or ratted out to your wife for being a groper.

9. Anything less than 20 percent is blasphemy.

Sorry, kids. This isn’t an ego thing; this is a New York thing. Most service industry workers make about $2.13 an hour, far below minimum wage. My livelihood is my tip. And I know without a doubt, I never give service that is worth less than 20 percent. I always find it funny to hear these guys who work for Morgan Stanley or Barclays or UBS or Bank of America talk about throwing money around, but when a $153 bill is dropped, everyone gets real quiet. I was an English major who was terrible at math, and somehow even I know that $20 on anything more than $120 is an insult. It’s ironic that those who deal with money on a daily basis are the ones who seem the most confused when it comes to adding a tip. You aren’t curing cancer or solving the debt crisis here, bro. You’re leaving a 20 percent tip on a check, and I’m pretty sure your phone even has a calculator. Maybe that explains the financial crisis of the last four years. If you can’t figure out 20 percent of 173, you probably shouldn’t be handling millions of dollars a day for other people. Or if you’re just too cheap to leave an adequate tip, maybe you should just stay home. Do you work for free? No? Okay cool because neither do I.

The rest: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/19/bartender-confessions-10-things-they-hate_n_2719789.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

[NYC_SKP]

1. FFS, for a 20% tip just drop last digit and double. $153 is a $30 tip.

Or $31.

K/R. Now off to read the rest...

[cliffordu]

2. LOL...

Freaking cheapskate.

I put down 25% every time.

Waited table and tended bar for years.

[NYC_SKP]

4. Hey fucker, I was talking to the banksters in the story!

You, I'd tip you nicely!

I'd take the tab, split it in two, carry the one and divide by infinity.

You probably have the ap on your iPhone.

OT: Any summer road trip plans?

[cliffordu]

5. lol....

Mebbe in the summer coming south again......

From the Canadian border to the desert along the spine of the Cascades and then the Sierras

IT's a short hop from Tahoe to your neck of the woods......And all downhill...hahahahah

[Viva_La_Revolution]

3. I hated the well-off farmers who would come in for happy hour drinks at $2.75

cause my tip was never more than the quarter left over...

[KurtNYC]

6. Reasons that customers dislike bartenders...

1. My drink is still half full so "NO I don't need another one."

2. You just picked up the rest of my $9 cocktail and poured it out (see item 1 above).

3. You refill premium vodka bottles with generic vodka.

4. Because you pour bottled beer down the side of the glass like an amateur. I could drink it faster and it would taste better if you let the gas out but you are in too much of a hurry to do it right.

5. You are drunker than I am and it's only 10pm.

6. It doesn't matter how much I tip because you are, apparently, a deeply unhappy SOB.

7. Because we read your list of 10 reasons why you hate us and now think you are a whiny prima donna. Sorry that my 20% tip on a $6 bottle of domestic beer ain't enough for you. Having people hit on you, tell you you are "hot" and tip ONLY 20% ?? the horror.

8. I think I can taste your crybaby tears in my drink.

9. You took the cap off of a dirty bottle of beer and gave it to me, 8 seconds of your precious time, and now you want some huge tip because it was so much "work."

10. Your choice of music sucks. Your friends aren't here for you to impress with the latest indie BS music, or worse your friend's unsigned band, so why don't you play what we like for a change.

11. Your "pint" has only 12 ounces in it you lying cheat.

[WilliamPitt]

8. "You took the cap off of a dirty bottle of beer and gave it to me, 8 seconds of your precious time"

And if you really think that's all there is to the job, I can feel pretty confident about guessing that you've never worked a service gig in your life.

An incredibly, profoundly, demonstrably ignorant statement in any case.

[Maine-ah]

9. +17

one for every year that I've been a bartender.

[KurtNYC]

11. 12. You can dish out but you can't take it.

13. The bar back does the heavy lifting, hauling kegs up and down the basement stairs, hauling ice, more glasses, cases of bottled beer, cleaning up puke... and the bar back gets tipped out by the self-pitying bar tender. I feel sorry for the bar back.

Mr Pitt, Just because I counterpointed one bar tender's hang over induced gripe fest you lose your cool ?!

I can feel pretty confident about guessing that you've never worked a service gig in your life.

ME <--- line cook, waiter, bus boy, bar back, host, catering gigs, Sunday brunches at a huge Mexican restaurant in So Cal, cook trainer at a ski resort

YOUR STATEMENT: incredibly, profoundly, demonstrably ignorant

[WilliamPitt]

12. My cool is far from lost.

I defend bartenders with vigor is all.

9. You took the cap off of a dirty bottle of beer and gave it to me, 8 seconds of your precious time, and now you want some huge tip because it was so much "work."

You made it sound as if popping bottle tops is the only thing a bartender does, and is thus undeserving of tips. That's just stupid, as you apparently know given your personal experience.

Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of bars don't have barbacks. The bartenders do it, and run ice by the large barrel, and empty trash, and clean up vomit, and break up fights, and clean hundreds of glasses, and count stock, and restock, and run their asses off over ten-hour shifts for the princely sum of $2.65 an hour (the going rate here in MA). They open bottles, too.

[sharp_stick]

14. If they're popping tops off of bottles

where you hang out, the bar back is the bartender.

[d_r]

10. nice to be a in a bar where

you don't have to fight for the bartender's attention to get a drink and get asked if you are ready for another. To me.

I had the JOY last week of sitting down the empty glass of my first beer just after taking the last sip and the guy handing me the second beer, it was like a waltz or something. I tipped that cat 25%.

[sharp_stick]

13. Premium Vodka is funny

such a successful scam has never before been so popular.

[KurtNYC]

15. It is easy to spot a bar that is doing this bc they have lots of Lloyd's bottles in their recycling

or some other generic that is not displayed behind the bar. If they want to fake Stoli or Grey Goose they may use McCormick vodka. But if I am reading your post correctly, then yes, the whole concept of 'premium vodka' is a scam -- some vodka is smoother than others but IMHO it isn't worth 4x the price.

And the whole point of vodka is that it tastes like nothing once you get it cold enough. Less sugar and less impurities = less potential for hangover so vodka is a great value...unless you pay $30 for 375ml of Grey Goose.

[sharp_stick]

18. The scam idea was my basic point

the reason the bars do the rack to top shelf switch is because they can get away with it. Unless you're trying to swap out Grey Goose for some Moscow shoe polish nobody will know the difference, especially in a mixed drink.

[phantom power]

7. totally righteous, except I don't really get (2)

Am I really supposed to worry that I didn't do sufficient research before I go out to a bar? Or worry about what a server thinks of what I want to order?

errr, OK. Judge me.

[DFW]

16. Here's what every bartender WOULD hate about me, if I went to bars

I don't drink alcohol.

(I do tip 20%, though that's no consolation to a bartender).

[ellisonz]

17. "All alcohol is fun. You get drunk."

She's gonna be a great television writer!

[phantom power]

21. I think I get her point there, although it made me wonder...

If you take the point of view that "ethanol content" is primary thing that's pleasurable about a drink, we could all just stay home and drink jug wine, save a ton of money

At some point criticizing other people's taste in drinks (or anything else) crosses that foggy boundary into snobbery.

[ellisonz]

24. It's for that reason I've always trended toward not becoming a complete bar snob

I'm going to enjoy that bottle of Remy Martin 1738 with friends a lot more than I'm going to enjoy getting trashed on Bud Light and Jack and Cokes.

I find that bars by making good taste in alcohol prohibitively expensive all the time lessen my enjoyment of their establishments.

Also, I've spent a fair amount of time in Honolulu and somehow most bars there manage to always have good specials. I mean a $2 pint of Guinness in New York City would probably be criminal. But in Honolulu after a decade of $2 the highest my favored bar would go on specials night is $2.50.

I guess I'm just too reasonable for New York City bar culture.

[ellisonz]

19. However

I'd take her more seriously if she had better taste in booze:

"Hoegaarden, Chardonnay, Jack and coke, Bud Light."

[charlie and algernon]

22. meh, I think her point was "Keep it simple, stupid"

Have your staple drinks and just go with that instead of trying to get some frilly "fun" drink. A Jack and Coke ultimately has the same effect as the blue cosmo with a little pink umbrella and pineapple wedge.

[ellisonz]

26. My many years of intoxication confirm this in general

But different types of alcohol produce different types of drunkenesses - otherwise why would we have so many popular different types of booze?

[phantom power]

23. Symmetrically, she would apparently take *us* more seriously if...

we had "better taste" in booze. Those particular bits of her article left me thinking "what if we all just ordered the ethanol-delivery platforms we like, and leave it at that"

[ellisonz]

25. For real

I just have a hard time taking her seriously when her taste appears so limited to common "soft" drinks. I'll match her delivery platforms and raise her a bottle of Wild Turkey 101.

[Gorp]

20. That's perfect, especially number nine. I almost always tip more than 20% even on a small tab.

On a rare occasion where the service royally sucked, I'll sometimes tip 10% just to show my displeasure. That's a really rare occasion. My basic rule is to round up the tab to the next even dollar amount and tip 20% or more off of that. Sometimes a lot more. I also don't tip at "happy hour" drink rates. I tip as though it wasn't happy hour. I know the prices. It isn't just NYC, it's everywhere. Bartenders and waitstaff get paid crap. They need the tips to survive. It's sort of a screwed up system, but that's how it is.

And yes, they appreciate it and remember you when you come back. I once heard an older gentleman say, "Don't leave a tip. They get paid enough as it is." - that was almost 30 years ago and they weren't even making $2.13 at the time. His daughter left a tip anyway.

I sort of use a sliding scale - up to 50% for a really small tab, in the range of 20-25% for a larger one. The IRS automatically assumes 15% so tipping low is hurting the server in more than one way. If my wife and I stop in and get one $3 lager each, I'll leave a ten-spot. Most places we go to will have an icewater with lemon wedges and a tall lager waiting for us by the time we find seats at the bar. What goes around comes around.

[bobclark86]

27. I have mixed feelings on tipping sometimes... but not to bartenders.

When I get drunk, I tip more. The last time I went out and got really plowed was Christmas Eve. $50 of vodka and Red Bull later, when the room was spinning and my eyes were blurry, I tipped another $25 (50 percent for cracking a can of Red Bull and pouring some vodka is a pretty good haul from a guy with a smile on his face who doesn't grab your ass or swear at you). I used to live in a town with a bar across the street from work and $1 pints of Amber Bock every Thursday. I budgeted $2 for the second beer (I got the first one comped every night) and then $1.50 for the rest (usually stopped at 5 or 6, with the rest of my $10 left behind). I also don't grab asses, make weird requests or get disorderly — they have plenty of others to deal with. In fact, I bring a camera and shoot people, and most of my bartenders are still friends on Facebook because of it.

Yeah, my bartenders love me.

That said, I can count on one hand the number of times I have given 10-percent on bills in restaurants if the service (not the food, as the girl has NO control over the kitchen) was particularly lacking. I go 16 percent (double our tax rate) and round up to the next half-dollar for normal service, but usually do 20 (and round up to the next dollar) or more because I pick and choose where I eat for the better service.

No, I don't tip on takeout at the Chinese place while doing my laundry.

[davidthegnome]

28. Is there even one reason I should care?

As far as whine fests go, I've heard far better from people who probably work a whole lot harder. I tip 30%, I don't hit on staff - and I generally don't give a shit what they think, either. This is because I spent years washing dishes for various restaurants. Being a Bartender may be unpleasant at times, but in every restaurant where I have ever worked, the Dishwasher is the jack of all (and usually the most unpleasant) trades.

My thoughts? Maybe if she didn't whine so damn much, she'd get better tips.