December 12, 2019

By Wall of Whiskey

Broken Glass, Wet Customers and Houdini

How to overcome extreme bar mishaps

-The best Bartender Aspirin-

Shots!

As Bartenders we've all had days. Crazy days. Crazy days that have scarred us but are now a point of pride. We call them "Battle Wounds" (because every night we're doing battle against the many faces of evil with ludicrous requests and uninhibited entitlement).



These are the days we use to "one-up" each other over endless rounds of Fernet and Jameson proving our rightful places in Bartenders Valhalla.

-We'll take breaks when we get to Valhalla-

To The Victor Belong The Spoils

Being 'Victorious' on one of these battle days will have a different meaning to everyone but with one unifying concept: We got through it.



If you've been in the game (bartended) long enough you've no doubt had many losses and many victories and this is what gives us the temperament to handle any situation.



If you've ever heard any Bartender worth their weight in Goldschlager complaining about something, it's not because we like to complain, it's because we are being hindered from doing our job to the best of our abilities and we need to record this in our brain ledger so it doesn't happen again.



It's not your fault (as a customer) that someone didn't properly prep lime wedges or make enough backup simple or any of the 250 things that will turn a 2 minute cocktail into a 10 minute cocktail into a frustrated customer into a backed-up line into many infuriated customers into an exasperated bartender into a drunk bartender into an upset manager into a new resume entry for a Craigslist job search.



It compounds.

"To those that see a smooth-running bar, calm staff and nobody crying: We've done our jobs."

-Do you revere ice???

Broken Glass

The ice Well is a sacred place, the lifeblood of the bar. 99% of customers get something made with ice so it stands to reason that it should be a sterile place.



Bartenders should revere the ice-Well. In fact if you EVER see a bartender scoop ice for your drink WITH THE GLASS... Get up. Walk away.



I'm sure I'll upset some veteran bartenders but there's no excuse for this. If ANY chips of glass go into the Well you MUST "burn" it. That means completely melt or scoop the ice out and fully inspect the Well for pieces of glass.



In my opinion, any bartender that is too lazy to use a metal scoop for ice will NOT clean out a dirty Well. Please prove me wrong.

-Beware the Skeksis-

The Cold Stone

Another very important aspect of the Well is the cold stone. This mechanism sits at the bottom of the Well and chills the soda lines that run through it. When the Well is full of ice that soda's cold.

-End of shift, 4th of July-

This brings me to one of my Battles

I was bartending during July 4th on San Francisco's Wharf (no need to name the bar) during the summer of 2011.



Some of you have been to The Wharf during 4th of July and can understand the hordes of people that wash through there; we're talking thirty-thousands or so.



I was working solo that day for reasons only known to the inexperienced young folks staffed as "Management". That means I was handling customers sitting at my bar, drink tickets for the servers and ALL of the to-go orders. For 13 hours I was a rock star.

My Lunch Break Mistake

It goes without saying that I was entitled to a short lunch break during hour 8 of my shift. The procedure was for a manager to step in for bartenders during breaks to prevent interruption of service for the guests.



After 30 minutes of stuffing my face to the gills with jambalaya and staring out at the peaceful bay I came back to this scene...

-UUUUHHHHhhh!!!-

My young and inexperienced manager was scooping buckets of ice from the Well with a LARGE METAL BUCKET. The kind you'd find holding an 18 pack of corona nestled in ice.



She had broken a glass in the Well and was doing the responsible thing by burning the ice coupled with the irresponsible thing of scooping the ice out with a big cumbersome bucket.



I yelled out to her, "Don't use that bucket!!", to which she responded, "Why not? It's fine!", but it was too late. The sharp forceful metal bucket had clipped one of the soda lines and begun spraying EVERYWHERE. All over her, all over me and more importantly, all over the customers at the bar!

-Front-Row Bar Ponchos Needed-

A Lost Battle

What she did next was pitiful: She left. She said "Well, you're back from break I'm leaving". Grabbed her car keys and left.



There I am with a nearly empty and exceedingly hazardous Well, some sticky liquid spraying all over the place and people STILL filing in.

-The Horror!!-

A Victorious Attitude

I kept my calm.



I broke it down into 2 objectives:



1) Stop the line from spraying everywhere

2) Make sure the customers are OK

-Just Breathe-

Objective 1

After taking a lengthy, controlled, centering breath I was able to shove the broken line temporarily back into the hub it broke off from mitigating the soda geyser. I then turned the gas off cutting the pressure to the soda line all together.

We ended up bringing in big plastic buckets to fill with all the soda from our upstairs bar. Mad classy yup.

Objective 2

I started with the people that were already eating food at the bar by saying something like "Alright, now that we've all had a refreshing spritz who here needs glass removed from their crab cakes??" in a confident yet apologetic tone.



This made people sympathetic to my predicament while knowing that I was here to take charge and make sure everyone was taken care of in spite of the situation.



Everyone ended up having a great time and gave me much kudos for handling the sitch (literally like a boss) and we all went outside together to watch the great foggy SF fireworks show.

-Everything's Alright-

The Takeaway

Our objective as Service-Folk should be providing people with the best possible experience allowing them to escape their tedious lives for a flash.



That could mean leaving someone alone to enjoy their $30 pour of Scotch or chatting with someone for a few hours and learning about their Grandkids.



Being able to discern which tactic to use comes mainly with experience and will become second nature with time.

Cheers!

What are some of your crazy shift experiences?



What did you do to shimmy your way back into the good graces of your bar peeps?

Leave us an interesting story in the comments about a shift gone right/wrong!