March 12th, 2021

Friday night and it’s off to the service bar with a world-class migraine. Apart from that, I’m in a good mood. Got a new lanyard in the mail (featuring Avatar – my favorite Swedish metal band) and have moved my gaming license over to that, so had positive ‘new thing’ vibes to go with to start the night.

I’m again – persisting in not being thrilled about being there anymore.  The mental countdown is already starting to subconsciously tick in my head, and with my school schedule so heavy in terms of work, it just continues to seem like a monumental waste of my academic time to be dumping 32 hours of it into this place.

-sigh-

Need the lotto win, you know? Not a huge one. Just a nice quarter mil to pop into my bank acct so that I can put my focus on school and not be running half on empty all the time as I chase down all the deadlines around my work scheudle.

ANYway. Holstering that particular bitch session for now.

On the way to the bar I notice that there’s a room set up for ‘beverage employees only’, that looks to have a mini buffet-line kind of thing in it, but nothing set up. Clearly an earlier in the day thing. Clearly something that no one bothered to tell me about it.

My gut reaction was to shake my head and mutter ‘Typical.’, because it’s not the first time. Not likely there was anything in there that I’d have cared to eat anyway but I tell ya, if there had been shrimp and/or hot wings available that I missed out on due to folks not giving a shot, I’ll probably spare half an hour to be hot about it. When I actually have a moment to talk to my boss I’ll probably politely ask and be generally snarky about it for 30 second or so just because. I’m probably developing a potentially unhealthy level of ‘tired of this shit’.

So I get my money. I report to the bar. I start doing the usual start-up routines. One of our cocktails comes by to get some beers as she sees me here. I go to grab them.

I notice the coolers are actually pretty well stocked. I’m mentally giving the barback some credit for actually getting off his ass. Then…  the fuck?

Why is this beer… warm? It just get put in the cooler or some….ohshit.

My eyes track down to one of the little mini-thermometers in the cooler. 70+ degrees.

Fuck. Oh, that’s not good.

This stuff’s supposed to be kept in the 30ish degree range ideally. While it’s possible we might have the occasional stray European who likes his or her beer warm, that is not reflective of our general clientele. I have three coolers (One large unit) down. And all the beer in it is super warm. That’s half my storage capacity gone.

I of course immediately pick up the phone and call our main office. By chance one of our supervisors is in there so I raise the alarm. Another one shows up coincidentally a moment later to pick up my stocking list and tell him too. The bossman and most of the night supervisor staff descend on the bar and flurry around.

(It is during this time that the supervisor I spoke to first lets me in on the fact that she stocked the bar herself on Tuesday. Rescinding any credit given to barback. I tell you – once he starts working nights? I’m going to run his ass into the GROUND. He’s gonna learn to do his damned job or get run out on a rail. This shit doesn’t fly and I will RAIL about it.)

So engineering is summoned. The guy putters around with the machinery but it’s above his pay grade and he advises the bossman call the company that manages the coolers. He goes to do so, and then has folks roll down one of our portable banquet coolers to the service bar. It’s fair-sized, and we get about 5 cases of beer in it. 1 case each of 5 different flavors, basically. We shift some of the remaining cold storage around to fill in some of the blanks. We basically get to a point where we -can- sell just about everything we normally do, but we have to restock it more during the night. Not a bad fix, really.

I’d have been fine if they’d just said ‘screw it, go home’. I had homework to do n’ all, but I stuck around and did the thing. As nights go, it was steady but not crazy, and the time largely passed without much incident. When it’s busy enough that I don’t care what’s on the TV, it’s a good sign, I suppose. One of our servers wanted to put on a local basketball game and I was like ‘sure, just mute it so I don’t have to listen to the goddamned squeakyshoes all night’ and he was cool with that.

Got both of my breaks in and finished up some philosophy work. New supervisor continues to be trained. She’s not shy about putting in the work, I’ll give her that. I think ultimately she’ll probably be fine. We’re still in learning stage, but unlike many – she is -not- afraid of getting her hands into it (or at least fakes it really well), and in this line of work, that’s a trait that’s necessary.

The headache persisted most of the night, sadly, but ultimately it passed well, and money was actually on par with a good service bar night in days of old. It’s nice when one night’s tips gets you almost to your conservative budget goal. Rest of the weekend will be finnacial icing at least, so … that’s good.

As to the poor cooler? Knowing this place, it has even odds of being broken well beyond when I’ve stopped tending the bar with any regularity. I’m still debating doing the occasional guest appearance once the semester is done. That particular bar is well out of the smoking zone, so… maybe… providing they understand that I don’t care -who- calls in, I’m not going to go down to the main lounge and tend in the smoke once it’s back. Fuck. That. Noise. I will walk out first.

But hey – blow up that bridge when we get to it, I suppose.

Back to the lounge for Saturday, but not a solo gig this time. (Assuming of course  – my designated co-worker doesn’t call in.  We shall see. More money for me if he does.)

Take it easy, folks.