March 20th, 2021
… ready? Braced for it?
Here we go. Strap in.
So I arrive at the service bar for my Saturday night shift. Jesusfuckingchrist.
I knew they’d gotten run over last night so I wasn’t surprised to see it needing work, but one also hopes that either the barback stocked before leaving last night, or someone on the day shift would have done it. Getting the bar prepped for the night is supposed to be a day task.
Nope and nope. Big ol’ industrial-sized bucket of nope. I’m tossing the previous exclamation a jumped-up pogo-stick here, that’s how big the bucket of nope is. Holyfuck.
I know from experience that with this sort of crowd, that the second my sign comes down, everyone will simultaneously know via hive-mind and I won’t have a second to do anything. So.
I keep my closed sign up. I put my money in the cash drawer. I get pen and paper and proceed to create an epic-sized 3-PAGE LONG stocking list. That is unheard of, by the way. 1 usually does it. 3.
One of our night supes shows up as I’m finishing and hangs around for a few minutes while I wrap up the liquor order and hand him the three pages and off he goes. 45 minutes after the bar was supposd to open, I have things as put together again as I can under the circumstances, and take down the sign. A guy comes up. There’s a line in 3 minutes.
Told you. 12 years of experience at this bar isn’t for nothing.
Eventually a -CARAVAN- of supply carts shows up. Two supervisors, and our ancient-as-fuck barback. Pushing heavy carts on carpet sucks, by the way. Guess who’s having the worst time of it? You already know.
I attempt to help put things away but I barely have more than 2 seconds between people so I mostly give up and let the other folks stow things. One of our supervisors notices a logistical issue in one of the coolers, and asks if I mind if she swaps location on two items for better fit. I tell her to go for it. Her – I’m liking. She works hard – and acknowledges my expertise at this. It’s a small thing, but it’s appreciated.
Now – busy ensues for a while. We’re gonna fast-forward a few hours. Tons of people waited on. Lots of cocktail orders filled. My supervisor has eventually shows up to give me my first break.
I have not seen hide nor hair of our new barback in 3 hours.
As clarification here for those who need it :
That’s not good. Part of their job is to make sure I continue to have beers to sell, to put it broadly. When nights get this busy, they need to be regularly checking in. The good ones will walk up, ask what I need, I’ll beg 2 minutes indulgence from my next guest (because when the line is never-ending it’s the only way you get a breathe), and give the barback a list of what I need, they’ll go off with it, and bring it back in a while.
Over the entire course of the night, I saw our new guy come up… maybe twice. Once to dump a bucket of ice in our bin and then fuck off as fast as he could. Once to talk to my ‘supervisor’ about what we needed – and bless her – but she isn’t thorough, nor does she make lists. She’ll happily defer to my judgement on these subjects, but ugh. He showd back up a bit later with a cart and…. 4 cases of beer. (Out of the arguably 12+ that we needed.). I very nearly flipped. “That’s -=ALL=- he brought???”, I recall asking to the air.
Ugh.
I’d say the night continued like that, but he never showed up again except at the -very- end to collect the garbage I’d bagged myself (his job), and watched him walk away from the other trash can (also his job) that needed changing, that he did -not- do. Supervisor and I just dealt with it. She got all my beers for me. I missed my second break because we were doing his job on top of ours too, and was late turning in a class assignment on top of it.
Service bar is a venue where the barback can show that he can shine, or has the potential to shine. He’s your line of support and the walk-in is too far away from there to piecemeal it like you have to in the lounge sometimes. If no one’s helping, you just have to shut down and piss people off for 45 minutes while you go get stuff. He utterly failed at this. He clearly knows -what- he’s supposed to do, because he demonstrated it on Friday. Tonight, he clearly showed that he had no interest in doing that for both bars to any degree of excellence. And he still expects to get his 10% tipout.
I was livid. I let my boss know as politely as possible that a.) she’s gotta do what she’s required to do, and that b.) I wanted it passed along that I strongly objected to that lazy asshole getting $25 that I busted my ass for when WE were doing his goddamned job all night.
I have never been so angry at a barback since that one that decided to stand around in the lounge listening to the music rather than doing his job. I threw -him- out of the bar that night. (Not physically, no.)
Our current barback? I don’t want him anywhere near me ever again. Seriously. He can fuck RIGHT off. Get out of my bar. Get out of my face. Get out of my tip jar.
Why the actual fuck, did someone think hiring this guy was a good idea? He’s not ‘better than nothing’ because that would mean that ‘nothing is better than nothing’, and that doesn’t mathematically add up, so no. I can be patient with someone who -wants- to learn. He doesn’t have the slightest interest. I’d fire him on the spot if it was my call. It’s not. So I’m probably going to have to cope with his stupid ass for a bit.
Ugh.
I was hot all night. I’m -still- hot about it. I suspect the bossman is going to hear about this at length. I’ll give him a chance to approach me about it first as I’m sure the word was passed -to- him.
…
…
oh. Forgot. Here’s a funny thing.
The beer coolers that died last week? Fixed. Like…. actually fixed, not duct-taped together with prayer. Fixed.
The fuck?
Not complaining, but the last time that happened, we had coolers down for a month and a half. A week????!
Seriously. Full fucking moon. Something.
I hope the barback doesn’t work on Sunday nights. I’ll be very tempted to tell him to just fuck right off.
We shall see.
Take it easy, folks.