Saturday – April 21st, 2012 {SB}

So it’s been a few days weeks fortnights … jeebersjiminychristmasit’sbeenTHATlong?!

*sigh*

h’ok… I think probably a little recap is in order. You’re about 8 months out of date. My apologies for the lapse. Between the bar, my real life, and contracting work, my life has been – to use a colloquialism of my college roommate – “busier than a $2 whore on nickel night.” Now, to catch you up :

Taking it literally from the top – personnel changes. The big one: Skippy has stepped down as GM and Mr.Suit is now in the role.
Bartending staff has, as usual, cycled. Dead Man’s Boots is again the word of the day, and with a limited staff like the bartenders have, is more or less what you’d expect anyway. No one gets in, until someone dies and falls out. Continuing to buck the trend and keep my seniority, I’ve still employed. My fellows now include:
- Slightly Neurotic Former Barback Day Guy
- the girl who was hired as a bartender when the staff was full, but cocktailed for a while, and now happily does both things part-time
- Native Braid Former Barback Guy – the current Don Juan of the barkeeps, and last but not least :
- White Shirt Guy. He lost (for a second time I think) his supervisory stripes and was doing some cocktailing for a while (which prompted a temporary name change to White Skirt Guy), but with our most recent barkeep departure, the one I mentioned before that I thought was bi-polar, but who as it turned out was just hung over most of the time and a teensy bit stalky, White Shirt Guy has stepped into the most recent pair of DMBs and is now one of our three full-time barkeeps. He needs a little seasoning, but we’re a couple of months out from outdoor concert season, so it should be OK. He’s doing all right so far.
We had a major recipe book overhaul. Most of the old drinks survived, some with revisions, some new recipes were added. We’ve had some minor alterations to our bottled stock as well, most recently replacing our MGD with High Life.
Supersivory speaking, we now have a basic stock of four that rotate, with a fifth gal cross-departmentally that’s going to be pitching in periodically – which means more than likely that at some point she’ll be the next person shifted in when someone falls away, but our four are a good four really. The only one that I think might have the best shot of departing is our former senior barkeep because really just doesn’t give a fuck about chain of command and likes to make arbitrary choices
Policy-wise, we relaxed our drink carrying rules, allowing our guests to purchase two and carry them off, providing one of them is for someone else. The one-at-a-time rule is still in effect. The guests are pleased, though, and it does give us now room to lock things down in case of an especially crazy evening. We’ve only done that once.
I’ve just cleared my 3 year anniversary at this job, gods help me.
We just recently migrated our point of sale system over to something that’s allegedly designed for a multi-venue environment like ours. The UI looks really week, like 1980s blocks and lettering, but it seems like it’ll be functional enough once we work out all the wrinkles. Currently the big problem is we’re going to have to install upgraded infrastructure for it, i.e. our own server, because it tends to spaz out and freeze up 30 times a night, which has by extension resulted in temporarily not allowing credit card transactions due to the chance of the authorization wiping during a freeze and the guest walking off with free booze, which is a no-no.

OK – I think that covers it. Moving on – and I’ll apologize for the brevity, but time’s about up:

It was a busy service bar night. I made good money. We were steady from 6pm on until -after- close. Not that they got served after close, but gods they kept asking. We also delightfully had Stanley Cup playoffs rocking out on both TVs to the delight of many of my guests.

One of our classic cut-offs made an appearance, which was kind of cool in a nostalgic sort of way.

No real problems.

Closing Observations:

Every now and then, you truly -do- have to be a smartass when someone asks ‘Can we smoke in here?’ with all the ashtrays laying about. You just do. My favorite response? “Nope. We just put those there to screw with you.”
Apparently we had a dance recital in house last night. I haven’t seen so many odd outfits since Halloween.
Wedding parties arriving just prior to last call are – in a word – a royal pain in the ass. No dude, you cannot get trashed in 15 minutes – and I’m not gonna let you try.

Next up : Monday Night