Tales from the Bar, Episode 2: Am I Unlikable?
...or am I just surrounded by jerks?
Episode 2: Am I Unlikable?
*all names have been changed
At The Bar, Leah was the one to watch. Blonde, blue eyes, towering, and the proper amount of tattoos to make a girl look edgy.
She had industry connections, she had invested in a grilled cheese truck with her friends that was doing well, and she knew what she was talking about. Sometimes she could be a little brusque with me, but I thought that was just how bartenders spoke.
“Hey, how was your weekend?”
“My friend’s food truck has a flat tire, so they couldn’t get out to their spot either day. It sucked.”
“Yeah, must be hard to watch your friends struggle like that, that does suck.”
“No. I’m an investor. It’s costing me money.”
As I worked my dinner serving shifts, I clocked her effortless, unguarded way with customers. Hugs, high-fives, shots the managers ignored in the name of business.
“Baby! I need a little drinkie with you!”
“Shot o’clock!”
She made money. Big money. I wanted those fat stacks of cash, too, so I tried to emulate her during my own day bar shifts, but the brighter lights and slower pace didn’t really lend themselves to the nightclub-bathroom chumminess Leah showed her regulars.
“Hey, how’s it going?”
*looks up from Boston Globe, startled* “What?”
“...just checking in. Let me know if you need anything.”
One blustery Sunday, Leah worked brunch bar with me, and I was scheduled to close alone after, since I couldn’t mess up too much on such a slow evening. I needed to figure out how to be like her, and I didn’t have time to be shy. My bank account was dwindling by the day. I screwed up my courage and made my move as we mixed Bloody Marys for a heavy-eyed group of Harvard grad students.
“Hey, Leah, I was wondering if you could give me some advice about what you wish you had known back when you first started bartending?”
“Yeah, totally.”
“Thank you. I feel like I’m not quite getting it right, but I’m not sure what’s wrong.”
“I’ve got some stuff to tell you, we’ll talk.”
After she clocked out that day, she sat down at the curve in the bar, ordered a tall shift beer, and beckoned me in close.
“Come here, Lizzy, I have some advice.”
I leaned in and set her IPA in front of her, a little surprised we were doing this so soon.
She opened her beautiful mouth and spit out a stream of testy criticism, one that was based on her personal preferences and much less on what I would later come to know are the industry standards. She ordered another draft from me and continued to pour forth, increasingly concerned about my future as a bartender as her pint glass emptied, becoming a cascade of lacy rings.
“I’m just not sure you’re cut out for it, but good for you for trying. You might just not be the right person for it. This job isn’t that hard but it seems hard for you.”
She ordered a third IPA, and as I brought it I gratefully noticed a new guest settling in at the other end of the bar.
Maybe that was Leah’s goal: to be so deeply hurtful and unpleasant that I’d rather spend the rest of the evening chatting up the leering stranger than my own sister-in-arms. I hesitate to assign someone so cruel that level of intention. I’d rather not live in that kind of world, at least not in my own head.
Much later that night, seeking sleep, I recalled an afternoon decades past, when my mother gave me a similar lecture, one also meant more for her emotional release than my education. (You can read about that incident in my poem “Forty-Five Minutes,” but please take care of yourself if you have a history of family abuse.) I fidgeted with the lavender linens and stared at my popcorned ceiling. I wondered what the odds were that Leah, like my mother, would grow a habit of venting her frustration into my startled, frozen face. The massive, white-painted iron radiator clanked reassuringly in the corner. My brain wasn’t old enough yet to make reliably good decisions, but my nervous system didn’t like my chances with Leah, so I chose flight. I decided to approach my manager the next day. We sat down together at a table in an empty section of The Bar.
“Luke, can I go back to serving? I don’t know if bartending is for me.”
*exhausted sigh* “I wish I could, but I already replaced you.”
That was that.
So, I let my eye wander from what I thought was my forever love. I padded my resume with every single foodservice skill I had learned from The Bar, put on a low-cut shirt, and shook my considerably curvy assets around town until I landed a job as a bartender at The Beer Bar. Hired on as a bartender. (Anyone who thinks they’re better than that has never struggled for money. See you in the comments.)
My head spun with possibility. I wasn’t going to have to overcome the childish host and server reputations at this new joint. I was going to join the team armed with assumed competence. I knew what the fuck I was doing now, and no one there had ever seen me behave otherwise. Sure, there would be challenges there like anywhere else, but a fresh start felt like it would fix everything that was currently broken in my life and reputation. Spoken like a true addict.
I was genuinely excited for my new job, and equally excited to see what the crew at The Bar would do to send me off. I had worked at The Bar for four years in three different roles, and the last person to move on who had spent that much time there got a huge celebration with cake, speeches, and a menu signed by the whole staff. She had been my serving mentor, and I still use the advice she gave me today. I made sure to tell her how much it meant to me that she took the time to teach me. Many other staff gave her similar farewells, and she left shining with happy tears. I couldn’t wait for my own emotional moment of closure.
My last day was a sunny midweek bar shift, slow and unremarkable. I decided not to mention to anyone that it was my last time shaking up cocktails there. I didn’t want to spoil whatever moment the manager had planned.
The lunch rush passed, stultifying in its smoothness, and the afternoon eased into dinner. I greeted the incoming night bartenders with a smile growing tight; I was about to finish for the day, and the time for celebration was running out. I dawdled for a few minutes after the shift manager cleared me to clock out, then it dawned on me that dinner service was happening around me with complete normalcy. I paused for another minute by the server station, slowly filled and drank a glass of water. No one even caught my eye.
Finally, there was nothing left to do but leave.
I ducked into our tiny coat closet to grab my things. The bare lightbulb swung. Once the door closed behind me, I flipped the suggestion of a lock and tears and disappointment filled the tiny space, muffled by dozens of inexpensive winter coats, city-grimed backpacks, and worn-out black Dansko clogs.
Then: the same ringing silence that had followed the abuse, both when I was young and now.
I couldn’t stand my own jumping skin.
I kept my eyes down as I made my way out the front door for the last time. My face was wet when I left, too, just not the way I had hoped for.
The host brightly wished me good night as I passed the stand where I used to shine so brilliantly, myself, and I managed just enough eye contact and smile to avoid question.
That night was hard. I tried to soften it with beer and shots with my roommates at home in our yard-sale-chic living room, but it chafed just the same when the sun rose, and all the more for the pulsing hangover.
I wish I could say I never again entered that door and passed that host stand again, that I stood in my hurt instead of trying to justify bad behavior. But I went back a few times, as addicts like to do. My time serving craft beer at The Bar had piqued my interest in the subject, and they had a great selection. It didn’t occur to me to find somewhere new to go. The Bar was the devil I knew.
I was studying to become a Cicerone, basically a beer sommelier, and I went to The Bar to try new drafts and study my course materials somewhere other than my tiny apartment. I found myself hoping to be greeted like a returning family member, the way I had seen other former employees be welcomed back so joyfully.
But there was a new sacrificial lamb working day bar, and she had no idea who I was. She was kind, but took no special measures. The serving staff I used to joke with by the dumpsters smiled from a distance, but remained focused on their work. Eventually, I decided to stop being the puppy licking its dead mother’s teat, and I chose to do my Cicerone studying at home instead.
(That front door doesn’t even exist anymore: due to the pandemic shutdown, The Bar closed after decades of business and was sold to a different family. The new owners drastically remodeled the building, including moving the entrance and putting a wall where the front door used to be. That’s the kind of closure my brain appreciates.)
The Beer Bar was a better place to study, anyway. 100 drafts, each unique and made by an indie craft brewery. This was back in 2015, when craft beer was at the peak of its boom and the breweries hadn’t all been conglomerated yet. I brought my books to work with me, and used my two daily shift beers to explore the many styles being brewed in the world. (I also used them to work on my burgeoning addictive behavior.)
I stayed consistent, and I gained a reputation as someone with knowledge. The other bartenders, a crew of backwards-cap beard bros, began to consult with me when customers asked for a recommendation, and I found myself with the answers to their questions ready at hand.
“Lizzy, got a guy over here who loves Citra hops but wants to try something new.”
“Bring him a taste of the Weyerbacher Double Simcoe, he’ll love it.”
Later
“Fuckin’ nailed it again, Lizzy, check out the tip. He left you his number, too.”
The beer manager, a position only needed in a bar with so many drafts, noticed too.
He taught me how to manage a complicated draft system like the one we had in house, and made sure I had access when the reps came by with rare bottles to share. It’s sadly worth noting that even though he was straight and I was young and attractive, he never tried to make a move on me. (This was pre-Me Too, and I looked this good, which is really saying something:)
More than any knowledge about hops and draft maintenance, though, what I learned from The Beer Bar is how I deserve to be treated. My fellow black-shirted bartenders cheered me on instead of tearing me down, and gave me helpful advice instead of more things to worry about.
“Guys, the dude in seat 20 just waved me off and said he’d wait for the bartender!” *cackles*
"Got it, he can get fucked, I have plenty of other people to wait on anyway. You ok?” *fistbump*
Importantly, when the time came to move on to the next bartending gig, the bar crew loudly cheered for me as I clocked out for the last time, with big Wayne’s World “we’re-not-worthy” bows and insistences that I come back to visit them, lest they perish from lack of seeing my face.
The Beer Bar wasn’t perfect, but it taught me that I’m worth kindness, and without that knowledge, I wouldn’t be around today. I haven’t heard from Leah in years, and thanks to my willingness to leave a bad situation, now I’m the one to watch.
This was great - I think it really depends on where we are and whom we are working with.