He was one of the finest bartenders that I ever worked with: He was educated, gracious, knowledgeable and efficient. In fact, it was he who had trained me to bartend at a different bar some years before, and, in a word, he was a consummate professional — until the moment he wasn’t.
I remember that moment. He was sweating; it was visible in part because of the silly blue polyester shirts we had to wear, coupled with a little bow tie. Whoever decided that bartenders should wear a long-sleeved shirt while making drinks is an idiot, or at least was never a bartender at a busy bar. Looking back in hindsight after 35 years in the bar business, there were a lot of people who fit that description.
“You really want me to go throw that wrench into the gears of that kitchen?” my mentor practically yelled at the guest in front of him, the sweat line visible between his shoulder blades.
“Now?” he asked, pointing at a kitchen that for all intents and purposes was on fire, because, without exaggeration, at least a quarter of any kitchen is open flames.
Frankly, it’s a surprise that more restaurants don’t succumb to fires. Truly, it is.
“Do you have any idea what kind of problem that is going to cause?” he added.
I don’t remember what the request actually was. Maybe it was a whole litany of them. But whatever it was, it was the breaking point for my mentor. And it was the last day that I remember him standing behind a bar. It was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.
Someone asked me the other day if I thought people were basically good or basically bad. I replied that I believe most people are basically self-serving, which means that they are most interested in what’s only best for them, not necessarily what’s best for everyone else.
Maybe that’s because of my 35 years behind the bar. Or maybe it’s because at least once a week someone asks me if there’s anything I can do about the people sitting at the bar.
“Like what?” I always ask. “Would you like me to ask them to leave?”
“Well, no, not that,” they will say.
But in fact, if I was willing to do that, there are many who would, in fact, want me to do exactly that — at least until it came to them.
“How long do you think it’s going to be?” asked one such man, standing behind people who were standing behind the people sitting at the bar.
“At least half an hour,” I said.
“OK,” he said, stepping away.
I finished making the half-empty glass of wine full, only to see him push his face through the crowd once again.
“Something to drink?” I asked.
“No, just checking in.”
“Checking in?” I replied.
“Yeah, about those seats.”
It had been less than 30 seconds. I was pointedly aware that I was now visibly sweating through my new white polyester long-sleeved shirt — no bow tie this time — but instead a vest and a regular tie. I wondered if you could see it between my shoulder blades, but then I remembered the vest.
I also thought of my mentor, and I thought of that kitchen being on fire all those years ago, and I thought of my friend’s question about good and bad. I also thought of screaming, “It’s literally been 30 seconds!” in the man’s face.
In this business, there are breaking points, almost every night. The trick is not to let them break you. It’s always about the bigger picture, and if you let the minutia drag you down, it will, because it’s always there — every day.
Friedrich Nietzsche once posited that if you stare into the abyss, the abyss also stares into you. But what if you don’t stare into it? If you ignore the abyss, does it ignore you?
I looked up into the man’s face and answered him the only way that I could, or, more correctly, should.
“Still about half an hour,” I said.
Two minutes later, when I saw him poking his face through the crowd again, I just ignored him.
Leaving me with these thoughts:
• In a business that serves drinks, there are always going to be straws.
• You can’t control other people; you can only control your reaction to them.
• Philosophers can’t be right about everything, and neither can bartenders.
• The person who said that “ignoring a problem doesn’t make it go away” obviously never worked in the bar business.
Jeff Burkhart is the author of “Twenty Years Behind Bars: The Spirited Adventures of a Real Bartender, Vol. I and II,” the host of the Barfly Podcast on iTunes (as seen in the NY Times) and an award-winning bartender at a local restaurant. Follow him at jeffburkhart.net and contact him at jeffbarflyIJ@outlook.com
