162 - When your coworkers shift all their duties on to you

I've been bartending for over a week now, and I've been doing exceptionally well at it. I come in every morning, pour myself a glass of orange juice, and for the following twelve hours, I do my job as if I love it, because I truly do.

I can see the same passion and work ethic in the eyes and behavior of the man that hired me. He owns four restaurants, and in order to fully respect my Boss, I must adopt his internal devotion to providing customers with high-quality service.

The thing is, though, I can't say the same about some of my coworkers, especially this one guy, who I will give the alias, Gaston, for now.

As people in the food and drink industry, us waiters, waitresses and barmen, all have our preferences as to who we want to serve. My Boss likes to serve the big tables, keeping track of what twelve different people are eating and drinking at the same time, while I like to cater specially to the customers who seem to be a little wealthier. My logic is that my extra bit of effort put into serving these diners will generate more tips, and therefore more profit for the business, and more wages for the entire staff, including me, of course.

Now, Gaston is an assistant manager. Gaston enjoys what he does, and is good at what he does -but that's only if he's focused enough. What I mean is, he likes to talk to the ladies.

It ticks me off. Because he then gets too distracted with his lady-friends to actually do his job. He tells me to clean this, pour this into that, hand this over to that person over there, while he gets to entertain beautiful women sitting at the bar.

He shouldn't even be behind the bar. And I hate how every evening, he orders me to clean the beer taps, and the coffee machine. They're really annoying to clean, to tell you the truth. So shouldn't we take turns cleaning it, as it's such an undesirable job?

I guess not. Just because he's my superior, wearing the black shirt that demonstrates so, then I, wearing the white shirt that signifies my inferiority, must always perform these difficult and tedious duties.

161 - When your boss gets impatient or bossy

So today, I started working at my new bartending job. This is my first job, and with it, I got a new boss.

Actually, I got three new bosses. I think one is the owner, one is the manager, and one works the floor. What the difference is between their three jobs is beyond my apprehension, but I'm sure that the three of them are all equally important in keeping the Belgian restaurant/bar I now work in running.

So let's start with the owner. I think he's French. I was delicately handling this piece of weirdly shaped drinkware (pictured right), when all of a sudden, he exhales a humongous sigh. I look at him, and he's shaking his head. He comes over, and he tells me not to be afraid of using force when cleaning the glasses. Now, look at the glass of Kwak. The glass looks fragile, doesn't it? Why the Hell would I use force...? I'm just trying not to break anything!

The Belgian manager told me that I looked bored when I polished glasses, and that I should always up my game. Hell, yeah, I'm bored. After wiping a hundred glasses, it gets boring! (I guess he has a point, though. Bartenders need to look energetic.)

The Chinese floor manager was the most impatient. He kept making kissing noises to get my attention, instead of actually calling my name. What that's about, I have no idea. He would then direct me to something, just to make me move here and there, climb this ladder, place these bottles in the lower fridges, clean the glasses on the left, wipe the coffee maker clean on the right, check behind me for any new orders, look in front when polishing, turn back to answer phone calls, turn back again to pour beer, one Stella Artois, two Leffe Brunes, one Kwak, two Hoegaardens, one cranberry juice - no ice, three Cokes, one Leffe Blonde, polish these glasses, go get more ice from the kitchen, go throw out the trash, go get more milk, go give a pint of beer to the chefs in the kitchen who will use it to flavor their mussels Belgian-style (????????), there's another order for three Leffe Blondes!, one fruit punch, two glasses of housewine, that tab is being paid for, tell Alex to serve these gin and tonics to those ladies over there...


This was all over the course of two hours, so I had plenty of time, and it was okay. It all went down smoother than I expected, and nothing broke, nothing spilt, nothing went by with flaws. That's not to say that I don't have a newly discovered respect for bartenders, though. They have to remember a ton of stuff. I guess bosses are meant to be bossy, in that, they're just trying to train me.

That Chinese floor manager still could've helped a bit, though...