The Honest Truth

So I started working at a bar. That’s right. Me who likes to be in bed by twelve so I can get up at 8 a.m. and work on being a “writer.”

This is what I’ve discovered so far. Bars are sad places. Well this bar is anyway. It’s called Boomers and it’s a big ol’ room with tile floors and wooden booster chairs. The upstairs is nice and intimate, but the downstairs part is to bare and dark to be cozy.

I work with the two guys who own the bar, Scotty and Johnny. Then there’s the female bartender, Sara, who’s platinum blonde extensions and tight jeans threw me for a loop when I first got there. I thought this was supposed to be a bar for old people. A jeans and a t-shirt type of place.

I started on a Friday night. A busy Friday night. Scotty was running around frantic because I wasn’t trained, people were filling in, and Johnny was late. Sara was doing her best to get me acquainted with the system, but she had her customers to tend to.

So there I am, tray in hand, wearing a t-shirt and jeans feeling like a boy beside my barbie doll co-worker. What the fuck. My job is to go out to the floor where people are sitting, take their drink order, tell the bartenders those orders, and bring out the drinks. Yes, I get to keep my dollar tips.

I also have to bus the drinks, which is not a problem because I’ve bused tables in restaurants before. My eye can spot an empty glass miles away and my body propels me toward it.

I’m surprised by the Boomer’s crowd. Given the name, I really expected everyone to be over 30. I actually spotted a couple of kids that looked 12. People ranged in style from a hockey team, to a group of artsy kids, to the lonely 30 pluses staring aimlessly drinking alone, to the group of obnoxious men, one of whom knocks over my tray while asking me if he can take me home. That’s when I learnt there’s a fine line between being nice and too nice. Give a smile, flick your hair, but don’t show too much tooth or interest. Drunk men interpret this the wrong way.

The night went slowly and I found myself fading quickly after having woke up at 7 a.m. that morning. I had no idea if I was doing the cash right, and based on the amount of tips I made (too much), I assume I probably wasn’t. Oh well, I see it as financial compensation for a stressful night.

Scotty and Johnny were nice, asking me if I was doing okay, and demoting me from corporeal to captain every time I screwed up. I appreciated the humour. Nobody yelled at me and I don’t think they will.

The music was badly done by DJ dolla. I’ve evolved into somewhat of a music song, but that aside, his playlist hasn’t evolved from the songs I heard in the clubs when I was 14. Later I was informed it was retro night, but that still doesn’t make things okay.

But DJ Dolla was nice, and I forgave him. That’s my general feeling about this job. I don’t particularly like the bar, or the people who go there, but everyone I work with/for are nice so I stick around.

The night was fairly uneventful aside from a guy getting kicked out for drunken antics like taking a chair, flipping it upside down, and spinning in the middle of the dance floor.

Everyone cleared out about 2 a.m. and then the clean-up happens. It’s an odd thing when a dark bar suddenly turns light minutes after the D.J. has declared last song. It’s an even stranger thing to know that’s when the worst part of your shift starts, cleaning toilets and whatever liquids came out of people for the night and mopping shitty floors. At a restaurant, you leave this stuff for the morning, and generally the washrooms are being visit by polite patrons. In a bar, a washroom is a place where puke happens, piss happens (not always in the toilet bowl) and sex happens. I will never look at a guy coming out of the washroom the same again.

So at 3:30, the time I usually find myself heading home from a bar or party to my warm bed, I find myself slapping on latex gloves and following sara into the washroom with a bucket. I can’t describe how hilarious it was to see sara, wearing a white tank top, tight jeans, and high-heeled boots, slam down the bucket in the men’s room and start scrubbing the urinal without flinching an eyebrow. It’s par for the course at Boomers.

After the tidy up, which wasn’t actually that labour intensive safe for the fact it was almost dawn, it was time to reward ourselves. And do you reward yourself after a night of serving booze? Apparently with doubles. About six of them. Me, Sara and Johnny, sat drinking and smoking cigarettes till 6:30. I was a combination of being so hungry and tired and terrified of not fitting in that I slammed back at least four whisky gingers and smoked a cigarette and a half.

Finally, after Johnny had declared it was his “last one” for the past five drinks, I realized if I didn’t stand up and go I would be taking a cab to McDonald’s with Johnny and Sara to eat a breakfast burrito. This is what they did. Seven a.m. to them was not seven a.m. to me.

So I stood up, thanked everyone for the booze and promised to be back again at 9 a.m. the next day. Then I slept till 3 in the afternoon. But hey, in my bar star alternate universe, 3 p.m. is the new 8 a.m. and double whiskey ginger’s go down like water.