dragonlady7

That is an obscure reference to a SNL episode I never even saw.
But anyway.

Tomorrow's the last day of the bartending course. It was a lot of fun, and hard work. Tomorrow we just watch a video and take a state certification test. Why not.

Today was a lot of fun. It was down to five of us, by the end of the day-- people had to leave, but a cool thing about the program is that if you can't take the class at the time you signed up for, you can take the class in another time slot, and they're very flexible about it. They also say that if you can't find a job you can come back and repeat it. That's kind of cool.
(It's Bartender's Professional Training Institute, Inc., by the way, and the course is roughly 40 hours and involves a lot of real hands-on kind of stuff. I would recommend it. It's more expensive than the ones my friends have taken, but it's also far more exhaustive. Also, they do job placement stuff. They have locations in Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse. You may now return to your regularly scheduled blog posting.)

Today we did some amusing role-playing stuff, which was actually really useful. Besides being tremendously amusing.

First, the teacher sat each of us down and conducted a mock interview. He asked us a lot of things I hadn't anticipated. "Do you have a girlfriend?" "How much money are you looking to make in a night?" "Do you have a lot of friends in the area?" And he catered his questions to the kinds of places we had said we wanted to work. Afterward, he explained to us why he would ask those questions.
Firstly, bar and restaurant owners and managers are crazy people. They just are. So they ask you weird stuff and wander out of the room and so on.

About the girlfriend-- most managers are aware that bartending (in certain kinds of bars, like nightclubs and college bars and so on) is the kind of profession where you're going to be exposed to a large number of attractive people of your general demographic. This means that your boyfriend or girlfriend is likely to get jealous. This means drama. This means him or her coming to where you work and distracting you. This means him or her getting into screaming fights with you. And, this means you not behind the bar, working, and focused on your work.

About the friends-- For a night club or college bar, if they're looking to fill the place (they have a cover charge, for example), they want to hire a bartender who has a following, who has friends, who will bring people in. They want the bartender to work for them as a crowd-gatherer, to bring in more bodies.
For a restaurant or more posh club, they don't want that. They know that if your friends come to see you at work they're going to want free drinks. So, how you answer is important there.

About how much money you want to make-- they want to determine whether you're honest or not. Of course the aim of everyone concerned is to make as much money as they possibly can. But if a bartender is going to achieve that by skimming off the register or giving away free drinks to get bigger tips, then that's bad for the place. Duh. So, they want to get you to talk about money so they can try to guage how honest you are.

As a result of this, I already have some good lines worked out. Not dishonest, just understanding why they'd ask certain questions and figuring out how to tell them what they want to hear about me to understand that I'd be good.
Because I would, man.

The second thing we role-played was each of us taking turns behind the bar while the others pretended to be customers. This was a ton of fun. Each time, the person who was going to be bartender went to the other end of the large room, and the rest of us gathered together and came up with a scenario, generally targeted toward the kind of bar where they'd said they wanted to work. So, we all ordered shooters from the kid who wants to work in a college bar, and we all ordered martinis from the kid who wants to work at a country club, and we all ordered chicken wings from the kid who wants to work at a restaurant. Etcetera.
I was the only girl there at the time, so I kept getting the fun parts. I had to be "the drunk chick" who doesn't know what she wants, and just wants to chat with the bartender and everyone there, and just distracts everyone and spills things. I had to be the girly girl who didn't like her cosmo because it tasted too much like vodka. Etcetera.
And when it was my turn to be the bartender, they all pretended to hit on me, and called me moderately offensive names.

The teacher explained to me that I would probably make more money than any of the other students. "Ah," I said, nodding: "Boobs." "Yes," he said. "Also, you're already better than about 90% of the girl bartenders out there." (Throughout the class, I generally knew more about customer service, liquor, best practices, and general common sense than most of the others, because fer Chrissake they're all just kids.) So, he explained, it's best, if you're not a girl, to work someplace where you'll get shifts with girls. Because girls generally get good tips. And then you split the tips fifty-fifty. You have to do half her work, but at the end of the night it is rewarding when you dump out that jar.

There's sexism inherent in it. Personally, I actually enjoy drinking manly drinks. I like beer, dark beers; I like Jaegermeister, I like vodka gimlets, I like whiskey on ice, I like vodka shots. I like to drink a few hard drinks, instead of downing dozens of high-calorie, frothy girl drinks. Also, I'm heavier than I look; not only is much of my weight in my boobs where you don't think of it as excess weight, but I also have very big heavy leg muscles that nobody ever notices under jeans. (Don't know why, probably from carrying the boobs around.) Add to that the fact that my heritage is 50% Irish, 50% a mix of English, German, and Dutch-- and you have to realize that it takes a serious amount of alcohol before I have had Enough.
So, I could sip on pink ladies all night, and probably drive you home (except I can't handle driving drunk people around; I get too distracted).

But, the sexism is there. And the teacher's right; he's been bartending for eleven years, and the kinds of girls who are going out to bars and drinking a ton are generally not your hard-working liberal activists. So, they're going to want pretty drinks, that don't taste like whiskey. And they're going to be hired as bartenders because they have long hair and low-cut shirts, and thus are going to be successful at it because a lot of bar-goers appreciate that in their drink-slingers.

As far as being hit on in demeaning ways, I sort of had an epiphany about that in Jersey City. They would see me walking along, a white chickie, blond no less, usually in a fairly fitted shirt, and they would look at my boobs, and they would whistle at me or click their tongues at me like I was a dog. But I realized that really, I should take it as a compliment. As long as there's nothing sinister behind it. I mean, really, what are they saying? They're saying hey, you are an attractive woman.
And really, who doesn't want to hear that?
So, you nod, and smile, and respond "thank you, I grew them myself and am quite proud of them" (or "thank you, they were expensive", depending on the situation of your endowment), and keep on walking. Don't lead them on, but there's really no need to get offended or feel violated. As long as they don't touch you or follow you.

So, I don't anticipate having a whole lot of problems with it. It really did give me more confidence to hear that-- yes, I am fairly good at the basic bartending skills we studied, and I am fairly confident that at the very least this is something I can do long enough to get back the $350 I spent on that class (more expensive than most, but I am so completely contented with it that I can't argue at all-- I feel it was more comprehensive than any others I've heard of).
At best, this is something I can hang onto and continue to do as I go about my life. The money is pretty universally decent if you're any good, the instructor said-- he's worked all different places, and how you get your money varies. In restaurants and such you get huge tips from each customer, relatively, but you get few customers. In nightclubs and such you get tiny tips from each customer, but you sling so much liquor and take in so much to the register, that it adds up.
And you can live your life around it. You can work a lot of nights at a bunch of different places, or you can just work a couple nights.
What really gave me the idea was that there are bars everywhere, and bars everywhere are similar. I can work as a bartender if I stay in Buffalo, I can look for a full-time job as well, but if I want to go back to school I can still keep working. if I want to go back to school in another city I can find a bar, and will have experience on top of that. (Around here, there's a bar every three blocks. Not a lot of jobs in general, but a lot of drinkers, and so jobs for those who give drinks to the drinkers.) If I want to go to grad school in Ireland, or England, well-- they have bars there too.
If I want to become a professor, eventually, well I can still work in the summers and so on. It just strikes me as a good field to get into.

I liked working in the convenience store that sold ice cream. I like making orders of things for people. I don't mind dealing with people. There are assholes, yes. There are horrible people. There are difficult people. There are uncooperative people. There are rude people. But the vast majority of people are decent humans, and if you treat them well they'll treat you well. I dealt with mentally ill people, I dealt with people who were late for work and I didn't have the right brand of cigarettes for them. I dealt with people who'd had a hard day and were looking for someone lower than they were to take it out on. I dealt with truck drivers who weren't terribly subtle in their flirting. And I made $6 an hour doing it.

So, I think this is something I can do. And, I won't be too tired to speak to Dave. I hope. I hope I won't come home and beat the hell out of my pillow and scream because I hate my place of work. I hope I won't come home and cry in the shower. I hope I won't come home and be unable to do anything but rant to Dave. I hope I will have the energy and the impetus to continue writing. I hope I will have the time to enjoy myself. I hope I will not suffer the same physical problems I did when I last worked retail (severe hip pains from standing still for 9 hours at a stretch). Most of all, I hope that I will not suffer the same emotional problems I have at my last two jobs-- the sense of isolation, the feelings of inadequacy, the pent-up rage at infuriating people, the loneliness.

It should be better because I am more mature now. I am nearly twenty-five. That is old. I am much older than I was when I graduated college. I am much more aware of what is involved in dealing with the real world. I have learned a great deal about the stages between creating something and communicating that thing to others. (That's called marketing and it's not just for creative works. It's also for simple things like interacting with humans. Good intentions must be effectively communicated. It's just that simple.)

I still wouldn't call myself a well-adjusted and mature person. I am still a deeply strange human, and I am still a bit of a misanthrope. I just don't 'get' people.
But, you have to make a living somehow, and you have to get out of your house sometime. So...

This seems as good as anything. I'm actually somewhat excited at the prospect of, say, earning money. It's not the money I'm that excited about-- I actually haven't deposited my last four unemployment checks-- but it's the earning. Doing something, getting paid-- then I can spend money, and save money, and in some way help Dave stretch out his savings and not have to worry about whether he can afford to finish school this time! I just want to be able to say, 'don't worry, i'll handle it' and just pay for things, without worrying that it's finite.

Also, i want to save up for a good camera. Hee.

Anyhow. I suppose that's all. :) For now.