airportbartender
Jul. 14th, 2006 11:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7Am dogsitting. Remember Bert? Of the dog in my beer icon fame? For whom I've dogsat many a time?
She's nearly totally deaf now, which is just downright weird. She wasn't when I last saw her, but that was Christmas. This time, I showed up at the house, made a racket trying to unlock the door (I always forget which way it turns), and she wasn't there to greet me. She was standing in the living room looking at the window and barking vaguely at nothing. I called her name and she didn't turn around. It wasn't until I came into the room and actually touched her that she turned to look at me and then went into her wild ecstasy-of-barking glad-to-see-you routine.
She's suddenly very old. It's sort of sad. But then, I've known her for four years now, and she was "old but doesn't know it!" when I met her.
In other news, the Internet sort of doesn't work where I've set up my computer. Low reception that cuts in and out, but it works just enough that I haven't mustered the gumption to move.
So I was using Z's laptop the other night, and went to the Livejournal home page, and prior to logging in, noticed their "featured blog" thing. I'd never noticed that before, in five? six? years of having a Livejournal. I think it's new.
One of the featured blogs was a Manhattan barmaid. "Hm," I thought, and clicked on it. Competent writer, yes. But she's had a blog for all of, like, a month, and most of her posts are, "Gosh, now that I'm Spotlighted, I have all these friends!" She had about four actual posts. And they had this sort of precious, sort of self-congratulatory "I work a cool job and here's what's hard about it" kind of vibe. Maybe I was just objecting to the journal being all in pink. Maybe I'm just feeling catty because I've been bartending longer than her and probably make more money and yet since it's not Manhattan it doesn't have the cachet. (And yes, it was when I lived in Jersey that I first came up with the idea of wanting to be a bartender, and yes I wanted to do it in Manhattan. So sue me.)
But, she linked to a number of other similar blogs, and some of those were actually good.
Waiter Rant probably takes the cake: Least pretentious, deepest, with the best snark and the most sincerity. He really captures what it is to wait on people: how cynical and jaded you can pretend to be, but in order to be any good, there has to be an element where you really, sincerely mean it. To endure it, you have to put some of your heart into it. But that means that when customers are assholes, as they are bound to be eventually, it hurts. And he captures that beautifully, while managing to be funny. This one in particular is an absolute gem: Innkeeper's Epiphany. It's sappy and not his usual but I know what he means, which is a different sort of feeling than you get from most of these Waiting Tables Sucks websites. (This one's good too, as a description of what a hardcore rush is like. To apply it to my perspective, think about it this way: Where I work, there is no hostess, no reservations, no busser, and I am both server and bartender, and there's not usually a manager within shouting distance.)
I also liked reading this one, by a bouncer whose blog's scored him a book deal. Doesn't look like you can read the archives from before he got the book deal, but it's interesting nonetheless as he talks about the craft of writing.
It's making me think I should fire up airportbartender, my blogger account, again.
She's nearly totally deaf now, which is just downright weird. She wasn't when I last saw her, but that was Christmas. This time, I showed up at the house, made a racket trying to unlock the door (I always forget which way it turns), and she wasn't there to greet me. She was standing in the living room looking at the window and barking vaguely at nothing. I called her name and she didn't turn around. It wasn't until I came into the room and actually touched her that she turned to look at me and then went into her wild ecstasy-of-barking glad-to-see-you routine.
She's suddenly very old. It's sort of sad. But then, I've known her for four years now, and she was "old but doesn't know it!" when I met her.
In other news, the Internet sort of doesn't work where I've set up my computer. Low reception that cuts in and out, but it works just enough that I haven't mustered the gumption to move.
So I was using Z's laptop the other night, and went to the Livejournal home page, and prior to logging in, noticed their "featured blog" thing. I'd never noticed that before, in five? six? years of having a Livejournal. I think it's new.
One of the featured blogs was a Manhattan barmaid. "Hm," I thought, and clicked on it. Competent writer, yes. But she's had a blog for all of, like, a month, and most of her posts are, "Gosh, now that I'm Spotlighted, I have all these friends!" She had about four actual posts. And they had this sort of precious, sort of self-congratulatory "I work a cool job and here's what's hard about it" kind of vibe. Maybe I was just objecting to the journal being all in pink. Maybe I'm just feeling catty because I've been bartending longer than her and probably make more money and yet since it's not Manhattan it doesn't have the cachet. (And yes, it was when I lived in Jersey that I first came up with the idea of wanting to be a bartender, and yes I wanted to do it in Manhattan. So sue me.)
But, she linked to a number of other similar blogs, and some of those were actually good.
Waiter Rant probably takes the cake: Least pretentious, deepest, with the best snark and the most sincerity. He really captures what it is to wait on people: how cynical and jaded you can pretend to be, but in order to be any good, there has to be an element where you really, sincerely mean it. To endure it, you have to put some of your heart into it. But that means that when customers are assholes, as they are bound to be eventually, it hurts. And he captures that beautifully, while managing to be funny. This one in particular is an absolute gem: Innkeeper's Epiphany. It's sappy and not his usual but I know what he means, which is a different sort of feeling than you get from most of these Waiting Tables Sucks websites. (This one's good too, as a description of what a hardcore rush is like. To apply it to my perspective, think about it this way: Where I work, there is no hostess, no reservations, no busser, and I am both server and bartender, and there's not usually a manager within shouting distance.)
I also liked reading this one, by a bouncer whose blog's scored him a book deal. Doesn't look like you can read the archives from before he got the book deal, but it's interesting nonetheless as he talks about the craft of writing.
It's making me think I should fire up airportbartender, my blogger account, again.
