Only a complete moron would miss the office job he traded for a bartending gig. Of course, you're reading something written by someone who needed to tattoo his own name on his foot so he could remember who he is in the morning. I am that moron.
In some ways, my life is the greatest. The earliest I wake up is noon. I wear the same pair of pants to work every day. Usually I clad myself in the same shirt. I never bring my work home with me—unless by work, you mean a bottle of whiskey and the cute girl from the bar. Often the hardest thing I have to do is remember the difference between a bay breeze and a sea breeze (pineapple in the first one, grapefruit in the second).
If the bar phone rings, I have to answer it and explain that we don't deliver Red Bull vodkas. There are plenty of awesome things about bartending. If you're a complete tool and can't figure them out, I already wrote them all down here.
But, alas, the grass in somebody else's pocket is always greener than the ditchweed in your joint.
While mixing cocktails for cockteases can be a fun way of life, it also brings with it a new slough of problems. So before you business majors ditch your graphing calculators and Wall Street Journals for a bottle opener and whipped cream, heed these warnings.
You might be hit by a truck, and you might have to pay for it yourself.
You see, bartenders have to pay their own health insurance. My rates vary from $275 to $450 a month. You read that right. EACH MONTH. So this means that most of us don't have coverage. It's much better to find a corporation to spend their money on you.
You won't be crashing any New Year's Eve parties with your friends.
Sure I drink until my eyeballs bleed on Mondays, but a bartender's free holiday and weekend nights are as rare as a morning Britney Spears wakes up without a stranger's pubes stuck in her teeth. When you and your significant other sip wine on Valentine's Day, I'm popping the cork. When you're puking on Saint Paddy's, I'm serving green beer. While you're blowing shit up with firecrackers on the Fourth of July I'm inventing red, white and blue shots.
Some people will think you're their therapist, and you may have to play along.
Now, I don't miss talking about bull or bear markets with my socially inept coworkers. But I do hate the mouth breathing regulars who come to the bar looking for somebody to listen to their dumbass life stories. Yesterday I ended up in an argument that Philadelphia was the new Boston—a shitty eastern town with shitty pro sports teams that have all of a sudden become good to the dismay of New Yorkers. Not being a New Yorker, or really caring about most sports, all I could say was, "I like the shows Cheers and Always Sunny about the same."
You can't avoid the customer.
I used to have a secretary and an ultra-professional voicemail… that I never checked. But now if the bar phone rings, I have to answer it and explain that you can't bring your own beer, you need to have some sort of fake ID, and we don't deliver Red Bull vodkas.
You might have to use a calculator, if you don't want the IRS on your ass.
When you get your measly office paycheck, your company's accountants take out the taxes for you, and skim a little for themselves too. At the bar, you're supposed to figure this shit out for yourself. If I understood numbers, I wouldn't be working for a guy who thinks his drink is pronounced "Vod-ker So-der."
You won't always be putting your knowledge to good use.
Believe me, I know it royally sucks when you know your boss is a gutless shitbag who has the social skills of most gangrenous hermit crabs. It sucks even more that you have to take orders from him. It also sucks taking orders from 19-year-old tardbots who think it's proper to order Hennessy and Coke "with a lot of limes and cherries, yo!"
If you can't afford to tip, you can't afford to drink in a bar.…Let me stray for a second. Tupac Shakur was probably killed probably by Frenchmen, not gangbangers. You know why? Because he popularized the bastardization of cognac. You're supposed to drink this French product straight up or with a few rocks, so when you ask any bartender to mix Remy, Henny or Courvoisier with cola, juice or Raspberry Slurpee, rest assured they're thinking, "You are a classless piece of shit that has no idea how to drink and will likely suffocate in your own vagina." The same goes for people who order Coors Light with ice.
Okay, where was I?
You might end up serving or entertaining some pathetic drunk for nothing.
Personally, I can't stand ex-billion-dollar companies and poor people who feel entitled to my tax money. Yet, as a bartender, you never shake the feeling that you are entitled to receive a 15-to-20% tip for every drink you pour. Another side note: if you can't afford to tip, you can't afford to drink in a bar.
Other stupid shit you learn to put up with when you're working the night shift: never seeing light, your parents thinking you're a failure, watching hot chicks go home with total douchebags, and hearing the same songs every night. "Hey, have you heard that new M.I.A. song ‘Paper Planes' yet? Let's play it again on the jukebox!"
But here's the big reason working in a bar sucks:
It's a constant reminder that I didn't get into video game design or porn.
And it's not because I suck at "Mario Kart" or have a small cock, because I'll whip anybody's ass with Luigi, and my last girlfriend said my dick is "just big enough to hurt a little but feel good a lot,"—and King Kong must have fisted her, because her vagina was huge. It's that I didn't want to hate "Mega Man" or despise banging girls. Because once you get your check from something, you will hate it. Carpenters hate wood. Psychologists hate people. I hate you.
I'm paid to spend six nights a week at the bar and I can't stand drinking, alcohol, bars or drunk chicks anymore.
The Man and Big Brother have officially won when you hate all the things you used to love.