Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Burnout

Any job can lead to burn out, but the wick seems to evaporate a little faster in the bar world. I’ve been at my current job for three years. Three years. My anniversary is rolling around and it doesn’t feel like a cause for celebration.

My sister got me the job to keep me afloat while I worked on my version of the great American novel. After three years and a number of false starts, it’s better termed the disjointed American 39 pages. I’m still plugging away, and I have a new friend to motivate me over coffee dates every two weeks, but at the rate I’m going I might turn forty and still be tending bar and dreaming about writing. I have a few years left, but forty is out there looming on the horizon.

I’m not making a judgment about forty year old bartenders. If that’s what you want to do, I think it’s great. The money is fantastic, the social aspect provides a whole spectrum of perks and there is definitely an art form to doing it well. If it’s not what you want to do, however, forty seems like an age, for me at least, to start figuring it out. Okay, thirty was probably that age, too, but I’ve always been a late bloomer.

Perhaps part of my problem is that I don’t care enough about the money. I’m okay with apologizing when I’ve made a mistake, but I don’t see any reason to put up with demeaning behavior just for a tip. Once a guy called me over to his table and made a speech about how they tipped based on the quality of service that they received. Next he turned to his sixteen year old daughter and asked her to rate how I’d done. She was appropriately embarrassed. I smiled and politely told him to keep his tip.

Also contributing to my burnout is the entitlement of off-season. It’s just us locals, and, while most locals are wonderful people whom I consider friends, the crazies tend to come out from under their rocks this time of year.

Fortunately, my least favorite crazy is in jail, so I’m free of his antics this fall. Last year he lied about being in the Marines to a friend of mine who lost his legs stepping on a land mine in Iraq. My friend was justifiably angry and they were seconds away from blows when I calmed him down. Now, why anyone would pick a fight with a professional athlete who is all upper body strength, is beyond me. My buddy would have killed the 80s rocker crack head once he got close enough to get his hands on him, wheelchair or not. But on another level, what kind of loser picks a fight with a guy who put himself in harms way to protect our country? Hate the war, hate the politicians, but don’t take it out on the men and women who sign up to protect us.

Another manifestation of the entitlement of some locals is the customer who responds to my request for payment with the question, “Do you know how long I’ve lived here?”

“Ya know, I don’t know your middle name either, but I feel like it has the same relevance to my desire to be paid for my services.”

When a customer doesn’t pay their tab, it comes out of my tips for the night, so it becomes a no interest loan that I don’t have a say in giving. And I have the added work of tracking them down to get paid back. I do have a tattoo and curly hair that can sometimes get a little scraggly, but I’m not exactly Dog the Bounty Hunter. This isn’t a part of my job on which I thrive.

Most of the people who walk on tabs at Z Tavern are good customers who have a bit too much to drink and show up the next day with a 50% tip as apology. For the most part it’s no big deal. I have a few customers that I love so much that I would pay their bill for the night and never ever bring it up, the catch being that it is something they would never do and if they did they would be mortified.

Twice I’ve had people run out the door on purpose. Once it was a cook from another restaurant in A-Town and the bill was $200. I didn’t know him, but, when $200 came out of my pocket, I instantly transformed into Harriet the Spy and tracked him down. After getting the run around from his co-workers, I went to the owner of the restaurant. I told the owner that if I wasn’t paid back, I was going to bring the police into his kitchen to look for the guy. Police and illegal Mexican labor in the same sentence pack a powerful punch and I was paid back the next day with a gratuity that I’d added to his bill.

The whole thing was ugly though. I love any reason to deal with our local police force, but I don’t like going to that dark place of myself that fights dirty to get what I want. It’s not me.

This summer a guy left his probably expensive and very ghetto chic bracelet in lieu of paying his tab, swearing that he would be back in twenty minutes with the money. A month later, when I threatened to one of his friends that I was planning to take his guido bling to the pawn shop if I didn’t hear from him, he told the Smurf Village police that I wouldn’t give his bracelet back and he didn’t know why. When he did finally pay his tab, he left a twenty-five cent tip on a $10.75 tab.

My recent burnout comes from a local couple who have been fired from more than one of A-Town’s dive bars. They’re quirky, she only wears white because she says the dye in clothing gives her a rash even though she’s got tattoo ink injected up one side of her body and down the other. I usually let them run a tab as a professional courtesy. They walk in and out of the bar, smoking outside, making phone calls on the street, etc.

As servers themselves, I assume that they know the old adage that ‘if you can’t afford to pay your bill, you can’t afford to go out drinking’. Most of us would take that one step further and say that if you can’t afford to tip, you should stay home as well. Taking advantage of my loose leash, they went out for a cigarette and never came back. That was a few weeks ago and I haven’t seen them since. It’s only twenty bucks, but it’s more a principle. I saw them at another bar a week ago, so they’re paying someone for drinks. They just don’t feel like they have to pay me.

Many bar customers are wonderful people. I’ve dated guys I met through the bar. Some of my best friends started as customers. I make a great living. Unfortunately the few jerks who feel they need to demean the server, start fights with other patrons or should be entitled to free drinks exhaust me. I’m burning out, but trying really hard to convince myself that the good outweighs the bad here up here in A-Town and Smurf Village.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

One Night Stand in a Small Town

I went to The Meet Market last night. It’s not a bar to which I would usually go, but I was meeting a friend after he finished work and it’s a popular late night spot. It’s a good idea, three bars in one, but it just takes a quick lap from dance hall to pool hall to smoking lounge to make me feel old and like I’ve been in town for too long.

Most of the patrons of The Meet Market are 22 year olds who throw their attitudes around like the brand new drinkers they are. My favorite overheard line from an exasperated 23 year old: “I haven’t been carded in years.” It’s a safe place for me during off-season. The few members of the opposite sex that hover near my age, I already know and have either slept with or ruled out.

My friend, a chef at one of the nicer restaurants in town, brought his friend, who is both a chef at the same restaurant and a recent one night stand of mine. We’ve seen each other once, in quick passing, since the night a few weeks ago, but I’m pretty sure it was a one night thing for both of us.

Here’s the thing about small towns: sometimes it’s like one big game of adult telephone. I mentioned on a Wednesday night that I was attracted to the chef as I was serving a Kettle One and soda (no fruit) to the manager of his restaurant. I might have said something about going through my whore phase. Don’t read too much into that. I’m a female in a ski town, it’s not hard to get laid but I’m still fairly discerning with my choices.

The manager, a dear friend of mine, walked into work at his restaurant the next afternoon and the first words out of his mouth were to the hot chef. I’d love to quote some elegant line, but my guess is that it was a crass exchange that took only a matter of seconds.

Foreplay that evening took the form of a red snapper cooked in truffle oil that he sent out to me and my mom between morsels of raw flesh that my friend was slicing off of fish who had likely been swimming that morning. Fortunately, Mom was on her best behavior that evening and kept her running commentary on her perpetual search for my future husband to a whisper. It can get bad: one Thanksgiving she burst into tears that we were only a two generation household.

So, back to The Meet Market. My one night stand was running all over the place, back and forth between our group and the smoking room. When he’d pass me, I got playful slaps on the ass and flirtatious quips. It was cute, save for the fact that he’s a 40-something year old man. Oh, and for the fact that he was also working a girl in the smoking room.

Huh?

I realized this as I heard his name bellowed out by a raspy female voice, and it was confirmed by a man walking down the stairs who told him that a woman named after a character from a Dostoyevsky novel was looking for him. After a shared chuckle and completely unrelated, my buddy and I decided to leave. We were just out for a quick drink after work, and one a.m. was hovering a little too closely to the horizon.

We navigated our way through friend and foe, to the back smoking room, saying our goodbyes as we went. It felt like we knew just about everyone in the bar. When we finally found our ‘friend’, as we were informing him of our impending departure, the girl in question attached herself to his lips. When he came up for air, we finished our goodbye and made a hasty departure.

Now, as much as I wasn’t interested in anything more than the one night with this guy, and our friendship continuing in its glad-to-see-you-when-I-see-you state, I’d be lying if I didn’t confess that, at the time, the whole thing made me feel a little like Josie-Grossie (Drew Barrymore’s character in Never Been Kissed).

The lip-locking girl, from some developing Eastern Block country, is a gorgeous size two with spiky blonde hair and about four inches on me. I’m 5’8” and haven’t worn a size two since before puberty, so she’s got some serious model proportions.

I’m not being overly sensitive by thinking that it’s a little tacky to make out mid-conversation with anyone, much less a girl with whom you were naked with in the last 14 days, am I?

But wait, the small town gets smaller. A few nights ago they came into my bar for dinner. I got to wait on my one night stand and his new statuesque arm piece. Not as bad as when my ex-boyfriend repeatedly brought his new 21 year-old Argentinean girlfriend into my bar, (do the math, I’m old enough to be her only slightly scandalous teenage mom), but not entirely comfortable for me, either.

Or is it? After some thought, it’s off-season - I had a lot of time to think while I was making their drinks, maybe it’s not so bad. It’s all in how you look at it, really. I’m hugely flattered that the same man who was attracted to her was also attracted to me. That’s a compliment.

While it’s true that the new crop of 22 year-old “freshman” packing up their dorm rooms to come out to Misfit Mountain for the season still make me feel a little older and like maybe it’s time for a change, they also remind me that I’m a little wiser. And that I really like living in a community where we can all be friends in the morning.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Hot Cop

I’ve always had a thing for cops. I’m not sure if it’s because they make me feel safe or dangerous, likely a little of both, but from Jesse Martin’s character on Law & Order to the Boys-in-Blue of A-Town, once I know they’re a police officer, I’m sunk.

My attraction is definitely not about the rules. I break rules. I’ve always had a problem with authority. When I was five my parents went away and left outfits taped together for me for the week. The first thing I did when they left was rip off all of the tape, so even if I did wear an outfit that they’d planned, it wasn’t because they’d said so. Okay, so it’s not exactly selling crack to second graders, but my point is that rule breaking started early. I break other rules, of course I do, I live in a ski town, but nothing I’m going to admit to here. At least not yet.

I dated a Los Angeles police officer a few years ago. Well, we went on a handful of dates. They didn’t always involve being in public and we kept it a secret from most of our friends, but I was crazy about him.

I’ll never forget the first time I saw him. We were outside of a comedy club where some of our friends had just performed. I remember him stretching as we were all standing around making a plan about where to drink next and I saw the gun tucked into the front of his pants. He’s a rightie who reaches across the body. My brain reeled as I weighed the likelihood of his being on the side of good or evil, and then decided that I wanted to get to know him either way. He was also really cute, confident and had on a t-shirt that made me laugh...it wasn’t all about the gun.

Though the gun was definitely a factor. When we first met, he lived with another cop and there was always a gun sitting out somewhere in the apartment. And, in Los Angeles at least, he was expected to have his gun on him whenever we went out.

Always on alert, he noticed everything about our surroundings and was very protective of me. He worked in one of the toughest parts of LA and would tell me which streets I should avoid because of gang activity. I still drove down them, but I loved that he cared. He was a police officer first, which was why we lasted as long as we did and why we’d never work in the long run.

Okay, flash forward to the present. As a bartender in A-Town, and in the Smurf Village down the road (Z-Tavern has two locations and we all work in both), I have a fair amount of interaction with the local cops. Some of them are my customers, many are also my friends, but all of them are my partners in keeping the peace in the bar. It’s not all that edgy up here, but, between DUIs, check ditchers (for whom I hope there is a special place in hell), and the occasional bar fight, they have their hands full.

Here’s the problem: there’s a new guy on the force and he’s so good looking that it’s hard for me to talk to him without making a fool of myself. Seriously. The first time he came into the bar he was carrying a cup of coffee from somewhere else. I told him that it was illegal to bring in outside drinks and that if he weren’t a police officer, I’d kick him out. Great flirting move, eh?

Next time I see him, he’s out with the boys. I’m drinking past my limit, which is about 3 drinks, I’m a cheap date. We’re in Z-Tavern and I’m flirting with the co-worker I’m crazy about, who, coincidentally, was a police officer before moving to A-town. Hmmm. I say hello to the guys, both Sheriffs whom I know and then turn to the new guy.

“Are you a Sheriff, too?” I ask.

As he says no, that he wears the blue shirt, a wave of recognition sweeps over me.

“You’re the hot cop!” I blurt out. And then I backpedal, as if I’m going to improve things by explaining, “no, you’re the guy with the coffee. Seriously, almost every woman in town calls you Hot Cop.”

I wasn’t hitting on Hot Cop. I was there to hit on the bartender, who was chuckling at my conversational ineptitude and merits his own entry down the road, but something about Hot Cop makes it impossible for me to say anything normal to him. I’m sure I blathered on and on. I woke up the next morning with the knowledge that he’s in his late 20s and has a girlfriend, so I’m sure I worked both of those questions into what must have been a humiliating conversation.

I woke up with no memory of our interaction, until I saw a police car pass me later that day. Did that really happen, I wondered as the details came back to me in disjointed flashes. About a month later, he came into the bar on my shift after I mentioned it to everyone I saw in a please-pass-on-my-apology-to-him kind of way. I brought up my embarrassment with a feeble apology and changed his nickname.

“I don’t want you to think I’m accusing you of being just a pretty face,” I dug myself in deeper, “I’ll refer to you as Competent Cop from now on.” Friends from another restaurant in town came in and I introduced him with his new moniker. He told me I didn’t have to share the story, in a tone that said ‘please don’t’, but I couldn’t help myself. Something about him makes me blather on like an idiot. And sure, he turned a little red and clearly was embarrassed, but he took it in stride.

And perhaps that’s the secret. There’s a confident swagger that comes with being a police officer. It’s not a job where you can second guess yourself. Hmm, should I shoot back at the bad guy pointing the gun at me, or not? That confidence seems to carry over to the rest of (many of) their lives. It’s sexy. It’s what I loved in the guy from LA, it’s why I can barely speak to Hot/Competent Cop without making a fool of myself and it probably is what I’m attracted to in the bartender with whom I work. A confidence, a purpose and the ability to stay calm when the bad stuff of life rolls around them.