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.