3 A.M. Stragglers

Balls of Fire recipe
1 1/2 oz Midori® melon liqueur
1 1/2 oz Stone's® ginger wine
6 soda or sparkling mineral water

Add 2 main ingredients and 2/3 ice chunks - stir (or shake in a flask) - fill highball to top with fizzy waters and then gradually pour it down the inside of your neck.

On Friday nights the bar closes at 3am. Dick and I do last call at 2:30am in order to get everyone out by 3am, however, there are always those stragglers who take their sweet time to finish their damn beers and chit chat away as if I didn't want to go home! Recently we opened up the backroom in the bar which has a pool table, video games, and a few couches to relax on. Although this adds an element of fun to the 100 year old bar atmosphere it does not mean that you are welcomed to hang out after closing time!

It's 2:30am, SHOTS ONLY PEOPLE! SHOTS ONLY! "But can I please just get one more drink please?" Who the fuck are you and are you deaf? I just said shots only. Boy do I hate those people who beg for another drink. Does it look like I want to watch you babysit another Jack and Coke for the next 20 minutes until I kick you out whether you're finished with it or not? I don't think so. Now chug or get out. But just as I turn down my customers' requests, Mr. Authoritative Chad (the owner) comes along and gives me the "ok" to let them continue drinking. Whatever happened to the rules? When Chad decides to stick around for closing time, the rules get tossed down the drain right along with all the leftover drinks sitting on the bar. Normally, Dick and I kick everyone out and then start cleaning the empty bar but, when stragglers are permitted to stay, cleaning becomes quite an obstacle.

In my head I'm thinking, No No don't stop your conversation and move for me. Just keep talking and drinking while I maneuver heavy bar chairs and sweep around your feet. And that is exactly what they do. Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me! After about 4 of those they finally notice my attempt to clean and move an entire foot out of my way. Again in my head I scream, Stupid Assholes! The worst part is that Chad is amongst them talking up a storm and doesn't even acknowledge that his tired bartenders might want to hurry up and clean and get to bed.

If only I could spit balls of fire directly at the stragglers causing them to burn up and turn into dust, so that I could sweep them right into my dustpan. Only then might I get home at a decent hour.

$10 Credit Card Minimum

Camel Piss recipe
3 oz Canadian beer
2 oz 1800® Tequila
1 oz Bacardi® dark rum
1 oz ouzo anise liqueur
Mountain Dew® citrus soda

Pour the beer, tequila, dark rum and ouzo into a highball glass. Top with mountain dew, to taste, and serve.

As I may have failed to mention, the bar I work at is in the middle of a liquor store. So, not only do I bartend but I also work the register up front for the liquor store as well. You can guess that this creates more work and aggravation than necessary and your guess is 100% correct.

When someone opens up a tab, majority of the time this means that they are paying with their credit card. At any normal bar, the credit card is swiped through the machine and there is a spot for the customer to leave a tip and to write down the total, but not at my bar. NO, I have to muster up the courage to ask if the customer is planning on leaving a tip on their credit card because what do ya know, there is no spot for a tip on the receipt! So rather than this being a confidential transaction it becomes an awkward conversation in which I assume they are leaving me a tip in hopes that my service was satisfactory. As if this isn't uncomfortable enough, once and if the person agrees, I then have to tell them that they must tell me how much of a tip they are adding to their tab so that I can ring it up altogether. Can I please excuse myself now before my face gets any more red from total embarrassment?

When it comes to buying packaged goods, you must spend at least $10 in order to use your credit card. Personally, I disagree with policies like this but hey I just work here. I don't make the rules nor do I bend them. One day this lady comes in (whom I have rung up several times before) trying to buy two 24oz. cans of beer which comes to a grand total of $4 with her credit card. I told her that we have a $10 minimum and of course her response is, "Since when?". Well, hmm let's see.......SINCE FOREVER! I sensed an argument coming and my blood began to boil. She proceeded to tell me that she always pays with her credit card and that she did so the day before. Annoyed and tired of being nice, I told her that I wasn't going to do it for her. To shut her up I called my boss to confirm the policy. While it was ringing, she had that "I'll prove you wrong" smirk across her face that I wanted to smack right off, but I calmly looked back at her knowing that my boss would side with me and make her feel like a complete douche bag. So Chad do we or do we not have a $10 minimum? "Yes we do," he said. And how long have we had that? "SINCE FOREVER!" he adds. Thank You! Now buy something else or give me cash and get the hell out of here you bitch of a customer you.

Oh and by the way I hope that your 4 dollars worth of beer tastes like camel piss. Have a great night now!

The Bar With Only One Martini Glass

Ka-boom recipe
1 1/2 oz coconut rum
1 oz banana liqueur
1 oz grenadine syrup
4 oz pineapple juice
1/2 oz limes

Mix lime, banana liqueur, and rum in glass. Add pineapple juice and stir. Add ice to fill glass. Add grenadine last and do not stir. Garnish with slice of lime and a cherry.

"Can I get a frozen margarita with salt?" a customer asks me as I look at her in disbelief. Have you looked around lady? This bar has been here since the beginning of time and so has all of its equipment. We don't even have a blender to make those fancy shmancy tropical island drinks that your mouth waters for. It's either beer or a mixed drink that calls for no more than three ingredients otherwise your ass is going somewhere else to drink.

Oh and did I mention that we only have one martini glass? That's right so if you and your girlfriend want to order two sour apple martini's then one of you is getting it in a frosted mug. So it's up to you to decide who is going to stoop down and drink a sophisticated lady's drink in a dirty man's beer mug. And one more thing, if you want it cold you have about a 50/50 chance that the ice machine is actually working and that there are a few refreshing cubes left to spare. When the ice machine is doing its job however, there is a small bucket similar to one that a five year old child would bring to the beach to fill up. It holds approximately 50 ice cubes and with each mixed drink using about 12 of those cubes...well you do the math. On Friday nights, the baby bucket gets filled more than I can count.

"May I have a glass of wine please?". Sure you have a choice between White Zinfandel, White Zinfandel, or White Zinfandel. Yes, you read correctly we only keep one kind of wine behind the bar so I hope you are in the mood for White Zinfandel. And if you want one of those sweet citrusy lemon drop shots that require a sprinkle of sugar to finish it off, well we don't have that either. Sorry to disappoint. I suggest you stick to the traditional pint of Budweiser here and steer away from anything too crazy because the chances are we probably don't have it and we probably never will.

When I am closing up at night, I'll slide that single martini glass across the bar pretending that it's really a grenade and...Ka-boom the entire eight seat bar gets blown to smithereens!

Buy Backs and the Ignorant People Who Expect Them

Raging Bull recipe
2 1/2 cl Kahlua® coffee liqueur
2 1/2 cl sambuca
1 cl 1800® Tequila

Layer in a shot glass; in order.

For all of you who don't know what a buy back is; a buy back is when the bar buys a customer back a drink after their fourth or fifth drink. This usually occurs only if the person is a regular at the bar (as in they come to the bar at least 6 days a week) or if the person is friend's with the owner of the bar which in my case, includes just about EVERYONE!

This normally becomes a problem on Friday nights when my coworker "Dick" and I are serving a decent size crowd of hooligans all of which have some sort of tie with the owner,"Chad". Whether they grew up with Chad or just happened to fix his toilet one day, they think that they deserve free drinks. Dick and I often hook people up (bartender slang for taking drinks off of tabs) with the expectation that they will leave a generous tip, however, this doesn't always work out the way we want it to. Unfortunately, there are quite a few ignorant regulars that think they are privileged and deserving of having their tab cut down to no more than $20 when they've had at least 8 drinks. Now that is just flat out ridiculous!

At 2:30am when it's time to do "last call" on all drinks, we start to hand out the dreadful tabs in hopes that the hooligans don't start to riot about owing $25 instead of $35. The appreciative ones hand us the money along with a tip appropriate to the original price and sometimes even more. The others are the ones that we need to worry about. They get so intoxicated that they start to argue about how many drinks they ordered or that we didn't hook them up enough. At this point, I start to curse them out in my head,"Well maybe if you didn't have so much to drink your tab wouldn't be so much you stupid asshole!". The funny thing is that Dick will actually say these things to their face. Yes! Go Team Bartender! Eventually, the inebriated fools will pay their $30 tabs and leave us a lousy $4 tip.

It is right then and there that I wish I could transform myself into a raging bull and charge the ignorant customers right out of the bar.

Splitting tips with a ditzy coworker

Circus Peanut recipe
2 oz brandy
2 oz advocaat liqueur
1 tsp arak
1 splash grenadine syrup

Have you ever had to split your tips with a coworker who just doesn't know how to do their job? Not only that but you end up carrying 95% of the weight all night! It's just not fair and I've begun to think that bartender's should have their own tip bucket rather than go 50/50. My thursday night coworker, we will call her Betty, is clueless when it comes to the art of bartending despite the fact she has been working with me since March of 2009.

Every f'n 20 minutes Betty goes outside to smoke a damn cigarette and she stays out there for a good 15 minutes while I'm inside busting my ass to make sure that everyone has a drink. So because I don't smoke that means I don't get a break? Another reason why I deserve my own tip bucket. I'm starting to believe if we were in competition with each other then maybe just maybe, Betty might start to do a little more work around the bar. It gets very frustrating when I see her having an intense conversation with a customer and she neglects the poor man just a few inches away waiting patiently for a beer. BE PATIENT EVERYONE, Betty has her blinders up and no one is getting another drink until she is done having her 10 minute conversation about what color to dye her hair next.

Then comes the dancing! "Let's wear matching school girl outfits and dance on the bar next week!" she says to me while I give her the HELL NO look. I'm sorry but I refuse to dress sexy for the 60 year old perverted men that come into my bar and get annihilated to the point that they can't even walk to the bathroom. No Thanks! At the end of the night I make sure to count the tips so that Little Miss Ditz doesn't make a major miscalculation and end up screwing me out of 20 bucks.

I sometimes imagine that she is that circus peanut that gets crushed and stuck beneath my shoe so that I can sneak away with 100% of the tips.