Yesterday, I was called for work at 3 pm. As I said to Lis as she drove me there, "The minimum I get paid for is four hours, therefore they tend to like to have people there for at least the four hours for which they are paying, so I'm unlikely to be out before seven. After eight hours, they pay overtime, which they also prefer not to do, so I'm unlikley to be out after 11. Other than that, I have no idea what the function I'm bartending is, or where, or how, so I'll call you when I'm done."
I got to work fifteen minutes early or so. Basically, functions have start times. The bartender is supposed to be up in the function room half an hour before the start time of the function, to set up the bar in the room, and in case people show up a bit early. And call time is half an hour before that, to give the bartender time to set up the bar cart that we take up to the bar.
See, we get all the stuff that we're going to need for the function, and we put it in a cart. We have half an hour to do that -- it usually takes about fifteen minutes if everything goes reasonably close to well, so the extra fifteen minutes is in case anything DOESN'T go well. Then we make sure we're presentable, tie is neatly tied, jacket clean, and so forth, take the cart up to the function room, and take all the stuff OFF the cart, and put it in places around the bar where we can reach it in a hurry and where it looks attractive and appealing, so that people will want to drink it. This normally takes about fifteen minutes, too, but you have extra time in case things go wrong. I usually use the extra time to be REALLY REALLY FANATICAL about EXACTLY how my bar looks.
It really is true: the nicer your bar looks, the more people drink.
So I can blame last night on the ivy bunting with glass grapes that someone draped around my bar before I got there. It really looked sharp, and allowed me to display the wine to good advantage. I bet it was Nelson's fault. He's competent.
( Story continues behind here, but it's going to get longwinded, so I figured I'd save your friends-pages. )
I got to work fifteen minutes early or so. Basically, functions have start times. The bartender is supposed to be up in the function room half an hour before the start time of the function, to set up the bar in the room, and in case people show up a bit early. And call time is half an hour before that, to give the bartender time to set up the bar cart that we take up to the bar.
See, we get all the stuff that we're going to need for the function, and we put it in a cart. We have half an hour to do that -- it usually takes about fifteen minutes if everything goes reasonably close to well, so the extra fifteen minutes is in case anything DOESN'T go well. Then we make sure we're presentable, tie is neatly tied, jacket clean, and so forth, take the cart up to the function room, and take all the stuff OFF the cart, and put it in places around the bar where we can reach it in a hurry and where it looks attractive and appealing, so that people will want to drink it. This normally takes about fifteen minutes, too, but you have extra time in case things go wrong. I usually use the extra time to be REALLY REALLY FANATICAL about EXACTLY how my bar looks.
It really is true: the nicer your bar looks, the more people drink.
So I can blame last night on the ivy bunting with glass grapes that someone draped around my bar before I got there. It really looked sharp, and allowed me to display the wine to good advantage. I bet it was Nelson's fault. He's competent.