So this guy walks into a bar, OK? He's with his girlfriend,
and the lady is soused.
I mean hammered: Wasted, shellacked. She doesn't know where
the hell she is. Since I'm the bartender, I tell her friend,
"You've got to get her out of here." So they leave. After
a while he comes back in alone and orders a drink. I assume
that he's taken her home, only to realize later that he'd
just dumped her on a bench outside. That's how a man can
be when a woman comes between him and his drink.
I asked other female bartenders for their take on being
a gal in a line of work where you have to fend off everything
from lecherous come-ons and gunpoint robbery to marriage
proposals.
So what do they look out for? "I'm wary of the asking-your-name,
wanna-be-your-best-friend type," says Bianca, a bartender
at Dots. "It inevitably leads to 'Honey, can I get
some more vodka in this?'"
Jackie, a bartender at My Father's Place, is among
those bartendresses who have developed an almost psychic
sense for trouble, just from the way it walks in the door.
One of the most common travails facing female bartenders
is the guy with the lewd remark. (Hint: Anything that starts
with "hey, baby" never gets better.) Jeannine, who works
at the Sandy Hut, recounts: "Within my first month
of bartending,
a particularly sleazy patron said, 'I bet you have a real
big bush'--leaving me speechless. Now I would probably say,
'Asshole,
I have an even bigger left hook!'"
Maybe it's just the scotch-induced slump, but guys can't
seem to lift their eyes all the way up to our faces. Gesturing
toward the chest zone, Honey, a bartender at Fellini
(who maybe oughtta rethink her name), says, "Men tend
to look here a lot." Jess, who also hauls the shots there,
recalls a time an old man kept asking her to marry him,
and each time she said no, he put down a bigger tip.
Naturally, the fights that arise in barrooms are an occupational
hazard. But a woman stepping into the middle of a boozed-up
brawl is often less likely to get swung at than a man because
she may be confused, in the blurry recesses of a drunk's
mind, with a sister, an old girlfriend or even the poor
chump's mom.
For some of us, the confrontations can be therapeutic.
"It felt good to be a bitch," says Amy, who works at Wynnes,
of the first time she really laid into someone. Another
bartendress relishes the power.
"I love cutting people off," she says with malevolence.
Jackie never really has a problem with men getting out of
line--but then again, she used to be a prison guard.
One of Jeannine's favorite techniques
is to throw water on people: "It's totally humiliating.
And it leaves very little
mess."
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