agent erica

Ok, petunias, I’m going to break this advice down into categories.  You may want to read them all though to check out what your competition is doing and because you probably don’t have a job if you are reading this, chump.  Just kidding, good luck.

The NEWBIE - you’ve never worked in a restaurant, the word hostess conjures up images of soft pastry goodness in individually wrapped packaging and you think Cuba Libre is a slogan that refers to Cuban nationalism.  Or maybe no one mentioned to you that your English/Philosophy/Anthropology/etc. major would mean virtually nothing outside of academia - in which case I completely feel your pain.  But regardless of why your brokeness led you to fixate on bartending as the key to your financial freedom, I am here to help you…or at least help you asses whether you can make it.  Now the subcategories will be broken down into rather superficial descriptions of what you look like so that you can understand the steps You need to take to be successful.  Be honest with yourself or I can’t help you.  Honesty is next to godliness is next to cleanliness, I always say.

- You are a Newbie ”Cute Girl” or “Super Hot Guy”:  [Meaning, when you go out at night you get hit on by men/women or you get checked out often (and not because your a** is hanging out the bottom of your pre-cracked-out-Britney-era cutt-off shorts.  No one likes a skank.  Unless, of course, you want to bartend in a strip club…which I hear is actually a lucrative career move).]  All you need to do is scour Craigslist for a cocktail waitress gig and then smile and flirt your way into a bartending position after that.  Or snag a bar back position and while you are getting experience by watching, apply for bartending jobs elsewhere or try to move up.  Of course, as a cocktail waitress you also have to flirt your way into getting one of the bartenders to teach you how to make drinks first.  And you may want to practice carrying a tray and balancing drinks on it…because if you can’t do that and you drop a drink on a patron’s head you’ll probably get drop-kicked out the front door of the establishment.  If you are a clutz, you may want to try another profession.  Read below for more options in case that happens to be you or you just realized you are not a Cute Girl nor do you posses the boyish charm of an Abercrombie model.  And come to think of it, your flabby abs belong in one of those before pictures on the wall of the gym.

-You are a Newbie ”Decent Looking Guy,” ”Short But Attractive Guy” or a ”Redeeming Feature Girl” (or a but-her-face, meaning you have big boobs or great hair or some feature that your skeezy manager thinks patrons will appreciate):  Well, you better also have some personality (can’t help you with that one, kid), have some connections, or get ready to pay your dues for a while.  You will likely need to take a job as a bar back for a while at a bar or restaurant.  This will be good though because you will learn what a bartender does and also be humbled by being someone else’s bitch (in case your less-than-satisfactory appearance hasn’t already given you complex and this is the reason you’ve resorted to bartending rather than having the confidence to follow your real dreams, in which case, you’ve got bigger fish to fry and I’m not equipped to handle that kind of baggage.)

-You are just plain “fugly”:  That’s nice that you are honest with yourself.  But geeeze, a little delusion never hurt anyone.  Get a personal trainer and some false confidence and see the advice above.

[SIDE NOTE!  Matriculation Not Necessary: Why I don’t recommend bartending school.            I know from experience, my friends.  The bartending school I went to required 8 classes of 4 hours each totalling a painful 32 hours spent in a janky old office set up like a bar where we practiced with bottles filled with colored water (sounds genius, but not so great because you can’t taste the drinks to see if you did it right).  The 32 hours they make you do could easily be distilled down into about 15 hours if the “teachers” weren’t so shitty.  At the fabulous school I went to, my first teacher was too white-trash for his own wife-beater tank top and also spoke some form of ebonics (awkward for all present, considering his race and location in Southern California) and spent more time telling stories about himself in 3rd person than teaching us anything (seriously, this guy was a loon).  Listening to him lecture for 4 hours felt like the equivalent of 8 hours of traffic school or perhaps equal to one hour of waterboarding.  And don’t even get me started on the owner of the school.  He was a recovering alcoholic and had not been to a bar in 20 years, yet he teaches some of the classes and has never heard of a jaeger bomb (needless to say, he didn’t have very relevant advice).  He also smoked cigarettes like it was his job (during class and inside the room) and supplemented this habit with a capuccino an hour which caused him to jolt around the classroom like a maniac…not to mention I knew twice as much about wine as him.  And also, some bars look down on going to bartending school.  Best to save yourself the time and money and just learn the skills on the job!!]

Well, I’m exhausted and that is all the advice I can wring out of my brain today.  And anyway, if you aren’t a newbie than you probably already know how to go about getting yourself a bartending job.

Stay tuned for more awesomeness…

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