The exercise:
Write about: winging it.
As I sit here writing this it's 12:30 am on Friday, and I just got home from work a bit over half an hour ago. Funny what can happen when a group of 12 (that was supposed to be 8) show up at the alley at 8pm (supposed to be 7:30) and head straight to the lounge before they start bowling.
At least they tipped well.
Mine:
So I've never actually been a bartender before. Sure, I've served drinks to friends at home and I can certainly pour myself a mean rum and coke, but that's about as far as I've gone with it.
Before tonight.
They started off easy enough, with the first three guys ordering beers. I learned pretty quick that the MGD was not a twist off while the Kokanee caps would not, in fact, shred my hands to pieces. Then two ladies came up asking what we had to offer, and there was something muttered about a Long Island Iced Tea.
At which point I began to sweat a little bit.
Thankfully they just followed the trend setters (bless their hearts) and ordered beers as well. Things settled in for a while after that, with my most difficult task involving having to figure out which glasses wine was served in.
Then? Then two of the ladies came up during the first game looking to have a shot. They were standing there looking at the bottles discussing what they'd like and I was like... I am not going to be able to wing this. So I went the honest route.
"Listen, I'm pretty new to this bartending thing. If you know what you want just point out the bottles you want and tell me what to do."
That went smoothly enough, and they seemed to like their drinks. Great.
Then it was decided that the team (they had three teams of four) that had the lowest total in the first game would buy shots for everyone. So I got to do 12 more.
Nothing quite like learning on the job.
2 comments:
Sounds like Kat's going to be getting you a book on cocktails for Christmas then (I can recommend a good couple if you're interested). As I recall, the Long Island Iced Tea is actually easy: just pour all the shots into a glass, garnish and serve, but it sounds like you managed to keep everyone happy -- and that's definitely the number one task of the barman!
Well done!
Winging it
Sebastiness looked around: so this was the Home for Unwanted Children. Her brief research, prior to the job interview, had revealed that it used to be called Dr. Abuse's Orphanarium and that something connected to dolphins and a large swimming pool had happened a few years ago. Now it was just another Home with a disconsolate, disinterested staff. And her.
"Can you sing?" the matronessa had asked during the interview. Sebastiness had nodded, deciding that adding "badly" was not the right way to proceed.
"Can you sing the Home's theme-song?"
Sebastiness had nodded again, figuring she could wing it so long other people joined in.
"Can you punish children for just being children?" asked the matronessa. "Not every day of course, just every other Tuesday and weekends." Sebastiness's mouth fell open and the matronessa chuckled. "We ask that to weed out the uncover policefolk," she said. "They always say yes. Now, can you build a spaceship out of toilet roll holders, bendy straws and sticky-backed plastic?"
Sebastiness nodded again; she could wing that so long as no-one cared what the spaceship looked like.
"And can you run a decontamination facility?"
Sebastiness looked around the Home again and wondering if she'd made the right choice answering yes to that last question. It looked like she might be winging it earlier than she'd expected; the whole place was glowing eerily in the early-morning dusk.
Greg - yes well, I'd definitely would have had to ask *which* shots needed to be included :P
Hmm, I'm glad my winging it turned out better than Sebastiness' did! I think things must eventually reach a point when it's time to own up... I think she went well past that point :P
Post a Comment