It’s Not Just One Collective “Industry”

Tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme…the employees of the nightlife scene vs. the bar scene. I was joking about this one the other night with my dear friend Ariana (you know the one). For such a similar set of work tasks and the general setting of an alcohol-fueled place of employment, these two types of staff are so vastly different it’s pretty funny at this point. Let’s get into it, shall we?

Now, granted, I may be a little biased. I have been on the nightlife/event side of things for some time. I’ve seen a lot of great venues close that I was very sad about, and a few I actually cheered about. The same goes for bars and restaurants, a majority of them unfortunately went no thanks to Covid. I’m lucky to live in Boston where you can actually make a decent life for yourself by working in these kinds of places. Well, that was of course before everyone started to get sick, everyone was afraid of leaving the house, everyone decided to spend their lives spewing hateful rhetoric on every public forum if they disagreed with a vaccine, and of course before people still had the nerve to come out, knowing all this, and tip fucking 10% or nothing at all. “Oh, Kerry, I don’t tip because people should make a fair wage from their employment and I don’t believe in that MEHHHH”. Here’s a fucking news flash for you Scrooge McDuck - you making a “statement” by not tipping NEVER reaches anyone that has the ability to make that call in any bar or restaurant. It only pisses off the person you did it to and makes you look like Elon Musk taking a rocket ship to his vacation planet or whatever the hell he’s doing these days. It makes you look like a smug, arrogant, loves-the-smell-of-your-own-farts piece of shit so stop doing it and call the people in your inner circles out for doing it too. I gotta say, we must be living in a simulation because I hate to think that myself and my friends are the only people on planet Earth who don’t have their heads up their asses when it comes to how to treat people at their places of work and be decent and kind human beings, but then I read the news and remember, “oh yeah, billionaires run the world and everyone is too self-absorbed with how many lies that they can tell about their lives on Instagram to give a shit”.

ANNYYWAAYY (as the hairy-chested porn star Reed Rothchild would say, plotting to rob a certain boy-loving, cocaine enthusiast at a seedy motel somewhere in San Fernando Valley during my all-time favorite film “Boogie Nights”), I didn’t come here to soapbox ladies and gents. We’re here to have a little chuckle today. It wasn’t until I met my girlfriend who works on the bar/restaurant side of the equation that I realized how different our worlds really are. It’s not really just one collective industry, though we often times refer to it that way. In fact, I noticed that people who work on the bar/restaurant side of things, are so vastly different from people who work in clubs and venues, it’s pretty much like night and day.

Now, say I walk into a club I haven’t been to in awhile. 8/10 times, I’ll walk up to the bar (that’s not how many times I’ll walk into the club and walk up to the bar which is a 10/10, it’s how many times I’ll walk up to the bar and this will happen before anyone tries to be funny here), anyway 8/10 times I’ll walk up to the bar and go to order a drink. The bartender and I look at each other up and down and know we’ve seen each other before. Where? We’re not sure. When? At some point. But somewhere, and definitely not this club. And we’ll go back and forth “didn’t you use to go to/work at such and such a place"? And after one or two guesses, we’ll go “OH YEAH! NOW I REMEMBER!” but our names can’t be recalled (2012-15 was a rowdy time for a lot of club staff). And that’s OK. We’ll re-introduce ourselves, laugh over some silly thing we remember from God knows when, they’ll know my drink order from whatever era that was in my life and they’ll be my bartender for the night until we meet again a couple years down the road. It’s amazing. I love it. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case if you walk into a a bar or a restaurant. Most bartenders in these settings always have a very Joe Cool air about them. Everybody knows their name and if they don’t know you, or you forget theirs, forget it. I’m not a regular anywhere except my couch anymore. The tequila is cheap and I can pee while still watching the TV. Seems like a win/win to me. Also there are snacks. And annoying people who actually think they’re important because they have 1k Instagram followers or have a table can’t walk into me or be in my way. My nights out are restricted to DJ gigs and the occasional show or stroll to the local watering hole. I’m not a regular anywhere. If I forget your name, I’m sorry, I meet A LOT of people between working at a venue, DJing at a lot of different places and situations, and also just having terrible short term memory (I wonder what from). It’s not meant to be rude. I need to meet people a few times, or have a memorable interaction with them. I’m a social person; it doesn’t mean I don’t like you. And it doesn’t mean that your favorite club bartender over the years doesn’t like you either. It’s just how we are. I don’t get mad if you don’t remember me in the sea of brown haired short girls (though I will say not many brown haired short girls have the impeccable bone structure and beautiful green eyes that I do, but I digress).

Now if you go out enough and are lucky enough to be considered “a regular” aka an alcoholic who is just too lazy to walk further past their house or try something outside of their comfort zones, you may be granted with a free shots for your constant support. If you’re a regular in a nightclub, a typical free shot you might receive is tequila or whiskey depending on your usual drink of choice. Sometimes it might even be a speciality shot that the bartender had extra of after making another drink. Regardless of who you are, you’d probably be OK with one of those. But if you’re a regular at a bar or a restaurant, you will pretty much always be gifted a shot of Fernet. For those of you unfamiliar with this “beverage”, it’s an after dinner liqueur with the consistency of Jagermeister and the flavor of licorice jelly beans served with the purpose of settling one’s stomach. It usually helps me settle my stomach by promptly running to the bathroom or smoking area (whichever is closer) and hardcore vomiting whatever it is I just ate or drank. To me, Fernet has one purpose - stripping the wallpaper off a house I’m re-doing that had a 3 pack-a-day tenant. I had a colonoscopy last year and the lemon shit that they make you drink all night goes down easier than Fernet. Thank you kindly Mr. Bartender but I’ll keep my insides intact this evening.

Another big difference is the level of sobriety you see in these work environments. Most of my club friends have phased out of this part of their work history. Now, back in the day, life was full of sex, drugs and rock & roll, but most are sober or hardly ever drink or go out at all anymore. If they do, it’s a couple of glasses of wine and a good book or TV show to wind down at the end of the day. Bar and restaurant folk? They have created a lifestyle around alcoholism. It’s truly impressive. I get a little crazy myself from time to time, but GOOD LUCK keeping up with this crowd. It’s like they some how have built up a tolerance to smelling it all the time so that when they do get off work, it’s easy just to get right back into it. It’s almost like there’s an advent calendar they keep behind the bar and every hour is a different shot with a cute message about the story of working in the industry. If they went to an all-inclusive resort, the resort would end up having to revoke the “all-inclusive” portion after an afternoon by the pool.

One thing I will say though that seems to unite us all though - Kanye West. Don’t ask me why but every single bartender, doorman, bottle girl, server, DJ, manager, whoever - probably has at least one Kanye West track on their “get ready for the night” playlist. Even people who don’t like or regularly listen to Kanye West have something that Kanye West has touched, written, sampled or put out himself. Don’t ask me why, I don’t have all the answers. Instead of putting on a MAGA hat and having everyone turn on him, he should’ve just used this to his advantage and started wearing one of the hundreds of pieces of alcohol promo merch that we all have lying in our closets as a show of solidarity during the pandemic, but no, that would even be too silly for Kanye.

For most people, especially people who work a regular 9-5 or work in retail or whatever, people who work around booze are all just one in the same. Going out, means going out, doesn’t matter where it is. Some of the nastier people I’ve come across in my life, seem to completely trash their “going out days” once they decide to settle down, get married, have kids, whatever, and seem to lump our choice of profession into a cesspool of poor decesion making and a failure to acclimate to “the real world”. Granted, we’re not nurses, we’re not teachers, we’re not nannies, we’re not librarians, we’re not shaping the world for a better tomorrow (in fact, most definitely, we’re causing a very hungover tomorrow for most but that’s besides the point). We may not be what you, almighty perfect person who chose to live in the societal constraints of normality believe a person to be, but we’re people. We pay our taxes (typically more than you do for any given year), we pay our rent, we have feelings and emotions and other than the fact that our workday hours aren’t as clearcut as yours may be, we still work, and let me tell you, usually a lot harder. My girlfriend’s side work involves more heavy lifting than most UPS drivers. Most of my friends bartending shifts involve 12 hours on their feet, being forced to smile on top of that. DJs have to time their pee breaks just right or face the consequences. We’re there when you decide you want to celebrate, or maybe you’re trying to forget, or maybe you’re just sick of being home and need a change of scenery, but most importantly, we’re there. We pour your drinks, serve your food, create your entertainment, get you an Uber home after one too many, and make sure you have a good time. It may be our job, but we do it because we love it and would appreciate being treated like the way you talked about us when there was NOTHING going on.

(Also, try watching Waiting in this day and age. The Problematic Police will be at your house in 5 minutes flat. Add that to the list of movies that I still find hilarious but did not age well…OH MY GOD THAT MOVIE IS ALMOST TWENTY YEARS OLD…HOLY SHIT. Big mistake looking that up on the internet).