I used to be a bartender not too long ago. After that I worked as a cocktail waitress whilst training to be an even better bar girl. That however did not happen when university all of a sudden showed up at the horizon and I am still running around with trays full of cocktails five days a week witnessing what goes on behind and in front of the bar.
The bartending business is stressful, hard, and just as crazy as it seems. I have loved almost every minute of it and even the toughest moments have their very own charm. One of the benefits of working behind and around the stick is those nights when you’ve got your arms covered in phone numbers and your pockets contain napkins with questionable suggestions of after work activities.
I mean, just imagine: you are a guy sitting in a bar (50 percent of the worlds population does not have to imagine, but you know where I am getting at). You’ve got your beer goggles on and that girl behind the bar shaking whatever she is shaking is doing a pretty good job. She is getting more and more attractive by the drink and as the night is starting to come to an end you swagger over there, confident as I ever. You are taking her home tonight, I mean who would say no to you, right?
But I advice you to hold on for just a minute soldier - do you have even the slightest idea of what you’re getting yourself in to?
Wine us, dine us, now that’s all fine, but if you want to belong to a girl in the hospitality industry there are some things that you have to take into account.
The following points are, if not crucial, of highest importance if you ever wish to date a bartender (or even a cocktailmad waitress like me):
1. You have to enjoy being woken up at two o’clock in the morning by a sweaty creature in an adrenaline rush that wants to tell you absolutely everything that has happened at work for the past ten hours.
2. Find it charming that no matter where you take her out for a drink she will have something to say and/or find something to complain about when it comes to service/the menu/range of spirits on the back bar etc.
3. Like the fact that your entire week is going to be planned around her two days off per week. Most likely neither of these will be on the weekend. If you are lucky one of them is a Thursday.
4. Have no sense of smell alternatively have a weird foot fetish and like them smelly. Our feet are enclosed in the same boots all day and it usually takes less than ten minutes before they are soaking wet. My garbage room smells nicer than our feet after a long shift.
5. All of our colleagues plus almost our entire friendship circle will look at you like you are an imbecile if you don’t know the difference between blanco, reposado and anjeo tequila or what cachaca is distilled from.
Still want to take the girl with the shaker home? Didn’t think so.
The LAB team giving Gill a send-off last summer 
