The Bar Life

By Trevor A. Keveloh

"Trev, leme tell you something. You may not understand this right now but one day you will. When you can't give people free drinks, when you can't hook them up with no covers, when you can't do anything for them, they will be gone. The ones that hang around after all that are your real friends." (MBT)

This may have been the best advice I have ever gotten in regards to the psychology of bartending and in all honesty, it's true. Being on top of my game at a bar and being out of the game working on different angles in life, I have come to realize that the cliche' of only having a handful of true friends is damn true.The beautiful part of this is I have already been through it more than once. I have experienced the, "fair weather friends," that sway from free drink to free drink all over the area and so on. I could take a bartending gig somewhere local and start promoting myself and sure as shit, you know what's going to happen. The leeches expecting free drinks, handouts, shots, no covers will show up out of no where giving you the ole, "O hey man, I haven't seen you in a while, I wanted to stop in. Wana do a shot with me?" That is usually code for, "I want a free shot and I am going to offer you one since I don't want to look like a freeloader." I may be a victim of my own doings of the past, but those days were long ago and I buried them with something that took over and that's called, integrity.

Bartending is looked at by plenty as, "not a real job," because of the hours, mainly cash as pay and lack of insurance/benefits programs that most adults with families require. Completely understandable to the mass looking for that but don't ever think it's not a, "real job." I have worked in every aspect of hospitality, along with corporate America, construction, retail, school system and I am done listing shit, but I have to say that this industry is by far the most complicated when it comes to needing all of your senses working at the same time and at an optimum level. It can be grueling. It can be punishing. It can be awful. It can be fun. It can be exciting. And it is usually worth it.

Since my high school days of throwing keggers than contained more than keg beer, I had a knack for getting people together and socializing around alcohol. I finally learned how to make some cool drinks at an early age or underage and my parties started to turn into more than just beer and shots. I threw in jello shots, mixers, margaritas and cool trendy shots. It was fun and I even turned a profit doing this sometimes. I looked at it in high school like this... There are going to be a number of keggers this weekend. A bunch of guys and handful of girls standing around getting guaranteed headaches and hangovers with keg beer, so let me offer them something different. I threw on a mix of diff genres of music, not just house music or DMB. Then I offered drinks that other parties werent. I kind of took the leap to college parties and bars while I was still in high school. Before ya knew it, I was putting asses in the seats and having dance parties and all kinds of shits. Some of you reading this are gonna giggle cuz yall know what Im talking about :)

Then I bartended. I got good at it, hell I was a natural. Everything came easy to me and I loved it. Something about that energy and constant moving and entertaining people all at once opened up a side to me that was always there, that I honed, that I embraced and spit out onto the world. I loved it, I still do. It's like a natural high to me at times when it's crazy busy, loud, fun and I am just pouring drinks and pushing them out. The excitement is like none other in a job setting. Really...


For my industry friends, making a jump from bartender to manager is never easy. Your equals start to look at you like a threat to their monkey games, the other staff may question your motives and of course, the customers/regulars are going to kiss your ass 10 times more in order to make themselves feel that they are still a part of the, "cool club." It's a difficult, no wait, it's a bitch of a fawkn hurdle to overcome and maintain. Whatever history you have with your clientele will be glorified if and when you make that jump to management. It's tricky as fawk but the best thing to do is get your feet wet and change bars. Get away from the soup kitchen mentality of people always wanting something for nothing. Or hell, get out of the industry all together and be sure to always tip your bartender or server when going out.