As an average American Mutt of a Monkey who was given the gift of semi-Sentient life at a point on the Timeline that Modern Monkeys refer to as the dawn of The 21st Century, I’ve been a Joe of many trades and industries.
My very first job was as a busboy at a Mexican Food joint in Texas. It wasn’t exactly what I would call upscale, but it was a sit-down place with good food and the staff made decent money for the early 70’s. I’ve worked a lot in the prepared food industry, from fast-food, both chain and local, to sit-down restaurants, both the busy and the high-end. I’ve done everything in a restaurant but own one.
Prepping food in the back with the brothers… Tending bar… Front end cooking…
I enjoy running a grill to this day.
One of my favorite opportunities was managing a bar at a busy dinner playhouse with real live Hollywood Stars.
I was twenty-one.
I always had plenty of cash when I was a bartender. I worked hard, and at busy places. I was a trafficker of the only legal party drug, and I was young and pretty.
I had a gig tending bar at the Holiday Inn in a college town in Texas when oil and money were both flowing freely. The nightly show was a popular, local country entertainer, and the legal age to drink was just eighteen. When I went in to that hotel looking to exchange skills and Time for money, the bar was already supporting one very busy bartender and four demanding cocktail waitresses, each making between $80 and $500 per night. The Timing was good when I responded to the managers posted cry for help.
My claim was that I had skills, my instructions were to get in there and tend bar.
The pay was minimum wage plus a small percentage of the floor sales that I rang up, paid to me by the four young women running drinks to the tables out of their tips. (Oh, HELL yes, we made sure that they rang up every single round!) We also got to keep what tips we could drag across the bar. It wasn’t terribly fancy bar, but it was long. With eight or ten high-back stools lined up, each with a cowboy perched in the saddle.
Five nights a week it was busy bar in a crowded room of well-paid guys from the oil patch, an eclectic collection of townies, plenty of students and staff from a popular Texas state university, and a country-western singing comedian who could claim on his resume a role in the recently released movie “Urban Cowboy” fiddling with a full band on stage… it was party ON!
I waded in and immediately began tripping over the other bartender, both of us doing our polite best to run between the counter where the waitresses lined up, traffic across the bar, each other, and the boys lined up on stools. My new senior partner was a very cute, very short, young lady who made the black knit top she wore as a uniform look real good. She had been working there a while, hence the line up of cowboys on the bar-stools.
Being the lazy entrepreneur that I am, I suggested “efficiency" to my new partner and, being a trusting soul, she agreed.
I suggested that she take care of her wanna-be boyfriends lined up at the bar, as well as the occasional wanna-be yuppie who leaned between them to catch her eye, while I kept the waitresses from yelling at us by being their boy at beck and call, and we'd pool and split the tips. She thought this was a good idea.
I had learned volume and speed-pouring at the dinner theater because we had good-sized crowds and only so much time to take care of their Texas-sized thirst during intermission.
After I trained the waitresses on how to line up their orders, I proceeded to impress them. Tipping the bar over and above the required percentage of sales soon became the norm. As a team, those women and I were a lean, mean, alcohol moving machine fueled by money and producing good Times.
We truly teamed up, worked together and made proper use of an opportunity, just like America promised. The other bartender and I would pool and split everything at the end of the night. I did the volume sales, which was my forte, and my partner did a much better job of separating young men sitting on bar stools for hours on end from tip money than I could ever hope to. We had each others backs and we made a good, profitable team. I never walked out with less than $200, commonly it was north of $600 and my high was $800. Not bad for an eight-hour shift of hard work at the dawn of the 80’s.
My very first job was as a busboy at a Mexican Food joint in Texas. It wasn’t exactly what I would call upscale, but it was a sit-down place with good food and the staff made decent money for the early 70’s. I’ve worked a lot in the prepared food industry, from fast-food, both chain and local, to sit-down restaurants, both the busy and the high-end. I’ve done everything in a restaurant but own one.
Prepping food in the back with the brothers… Tending bar… Front end cooking…
I enjoy running a grill to this day.
Good Times!
One of my favorite opportunities was managing a bar at a busy dinner playhouse with real live Hollywood Stars.
I was twenty-one.
Good Times!
I always had plenty of cash when I was a bartender. I worked hard, and at busy places. I was a trafficker of the only legal party drug, and I was young and pretty.
I had a gig tending bar at the Holiday Inn in a college town in Texas when oil and money were both flowing freely. The nightly show was a popular, local country entertainer, and the legal age to drink was just eighteen. When I went in to that hotel looking to exchange skills and Time for money, the bar was already supporting one very busy bartender and four demanding cocktail waitresses, each making between $80 and $500 per night. The Timing was good when I responded to the managers posted cry for help.
My claim was that I had skills, my instructions were to get in there and tend bar.
The pay was minimum wage plus a small percentage of the floor sales that I rang up, paid to me by the four young women running drinks to the tables out of their tips. (Oh, HELL yes, we made sure that they rang up every single round!) We also got to keep what tips we could drag across the bar. It wasn’t terribly fancy bar, but it was long. With eight or ten high-back stools lined up, each with a cowboy perched in the saddle.
Five nights a week it was busy bar in a crowded room of well-paid guys from the oil patch, an eclectic collection of townies, plenty of students and staff from a popular Texas state university, and a country-western singing comedian who could claim on his resume a role in the recently released movie “Urban Cowboy” fiddling with a full band on stage… it was party ON!
I waded in and immediately began tripping over the other bartender, both of us doing our polite best to run between the counter where the waitresses lined up, traffic across the bar, each other, and the boys lined up on stools. My new senior partner was a very cute, very short, young lady who made the black knit top she wore as a uniform look real good. She had been working there a while, hence the line up of cowboys on the bar-stools.
Being the lazy entrepreneur that I am, I suggested “efficiency" to my new partner and, being a trusting soul, she agreed.
I suggested that she take care of her wanna-be boyfriends lined up at the bar, as well as the occasional wanna-be yuppie who leaned between them to catch her eye, while I kept the waitresses from yelling at us by being their boy at beck and call, and we'd pool and split the tips. She thought this was a good idea.
I had learned volume and speed-pouring at the dinner theater because we had good-sized crowds and only so much time to take care of their Texas-sized thirst during intermission.
After I trained the waitresses on how to line up their orders, I proceeded to impress them. Tipping the bar over and above the required percentage of sales soon became the norm. As a team, those women and I were a lean, mean, alcohol moving machine fueled by money and producing good Times.
We truly teamed up, worked together and made proper use of an opportunity, just like America promised. The other bartender and I would pool and split everything at the end of the night. I did the volume sales, which was my forte, and my partner did a much better job of separating young men sitting on bar stools for hours on end from tip money than I could ever hope to. We had each others backs and we made a good, profitable team. I never walked out with less than $200, commonly it was north of $600 and my high was $800. Not bad for an eight-hour shift of hard work at the dawn of the 80’s.
Good Times
