I think that I could be a professional guest bartender.

Not a bartender, mind you, but a guest bartender.  The guest bartender has, arguably, the greatest job known to man, as I learned over Thanksgiving when I guest bartended in Philly at my local bar back home, Mick-Daniel’s.  My responsibilities on the night I guest bartended included:

- Arriving to work at 7:30pm

- Drinking casually while working

- Watching sports while working

- Talking to drunk girls while working

- Eating six mozzarella sticks while working

- Serving beer and (easy) drinks to my family and friends, with a stranger or two thrown in for good measure

- Telling the other bartender (in this case, my buddy David, who has a lot of bartending experience) what hard drinks/shots he has to make because I have no idea how to make them

- Telling the other bartender that he has to fix the registers because I mistakenly rung up $97.50 for three bottles of Miller Lite on the register by the door and the one by the front is on fire a little bit

- Eating four chicken fingers

- Finishing work at 11pm

- Getting drunk for very cheap at place of employ for three hours after work

The best part: I don’t what to say exactly how much I made (for tax purposes and all) but it was more than I make an hour at my real job – and it was cash!  Usually when I’m done working, I have to wait for the 14th or the 28th to roll around, then I have go to the ATM, and only then I can take out the money I need to buy pot.  With guest bartending, I get paid immediately when I’m done working, I make one phone call and step outside my work and boom – I’m getting high in an alley within minutes!  It’s genius!

[Alright, I have to calm down here.]

[Also, I love smoking pot.  I haven't done it too much lately and think I've forgotten how incredible it is.  You get an A+, marijuana, an A+.]

My shift, fortunately, went without any major disasters.  I arrived at 7:30pm and was given the rundown by my buddy Brian – where the beers, liquors and glasses are; how to clean the glasses; how to work the registers; etc – and when David showed up just before 8, we were ready to go.

My first order came from three girls, maybe two years or so younger than me, who wanted two Miller Lites and a Coors Light.  Like a pro, I slid open the freezer or fridge or steel container with the slidey lid that holds the bottled beer, put the three beers before them, popped off their tops with my bottle opener, and smoothly said, "That’s $9.75."  One girl gave me a $20, I rung up the order, made change, and gave it to her.  I was now officially a bartender.   

Soon, my friends and family started filing into the bar, included both of my parents and my brother and sister, and an unprecedented ten of my cousins (I have, I think, 30-35 total cousins).  The drink orders got more varied, but were nothing I couldn’t handle: bottle of Yuengling, pint of Smithwick’s, vodka soda, even cherry vodka-sprite-cran (!). Through it all, I handled the drinks orders professionally, with grace and aplomb, saying "Go fuck yourself" only once to my buddy Wick who seriously wanted a Tom Collins.   

[It was good to see my dad there at the bar, who, prior to a dinner I took him to in NYC last month, hadn't had a beer in 15 years.  Being at the bar for the my guest-bartending gig was the first time he'd been in a bar in 17 years, and he drank approximately 14 beers that night.  The next day, before I left to head back to NYC, my dad bought a case of Miller Lite, saying, "I forgot how good beer is."  So it looks like I'm responsible for making a 52 year old gun owner whose already on a steady regimen of painkillers start drinking again after 15 years of sobriety.  Um, whoops.]

[He's proudly up to eight guns now, by the way, as he's bought two more in the last five weeks.  I think one more and we've officially entered "arsenal" status.  Way to go, dad.] 

As the evening progressed, the bar got more crowded, both with strangers and friends.  But rather than get frazzled, I felt myself getting more steady on my feet; if anything, I was doing worse in the first half of the shift when the bar wasn’t as crowded and I was watching college football and chatting with what people were there.  Toward the end, I went from one customer right to the next, filling drink orders, gaining momentum and confidence.  Also, the bar has Red Bull on the gun, so I basically had the equivalent of twelve to sixteen cans of Red Bull during the shift.  Which would explain why my hair started falling out toward the end.  But I digress.   

But though I had fun (and got a little bit drunk), the best part of the night, aside from the 4am French onion soup and broccoli puffs at the Oregon Diner, was when I finished my shift at 11pm.  That’s when things start getting crazy at the bar, as more people started filing and patrons got drunker and drunker.  This is the reason why I could only ever be a guest bartender: I have neither the athletic ability or the stamina to move that quickly, nor could I possibly contain my jealousy and rage at having to give out hundreds of drunks in a night while only being able to have two or three.  That, moreso than the lack of agility, would be the major dealbreaker for me.  

Still, I hope to guest bartender again at some point, probably when it’s tax time and the IRS comes calling.  If you have the chance to do so, I encourage you to try it.  Free drinks, mozzarella sticks and chicken fingers, while making three figures in less than four hours…well, that’s the American Dream realized, right there.  This spreadsheet stuff is for chumps.