Journal // 3rd July 2024

Jul 3

On this day I…

Acting out of character as a Bartender.

That guy behind the bar, the one serving you a drink, is an actor. He doesn’t always behave like this. If you were to bump into Him in the street He’d most likely not remember you, because it’s not really Him you saw behind the bar, but an alternate personality that He created to make your experience one you’d remember.

For Him, it’s an act.

You’d only really get to see the real Him as he gets to the bar before work. Before He has slipped into His work mindset.

You see, the real Him isn’t interested in serving you anything, being your friend (the only people this isn’t true of are regulars he sees every week), meeting with you outside of work for lunch, hanging out, playing poker. He’s there to serve drinks, give you a good time and play nice.

The real Him would get fired after a few days as His tolerance for people is very low. He had to create this alternate personality to survive. The real Him would lose his fucking mind if He was stuck behind a bar for nine hours a day, unable to escape.

Yes, I’m talking about Myself.

A piece of advice I got from a bartending mentor back in 2019 was, “Create a personality when you’re behind the bar.” When I heard this I blew it off as nonsense, ‘Why would I need to do that?’

It didn’t take long before the Alternate came out, born from the good-time boy that I was. When we drink we lose that ability to control ourselves. When I drink I loosen up, become happier and sillier. This plays right into the expectations of guests in bars such as the one I used to work. I was no more than two feet from them, and I couldn’t escape so, I drank a lot to deal with it And by ‘It’ I mean people.

By that I mean people in general.

A recent trip to the English countryside taught me that I love the English countryside. It’s quiet. There are fewer people around.

I don’t have Enochlophobia by any means. Crowds don’t bother me, lots of people don’t bother me. Having to interact with them does. The majority of people are idiots. And if you’re in a crowd, the likelihood of there being insufferable idiots is very high.

This was brought home when we got back on the bus to head back to London.

I was in my seat, trying to just exist and enjoy the trip home, watching the countryside out the window, but was continuously interrupted by either, drunk idiots who couldn’t understand the subtle queues I was giving them that I wasn’t interested in this conversation. Like turning my head away to look out the window. Or people who felt obligated to make sure everyone was okay.

In those moments I became that Bartender. Smile, nod, say ‘Yeah’ a lot and try to do something else.

Drunk people are unable to register subtle queues. Though something with more substance would probably unset them and then you’d have to deal with that…

Lose-lose.

I act out the part of the “Bartender” to deal with people. Maybe my character is so chatty because he wants everyone else to shut up. To stop talking to Him. If He’s talking they can’t.

Some guests are okay, some however are obnoxious cunts. The kinds of people that you’d walk away from if you could. But maybe that’s why they talk so much, because you can’t just walk away, You have to stand there and listen to their bullshit while smiling and polishing that glass for 20 minutes.

So, as a guest in bars, please understand this, the Bartender doesn’t hang around because He’s interested in talking to you or hearing your problems, He’s there because he can’t leave. So cut Him some slack.