Training Day
A rainy Sunday night during the summer is among the deadest times we see at the Bar, topped perhaps only by a rainy Sunday afternoon during the summer. So it's a perfect time to train and supervise a brand-new barmaid, and it falls to me. Todd introduces me to Jocelyn, a girl with long, curly blonde hair, and my chin bounces off the floor with a "whap." She's barely five feet tall, and each of her breasts is about as big as my head. They're enormous. She's also wearing a fairly tight t-shirt. It's impossible not to stare, so I do.
"They're real," she grins, and I figure I'll take her word for it.
"You're going to make a shitload of money here," I tell her, shaking my head. We start running through the Bar's procedures, then I let her take some orders. She's had some experience, according to Todd, but every bar does things a little bit differently. So it doesn't worry me much when she has a little trouble getting the hang of our register. She's not great at basic math, either, but then a lot of people in my generation have that problem - we grew up with calculators and computers to do our math for us. I guess I'm lucky; it's always come naturally to me. And she doesn't have trouble with, say, three beers at $5 each - but for three drinks at three different prices, she has to think about it for a minute. But she'll get the hang of it.
Her mixology, on the other hand... well, let's just say I thought Todd said she's had some experience. Anybody who's worked a bar in this city in the last several years has had to mix at least one cosmopolitan - probably a couple hundred of them. That's Sarah Jessica Parker's fault. Someone orders a cosmo from Jocelyn, and she hesitates, then starts panicking a little. It's a good thing I've overheard the order, because the first thing she grabs is rum, and there's no rum in any cosmo I've ever had. I quietly pull her aside, and whisper in her ear: "Two vodka, one Cointreau, one cranberry juice, squeeze of lime, shaker with ice, strain into a martini glass, lime garnish." She nods briskly and gets to it.
After she's served the cosmo and made change, she comes over to thank me. "In this bar, you should never be embarrassed to ask someone you're working with how to make a drink you don't know or don't remember," I tell her. "You should only be embarrassed if you don't ask and then get it wrong. Then instead of taking ten seconds to explain, we have to take five minutes and ten dollars to make an unhappy customer happy again."
She smiles, and says, "I've never thought of it that way. The other girls at my last bar weren't very helpful - sometimes I think they wanted to see me screw up."
I wonder why, I think to myself, staring at her breasts again.
"They're real," she grins, and I figure I'll take her word for it.
"You're going to make a shitload of money here," I tell her, shaking my head. We start running through the Bar's procedures, then I let her take some orders. She's had some experience, according to Todd, but every bar does things a little bit differently. So it doesn't worry me much when she has a little trouble getting the hang of our register. She's not great at basic math, either, but then a lot of people in my generation have that problem - we grew up with calculators and computers to do our math for us. I guess I'm lucky; it's always come naturally to me. And she doesn't have trouble with, say, three beers at $5 each - but for three drinks at three different prices, she has to think about it for a minute. But she'll get the hang of it.
Her mixology, on the other hand... well, let's just say I thought Todd said she's had some experience. Anybody who's worked a bar in this city in the last several years has had to mix at least one cosmopolitan - probably a couple hundred of them. That's Sarah Jessica Parker's fault. Someone orders a cosmo from Jocelyn, and she hesitates, then starts panicking a little. It's a good thing I've overheard the order, because the first thing she grabs is rum, and there's no rum in any cosmo I've ever had. I quietly pull her aside, and whisper in her ear: "Two vodka, one Cointreau, one cranberry juice, squeeze of lime, shaker with ice, strain into a martini glass, lime garnish." She nods briskly and gets to it.
After she's served the cosmo and made change, she comes over to thank me. "In this bar, you should never be embarrassed to ask someone you're working with how to make a drink you don't know or don't remember," I tell her. "You should only be embarrassed if you don't ask and then get it wrong. Then instead of taking ten seconds to explain, we have to take five minutes and ten dollars to make an unhappy customer happy again."
She smiles, and says, "I've never thought of it that way. The other girls at my last bar weren't very helpful - sometimes I think they wanted to see me screw up."
I wonder why, I think to myself, staring at her breasts again.