Learn to bartend

“The first few nights I worked there, I was scared shitless! The club would fill up in about an hour and the bar would be 3 rows deep in no time. I’d never worked behind the bar before so getting thrown into the deep end like that was extremely stressful. People would ask me for strange drinks I’d never heard of, some customers were speaking in French, others in Swedish. It was so busy that girls would try and flirt with me, but I was too lost to even notice.”

“But it was the best way I could have learned. Even though it was stressful in the beginning, being thrown into the deep-end like that meant I was forced to learn fast. I didn’t have time to think about how bad I was. I just did what I could do as fast as I could. And by doing it over and over again, and learning from every mistake I made (there were a lot!), I quickly got a handle on the job.”

“It was December 4th, 2003 and my first bartending shift started at 6PM, so I was told to be there by 5:30PM to help the other bartender setup. Being my first shift I was excited, of course, but I also wanted to be prepared. I packed up a bunch of my bar tools including the Boston shaker, a couple of pour spouts, a bottle opener, a tip jar and a corkscrew. I also brought $35 in small bills and change for no particular reason, aside from maybe “seeding” the tip jar.”