Boring Technical Details of Losing $200

Scene of the crime.. the white tent on the right is where we were working

Dog-bite it friends, I really WILL get back to (and soon draw to a conclusion) this ongoing series on the "autograt" tip that sometimes gets added to our bills in restaurants - the series that I know just has you hanging on the edge of your seats - as soon as I can.

But while not so directly tied into the series, here's a doozy from this Friday night that has to be included. You'll understand why by the time I close things out. Be patient grasshopper.

So... I now work part-time at The Arena, right? Concerts, sporting events, and the like. All told, there's about 15 bar stations and 50 or more bartenders clocked in and running registers during "max capacity" events, of which we've had three this week. You're imagining that we're making money hand-over-fist, right?

Well, we should be .... but sometimes things don't quite work out like that in our business.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, the possibility for theft remains an ongoing temptation for all bartenders. It's just too darn easy to pretend you're ringing in a drink when you're not, and allowing a cash-paying customer to leave his money there and then to put it in your pocket. That's just one of many "f'rinstances" by the way.

My point is that there are many ways to steal when you're behind a bar, and as Mom and Pop restaurants grow into chains, then eventually large, greedy corporations, eventually they see them all. Some servers and bartenders of course grow with the company, being promoted to management or corporate executive positions over time. Then it becomes part of their new job to prevent their "rank and file" employees from stealing, via the exact same tricks they once used, when they held the previous positions.

And so maybe they "fess up" and share with their bosses the more obvious means by which they cheated the system - or at least they share these "easy cheats" by claiming that they "... knew someone who did..." while they had the lower job title.

So newer policies and even brighter shades of red tape get introduced to those of us in the work force, as new and usually more time-consuming procedures of doing things get added to our work routines, many of them centered around the concept of reducing or preventing theft.

Really, I can't blame the companies for doing so. I know I would if I owned a huge corporation.

Now when you work at a typical restaurant, there's possibly only one bar in the building and sometimes only one bartender working per shift. It's relatively easy for management to watch them, and keep tabs on most of what they're doing - especially when you add cameras to the equation that managers, owners and corporate officers can view live from the comfort of their own homes.

(Yes I'm serious - at my last full-time bar job (Cattle Baron) there were three cameras trained on me behind the bar.)

But when you have FIFTY BARTENDERS working at the same time in a large Arena setting ... watching them all and protecting your assets becomes a challenge, understandably. Certain control factors just have to be in place, to keep the joint from being robbed blind.

The corporation that my Arena employs to handle their alcohol sales actually started out as - and now specializes in - "Concessions" and so the control factors built into our system are quite like those you might relate to how things are run at a movie theater.  Like how you can't just ask someone for a large cup for water, because they'll tell you "the cups are counted, and I'd have to charge you $5 for just the cup."

The upshot here means that opposed to holding employees accountable for how much popcorn, soda, or draft beer or alcohol is actually gone from your work-station when you leave, The Arena just counts cups. We count cups at the beginning of the shift, and at the end.  Nine different cups for bar stations btw. We have Single shot cups, Double shot cups, Patron tequilla cups, canned beer cups, bottled beer cups, and various draft beer cups, plus the souvenir cup.

Getting to the point finally (!) the difference between the number of cups you start with minus the number you end with gets painstakingly calculated on a ledger, and multiplied out by the nine different costs to figure out how much money SHOULD be in your cash drawer at the end of the night.

It's my second night and I'm paired with Barb who's been there all season. The outside cash bar, she says, is one of the premium best money-making places to be assigned, and so I'm glad to have drawn it. Tonight's a special event "block party" for the home team with 2 blocks of downtown Broadway traffic closed off, 2 large Jumbotron screens broadcasting the game live, and a couple thousand people who couldn't afford or didn't get tickets to the sold-out playoff game milling around outside The Arena to cheer them on.

And they're enjoying some alcoholic beverages as they do so, natch, and tipping well.

Barb and I are humming along getting to know each other and just watching that pile of $1 bills grow and grow as the night progresses. The event winds down (sorry for the loss, home-team), we clean up and she gets to counting the drawer.

Uh-oh.. Barb finally says slowly that she has a bad feeling. We re-do the math together, re-count every cup again, and turns out there's about a $200 discrepancy between what should be in the drawer, according to the cup counts, and what there actually is.

We're both pretty sure of ourselves and the other's abilities to not blame it on a money-counting error on either of our part. We recollect together every little detail of the evening, and she says at one point she caught someone reaching to grab a cup (for whatever reason, like to spit tobacco in, or to split a drink with someone perhaps) and she told them No. But it was busy, throngs of people were pressed up against the make-shift bar, and for all we know that wasn't the only time someone nabbed one, it was just the only time we caught them.

Now I know that "by law" an employer cannot make you pay that money. Generally speaking what they can do is to write you up for improper cash-handling or failure to follow procedure, and then maybe fire you if it happens again. That's the normal way I'm used to anyways - the legal way. Turns out The Arena has a different plan, that gets around such laws. Barb tells me that we both signed a waiver...

We both know good and well that the only options that exist are to pay the money, or turn the drawer in $200 short and be out of a job. At least we did break $200 in tips together this night, so we cough it up, pay the shortage, and walk with $34 left over between us. If we hadn't earned that much, the balance would either have come out of our own pockets, or out of our paychecks at the end of the week with our bosses having documentation of the error, which would of course likely affect our schedules and long-term employment status.

If all of that sounds a little messed up to you, well it is.

If you have any other ideas how a large arena could protect themselves from 50 bartenders being $200 short ($10,000) every night of the week, at this point I'm all ears.

There's just a certain "air" people like me can sort of pick up on when we're working with a professional, even from just one shift. Barb's good at this job, a wee bit older than I am I think, and there's nothing about working with her that makes me think she's scamming me somehow. Fortunately, she's not all up in arms about how "the new guy" messed up her cash drawer and cost her money. She's as non-plussed about this as I was when the Brazillians stiffed me on their $600 tab, and says to me "Well, now you already know the down-side of working here."

And now so do you.


"HOW is possible that we could both remain so calm when losing over $100 each on a single shift?" you might wonder...

The answer to this and more, as my series on "the autograt" concludes. Be sure you're subscribed!

Say My Name

"What Society thinks I do..."

You'd likely have to be a familiar friend and follower of my blog to get much out of this one today, or even get why I'd share this little piece.

Much of my writing here has been about my full-time waiting tables job, but as you know, I just got hired on for a part-time bartending gig.

Now I didn't mention this earlier, but I've been struggling with a few insecurities in the days since I accepted the position...

For starters, I'm not getting any younger. Bartending can be extremely physically exhausting, and I'm out of shape, and out of practice. It's been over a year-and-a-half since I last bartended for a living, and part of me has been wondering if I can even still do it?

Plus, I got hired at a major concert and sporting Arena, which means this will be an extremely high-volume job at times, with lines of people stretching 5 or 10 deep, all standing there wanting service "now" so they can get back to their seats before the intermission or whatever is over. Arena bartending seems a far cry from typical restaurant or fine-dining service, and while I have handled "high volume" before (as a Daytona Beach, FL Spring Break bartender) that was over 20 years ago. Have I even got what it takes for this job?

Well, we're all there for "orientation" - around 40 of us newbies, altho just 8 of us are newly-hired bartenders. After four hours of signing paperwork and going over the more general corporate policies that apply to us all, it's finally time for us to be broken up into groups and taken to our respective areas - Retail, Concessions, or Bar.

When this nice HR lady who was there for my interview, turns and says to me "You're a bartender right?"

It was a simple matter-of-fact question. She might as well have asked "You drive a blue Chevy right?" So I gave her a simple matter-of-fact "Yes."

However, long-time readers know that this was not the first time I'd ever been asked if I were a bartender...

And darn it, the second the affirmative answer left my lips, things got oddly surreal in Guy-land for a minute there.

There was this immediate sensation (with apologies to York) of warm water being poured slowly over my head, soaking me from within, oozing through my pores and trickling down every inch of my body, to my toes. Some of you won't like me putting it this way, but the phrase "fresh anointing" later came to mind. All I can say is that all of my doubts and insecurities about my abilities dissolved within seconds after answering her, as I found myself silently mouthing those words again...

"Yes. I am a bartender."

If you've ever uttered the phrase "I got this," then you know what I mean.

Stranger still, there was this ooey-gooey warm rush of emotion I felt towards my lovely HR lady and new best friend, as she was still standing right there beside me. It's as if I'd been going through my life for some reason as "Greg" or "Zelda Malone" for ages now - and she's the first person who'd called me by my name for over twenty months. She knows me, she really really knows me.

I feel like I'm someone who didn't realize they'd fallen asleep, being suddenly snapped awake again by a trusted friend.

Of course she'd think I was some kind of weirdo if I put any of this into words at the time... All she did was ask a simple job-related question so she could herd me along the right path with the rest of the cattle.

But I genuinely felt like telling her "That's the nicest thing anybody's said to me in a really long time."

Bartender Interview

Maybe since I posted that funny job listing I saw on Craigslist recently, perhaps some of you thought to wonder...

"Hey Guy, just why *are* you looking at jobs on Craigslist in the first place?"

Or (less likely) perhaps, "Why did I feel the need to interrupt this enthralling restaurant tipping series, just to tell you about a bar position I *didn't* get (or want ;) at work recently?"

Well to the point, it's because I have in fact been interviewing, and just accepted a part-time bartending position, that's why!

It's an extremely high-volume locale, doing events at our local "major" concert venue and sporting arena.

I thought I'd share with you some highlights of the Q/A process we went through during the interview. And then something kind of weird, or surreal, that happened tonight during my orientation.

I'm in front of three women during the interview. One is their (oops - I mean "our!") "Human Resources" officer. One will soon be leaving the "top spot" she has in management at (what I'll from now on just call) "The Arena" and the third woman - conducting most of the interview - will be "moving up" into the position.

"How do you feel about cutting someone off who's already intoxicated?" she asks me.

Hmmm, well I probably shouldn't mention that mad little rush of power I experience when I do so, so instead I start by simply saying "Polite, but firm..." and then leave them hanging for a few seconds while I gather my thoughts on just how to answer this one.

This is after all, a venue where people come to party, and - like a typical movie theater that makes most of their profits from popcorn and soda, not movie tickets - The Arena charges $8-10 for a draft beer, so I know  already that selling all they can is a huge part of their business model. I'm wondering if their question pertains more to their bottom line financially, or to their responsibilities to the community? If it's the former, then part of the question may revolve around "Am I a trigger-happy bartender who will too quickly cut off their patrons, and their profit-flow?" After all, there are cabs everywhere downtown.

But I have to be true to myself as well, job or no job.

I expound by saying "It's not the most fun part of our job, but it is a sad necessity of the position sometimes. You just have to be firm about it from the get-go, once you've made that decision, so they don't sense any wavering on your part. Sure, they'll act out or get belligerent for a minute sometimes just to see if you'll cave and serve them if they can intimidate you, but once you've said No, you just stick to your guns. Polite, but firm."

I continue "Plus, if they're the kind of person that drinks until they get cut off, odds are it's NOT the first time in their life they've ever been cut off. They know the routine usually. They yell at you a minute. You remain firm. They eventually give up and walk away."

It's obvious to me that I just "scored huge" with that answer. They now know, that I know, this line of work. Maybe I shouldn't, but now I'm going for the two extra points.

"And we have to back each other up too. If one person makes the decision to cut someone off - even if they're wrong - then the rest of us have to back them. You can't leave the door open for that person to just go to another bartender and get served. Once someone's cut off by one person, they're cut off period - at the whole establishment, I mean."

I could not have foreseen how well that would sit with them, but I'm glad I kept talking, in this case. Darned if that's not exactly one of the main points they drove into us during orientation. They made it very clear that if for ANY reason one of us wasn't comfortable serving a customer more alcohol, then all of management would back that decision, and if needed bring in Police (the place is crawling with Police presence) to enforce the decision and let us all get back to serving other customers. If we cut someone off, they want us to alert a manger or security, describe the person, and they'll make the effort to notify every bar station in the building. They let us know in the training that we are their "front line" of responsible alcohol service, and that we'd never be corrected for cutting someone off, or second-guess any of our decisions.

So back to the interview, then she wants to know how I feel about "conflicts?" I have to ask her what she means - what type of conflicts? "Conflicts with co-workers" she explains. "If you're working the same station with someone, but you're not getting along with them?"

"Oh" I say almost dismissively. "Well as you see from my letters of reference, I usually get along very well with my co-workers, to start."

She nods. She's read the letters. (Thanks Bobby and my other former employers!)

"But the way I look at it is that the people who cause the most conflict tend to just weed themselves out. Whatever they're problem is, if they bring it into work all the time, I won't really have to worry about them, because they probably won't be here very long. So I just ignore them - or at least their drama - if an immediate solution can't be found...

"I'm here to do a job - to serve the customers and to get paid. If my co-worker has the same goal, then there won't be many conflicts. But - and no offense to you - I'm not here to make friends, I'm here to make money. Getting involved with drama like that affects my ability to concentrate on the customers and to make money, so I'll usually just walk from any conflict that can't be solved immediately and focus on the job and what needs to be done."

I ask, and it turns out they are not offering full-time employment. Most of the people here either work another job, or they don't need to. Working here just means "fun" and extra money to some of them.

So now they need to know how I'll handle working two jobs at the same time, and if I'd foresee any conflicts with doing so. I know that what they'e really asking is whether I'll blow them off sometime because of my main job and not show up for work there at The Arena.

I tell them that "Working two jobs has it's challenges, but I've done it before. You just have to be up-front with both employers that "this is when I'm available here, and this is when I work my other job.

"But nonetheless, sometimes it happens that both places schedule you for the same night. If that happens to me, I first make the effort to deal with it myself, by just asking employees at one or both places to pick up the night where you got double-scheduled. Everybody's looking for more money or extra shifts these days, so that usually settles it - I'd just make the effort to get the shift picked up by someone else who needs it.

"If that doesn't work say, within a day of me finding out about the conflict, then I'd have to go to the manager who made the error and go over what we agreed my availability was, tell them I'm scheduled at my other job, which gives them a week or so advance notice to fix the problem. They'll generally realize that it was their mistake, and again, I'd probably only do that after making a reasonable effort to fix the problem myself."

Yuppers, I am "in" as far as passing this interview goes. The interviewing manager and up-coming boss thanks me for my time and says that she thinks I'll be "... a perfect fit" for working here and gives me the documentation I'll need to go take the required drug tests to finalize the hiring process and tells me when to report for Orientation.

Realizing that this entry seems way long enough already (you guys already know me, right?) I'll get back to the "surreal" (and just short of supernatural) thing that occurred during orientation that I spoke of earlier, next time. Subscribe via e-mail for my updates by using the blank box at the top of this screen if you want to hear more about this.

Meanwhile, I'd like to direct you to either read, or to re-read, this older Blog entry of mine. What I'll share next will be missing some needed context for you otherwise - and so you'll enjoy the next one all the more - if this story about my first time ever bartending from 1989ish is fresh in your mind.

Til next time.

-g-