How hard is it to JUST do your job?

Alright, you’ll have to stick with my through a brief explanation. On Thursday-Saturday our bar uses a cocktail bartender. This bartender JUST helps cocktail waitresses. You can imagine that when he helps other customers he is taking away from our register totals. Totals=percentage tipped out.

Now, it was extremely slow tonight. There were only three bartenders on, usually there are four. So, on my side I had the cocktail bartender. He was helping people (other than the cocktails) before I got put on. That in and of itself, ticked me off. He was helping people and therefore I (the second bartender) didn’t get put on until 11:30 because it wasn’t “busy enough”. Yeah, of course not when you have a bartender who isn’t supposed to bartend helping everyone.

Ok. So I get put on. I have nobody to serve. I see the cocktail bartender serving someone. I tell him that I can take that order. He says ok. Next customer, he tries to help as well. I tell him to stop serving people because I have nobody to serve. His response? Well, I am not pocketing the tips. Well, congratulations. Because NOBODY pockets tips. I explained to him that the more he helped the less I was able to put on my register. And our register totals determine our tip outs. So he puts the money in my register. And I think he has it figured out.

I was wrong. Every time there was more than one person waiting he would help them. Hi, I am a bartender and I know how to serve more than one person at a time. I was getting so annoyed at him. He started putting the money from customers in my register. First of all, this is unfair to the other bartenders who are trying to make money on their register. Second, let them wait one freaking second so I can serve them. He was taking people as soon as they walked up. I would literally be giving someone change and turn around to take an order and he would be like put five dollars on your register. No. Just let me serve my customers.

So if that wasn’t enough. He was telling me how much he was getting. For example. when I was walking around looking for customers and someone walks up to the bar.. he races me to the customer and because he is like a whole foot taller than me ..he gets to them first. He tells me to put rumplemintz in my register and then says “Well they’ve been tipping me like five bucks all night”. I take the bottle from him and tell him I can handle it. Ugh.

So we go to count tips and guess how many fives I found? ZERO. Seriously, you are either lying and trying to get me to tip you out ..which I am NOT going to do because I could have served everyone two seconds after he did if he would have just given me a second. Or you were pocketing the five bucks. Either way, you’re an ass.

I understand he was trying to help. But all he was doing.. Was giving me NOTHING to do.. And making it unfair for all of the bartenders working. I mean, really, how hard is it to JUST do your job? It's a fairly easy description. Cocktail bartender=serve the cocktails and NOBODY else.