I hope the newbie quits.

I haven't written about Halloween yet because I don't even know where to start.

Thursday and Friday night were miserably slow. It did allow me to take in all the lovely outfits. One of my co-workers said "I love Halloween because I get to see all the bitches dressed up like sluts". That pretty much sums up how Halloween is in a college town. I'd bet I saw more playboy bunny costumes than Hugh Hefner did on Friday night and it wasn't even really Halloween yet! There were quite a few mario's and only one luigi. We had a clever pair of cocktails dress up as trolls (nude body suits, and sprayed their hair neon colors and wore it sticking straight up).

On a high note, after a night of miserable tips.. in the last couple of minutes I took a ten dollar bribe from a customer. Our bar time is a few minutes fast.. so we end up closing and doing last calls a little early. Well, at this point it had been last call for shots for a few minutes. A man came up and asked for a beer and I said the standard "Sorry shots only, would you like a jager bomb?" He says no and takes out more money and I repeat myself. And again he takes out more money. He says "give me four beers and I'll let you keep the change." I saw the twenty and decided I could use that ten dollar tip.

And I didn't feel bad about it at all. I wouldn't even really get into trouble if I was caught by a manager because there is no clock around the side bar so keeping time is difficult.. you have to really listen to the DJ.. and I could just say that I didn't hear her call it.

So that was the highlight of my Friday night.

Saturday night I was at the main bar last on. The third on bartender wanted the night off so he gave his shift to a new guy who has never worked the main bar.. it was a disaster. The first thing the newbie did when he got put on was ignore the four customers waiting for drinks and went to help a cocktail waitress. The problem here is that we have a bartender who serves the cocktails and she was doing just fine. There was no reason for him to help her and ignore the people waiting. This is the same newbie who helped customers on that Thursday when he was supposed to be just helping cocktails. He can't seem to get it straight.

He also served one drink at a time. It was killing me to watch him. He would seriously walk up to a GROUP of people and ask one person at a time. Someone would ask for a beer and he would go get it, take the money, change the money, and bring it back, AND THEN serve the next person in the group. I know he is new, but how hard is it to remember more than one drink, especially if one of them is a beer. So, the manager had to put me on really early because this kid had no idea what was going on. That didn't bother me because I had a chance to make more money on my register, which equaled a higher tip out.

Anyway, there were about a million tabs and we only have so many clipboards. So there were about 5-8 tabs on each little clipboard. This means when someone tells me to put it on their tab I have to look through about 35-45 tabs before I can find their name and write it down. To make matters worse, the tabs hang from the top of the bar... which I can BARELY reach. So I'm on my tippie toes looking through tabs and one of the security guys is standing in front on me.. on the customer side of the bar .. drinking (he had the night off). And he proceeds to hit my hand while I'm looking through the tabs.. so I lose my spot and have to start looking through them all over again. He thinks this is funny when I tell him to stop. And then he does it five more times. Until I slam my hands down and tell him to stop because he's being a pain in the ass. Seriously, an employee should know not to screw with a bartender while their busting their ass.

So here I am .. trying to make up for the slack on my side of the bar because I'm working with the newbie on a very busy night. And as I'm going through the tabs again I notice that the newbie is writing the BARS tab totals on the cocktails side of the paper. Here's the basics of tabs we print out a slip of paper, write B and C on the top, and draw a line down the middle.. the last name then is written on the bottom of the paper. Anything the bar rings up goes on the B side. Anything the cocktails ring up goes on the C side. So this brilliant guy is putting the our sales on the C side. So I have to pull him aside and tell him to knock it off.

For some reason .. probably because he's never worked at the main bar before.. he thinks that he can't serve anyone on my side of the bar. Well my side faces the door.. so a lot of people line up on my side. His side faces the pool table where people mostly just "hang out". Ok so when he doesn't have anyone to serve in his 10 feet of bar space.. he just stands in the way. He doesn't try to help anyone on my side.. or the other 40 feet of bar space.. he just stands in the way. To prove his laziness even more.. while I was putting ice in my three cups because I had three drink orders to fill.. he starts pouring his liquor into the cup I just filled with ice and was about to use. Yes. that's right. He can't even grab his own cups of ice. He just lets me make them and then steals mine.

So anyway, I had quite the night trying to manuever between and make up for the newbie's mistakes. I would have been more pissed.. but I made over two hundred dollars more than him on my register and went on about a half hour later than him (I made 950 in two hours and he made 715 in two and a half).. so I got my revenge by taking home more money.

And then as I was about to leave.. I remembered I had worked early that day (4-9) and went to grab the cup of tips the waitress said she left me for helping her all day. Oh yeah.. she left me a dollar. A freaking dollar. Why even waste your time? Granted it was slow during the day.. but I tipped her our at least thirty dollars from credit cards.. and she also had quite a few cash tabs. And she's supposed to leave 15-20%. She could have at least given me five bucks.

Overall, I had a shitty week. I made less this week than I have in quite a while.. and it's only going to get worse with the holidays arriving.