The Meanest Old Bartender in Austin

Saturday, April 14th, 2012

I read this piece Meanest ol’ bartender in Austin dead at 95, by John Kelso on Statesman.com in 1995, and I was struck by the following lines:

If you walked into the Dry Creek Cafe, you knew you’d get verbally whiplashed by Sarah, known affectionately as “the meanest bartender in Austin, Texas.” And she didn’t mind the reputation.

Still, Sarah was loved by many of the folks at the receiving end of one of her spoken-word canings.

How do they do it?  How come some bartenders can treat their customers like crap, and yet they are loved, they  make lots of cash, and their many regulars keep coming back for more and more and more.  I know for sure that I, personally, could never get away with it, and I know, too, that many bartenders do exactly that, and they thrive on it.

I’ve known lots of gruff bartenders in my time, and I’ve loved spending time in their bars, too.  Take Leo Dylewsky, for instance.

We got Leo the Chuckle T-Shirt as a joke.

You can see that he was highly amused, right?

Leo Dylewski was not a bartender.  He was a chef.  But he was one of those guys who would threaten you with physical violence in the most graphic terms, insult you, and the horse you rode in on, and yet everyone who ever met him just loved the man.  Leo might not have served drinks for a living, but he was the epitome of a gruff bartender who was, nonetheless, a very popular man in his own right.

These days I can get away with insulting people from time to time, but I’m 57 years old*, for God’s sake, and I learned how to do this successfully only in recent years.  When I was behind the stick in the seventies and eighties I tried to be nice to everyone cos it was the only way I could present myself successfully.  If I threw out an insult, I’d most likely have lost a customer.

When I saw the article about the meanest bartender in Austin, Texas, then, I was reminded of Leo, and I started to hark back to the days when he would play at being the toughest mo-fo in the bar–he was an ex-Navy Seal, too, so he knew how to handle himself if need be.  How did he pull it off? I wondered.  It wasn’t too long before the answer came to me.  Leo was gruff, but his intentions were always good.  He was never really mean-spirited.  The love behind his actions always shone through.

I’ve also known bartenders who were outwardly nice, but there was something about them that made me wary.  Devious sorts, I guess you’d call them.  And the intentions behind their actions shone through, too.  They never seemed to last long at any one job.

What I’m trying to get at, I guess, is that in order to be a true bartender, it’s important that your intentions are honorable, and that you’re true to your self.  I can insult people now because I have finally learned how to do it with love.  Had I tried it when I was younger I could never have pulled it off.  And all of the above is just some food for thought.  Something to chew on for a while.

Leo moved to Florida at some point, though I can’t remember exactly when, and I heard from him in the mid-1990s when he called to tell me he had terminal lung cancer.  “Nobody told me that smoking 40 cigarettes a day for twenty-odd years would do that to me,” he joked.  He’d had chemo, too, and he’d lost all his hair.  “I look like Uncle Fester,” he told me.  God bless you, Leo Dylewski.  I don’t plan on joining you for quite some time, but if you can keep that barstool next to you open, I’ll be happy to stand you a scotch on the rocks when I get there.  As long as you don’t threaten to stick a ball-point pen through my ear-drum, that is . . .

*this piece was written in 2009.

Posted in Mindful Bartending |

Mindful Reading

Tuesday, April 10th, 2012

A friend asked me recently to recommend some books on spirituality, and this caused me to think hard about what I’ve been reading in recent years, and which books had had the most impact on me.  Here’s what I came up with:

One of my teachers has been Eckhart Tolle, so you might want to think about reading some of his books.  “A New Earth” is really good.

Deepak Chopra has also figured big in my awakening, and I highly recommend his Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire.  Creating Affluence is also a good book.

Ram Dass has become my favorite teacher in the past couple of years.  He attacks very serious subjects very seriously, and he has a fabulous sense of humor about absolutely everything.  His Love, Service, Devotion, and the Ultimate Surrender: Ram Dass on the Bhagavad Gita  is A MUST READ.  It’s available on audio-book, as is most every book I’m recommending here.

This brings us to the Bhagavad Gita, a monster of a book that I avoided for years, but it’s another of those books that serves well if you’re walking a spiritual path.  Stephen Mitchell’s translation is easy to understand.

The books by Seth, an entity channeled by Jane Roberts, can be pretty tough-going, but I learned much from them.

And finally I’ll throw in The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz.  It’s a fabulous book that I must have read at least half a dozen times by now.

Posted in Mindful Bartending |

An Equal and Opposite Reaction

Friday, April 6th, 2012

I was reminded this week, by an old teacher of mine, that anger is infectious, and if we can try to become immune to that infection, we can save ourselves an awful lot of despair and frustration.

If, for instance, a guest at the bar starts yelling about having waited too long, rather than screaming back at him/her something like, “CAN’T YOU SEE I’M BUSY?  YOU’LL HAVE TO WAIT YOUR TURN LIKE EVERYONE ELSE!” you instead look the customer in the eye and say, “I am terribly sorry, I’m really trying to be as fast as possible, please let me get you your drinks straight away so you don’t have to wait a second longer than necessary,” you’ll most likely find that the customer will be immediately soothed, and their anger will dissipate.

You’ll feel good about yourself if you follow this path.  Promise.

Posted in Mindful Bartending |

Bartender Checklist

Monday, March 19th, 2012

The following article originally appeared in March, 2009

I recently got a letter from a guy who reads my San Fran Chron column and was looking for a bit of advice:

“I’m an old-school guy and I love Bourbon and Branch.  Any other bars of that genre you can recommend . . .  I like old-school drinks: Old Fashioned, Sazerac, Aviation, Manhattan, etc.,” he wrote.

This was my reply:

“My very best advise to you is to ask the guys behind the bar at Bourbon and Branch.  Bartenders know that you won’t go to their bar every single time you go out, and they like to be the ones to turn you on to somewhere else that’s cool.  The bartenders at B&B know your taste, and I’m betting they’ll not only steer you in the right direction, but they might also give you the name of a bartender to ask for, and before you know it you’ll have new places to go and new bartenders to look after you.  Remember to tell the new bartenders which bartender sent you”

This question made me hark back to 30+ years ago when I was tending bar on the Upper East Side of New York, and I started remembering all sorts of unwritten rules that bartenders followed back then.  And not one of them had anything to do with mixing drinks.  These were rules we followed in order to make our customers feel like they were being looked after.

I’m quite sure that you guys who tend 21st-century bars follow much the same formulas as we did back then, but it never does any harm to look at some sort of check-list and remind ourselves of the guidelines that lead to us being the best bartenders we can possibly be.  Here are just a few thoughts, then.  I’d love to see this list grow, so if you have suggestions, send ‘em on, and we can take a look at them.

Great Bartenders make sure that newcomers feel welcome.  This can be done by merely introducing the newcomer to one of your regulars or, if someone is new to your neighborhood entirely, it’s great to tell them where they can get great Chinese food, which is the best specialty food store, the most reliable laundry, etc., and don’t forget to give them the number of a good taxi company, too–you never know when they’ll need someone to drive them home.

Great Bartenders assess situations using their eyes, ears, and their intuition, and if need be, they deal with said situations as soon as is appropriate.  Never hesitate–your gut will tell you when to speak up.

Great Bartenders make sure that nobody insinuates themselves onto another customer if it’s apparent that the customer on the receiving end doesn’t want the attention.

Great Bartenders do their best to make sure all guests get home safely.  This can mean taking car keys from some folk, of having a responsible person walk somebody home in some cases.

Great Bartenders teach bar etiquette to customers who might not know it.  Stuff like, “No, you can’t send that guy a drink until I ask him if he wants a drink with you,” and “Don’t leave your bag on the barstool and expect me to look after it while you’re in the bathroom.”

Posted in Mindful Bartending |

90 Percent of Success is Down To . . .

Friday, March 2nd, 2012

I’m about to let you in on what I think might be the biggest reason I get enough work to keep me busy 365 days per year.  And I think that if you apply it to your career, you’ll find that it might work very well for you, indeed.  Ready?  Here it is:  I’m pretty easy to work with.

It’s not quite as simple as that, but to paraphrase Woody Allen I can tell you with absolute certainty that

90 percent of success is being easy to work with.

Now let’s look at what that means, and before we get down to how to make yourself easy to work with, let’s take a look at the parameters you might want to think about setting.  Here’s what I refuse to do:

• I won’t lie about whether or not I think any product is good or bad.
• I won’t allow anyone to put words into my mouth.
• I won’t accept work from a company that mandates that I can’t accept work from another company.

And here’s a list of things I highly recommend you think about incorporating into your work ethic:

Never agree to do something you don’t want to do.

Always meet deadlines.  This means being on time for your shift behind the bar, and/or coming through on time with a new drink recipe that you’ve been hired to create.

Communicate, communicate, communicate.  This means that, if for some reason you’re not going to meet a deadline, or you’re going to be late for your shift-because we all know that shit does happen, after all-LET SOMEONE KNOW.

Help promote your competition.  This is something I learned years ago from Deepak Chopra, and believe me it pays off in spades.

Never badmouth anyone, ever.  This is a tough one.  Some people just piss you off, right?  Me, too.  And I can’t claim to live up to this rule 100% of the time, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that every time I say something bad about anyone at all, I feel bad about saying it almost immediately.  When we badmouth others, what we are really saying is that we are better than they are.  And that’s never true.  Never.

Here’s an example of how best to handle the last two points:  If someone asks you your opinion about a certain bartender who you don’t have a high opinion of, instead of putting them down, you might say something like, “Personally I prefer the style of Jim Smith behind the bar.”  Like I said, these are tough issues to live by, but I promise you’ll be happier if you concentrate on the positive.

Don’t be a prima donna.  You are no better than anyone else.  And neither am I.  If you never agree to do anything you don’t want to do, you’ll never have to imply that you’re too good to do that.

Never pretend to be good at anything that you’re not good at.  If you’re very fast behind the bar, but not very creative, tell that to whoever is interviewing you for a job.  That way they’ll never be disappointed if they hire you.

To the point above I’d like to tell you right now that I fit into that “fast but not very creative” category, though I must say that I’m a little more creative these days than I was, say, 5 or 6 years ago.  Why?  Because I’ve been learning from younger, more creative bartenders.  That’s why.  Keep learning.  It’s a lifelong proposition.

If, say, you’re a bar consultant, and a bar owner asks you to accomplish 4 things for them, and you’re no good at one of those tasks, hire someone to work with you on that task.  You’ll make only 75% of the fee, but your client will be happy, and you’ll get more work that way.

I think that just about wraps up what I have to say for the time being.  I’d love to hear comments, though, so please let me know what you think.

Posted in Mindful Bartending |

The Man with the Penny Tip

Friday, February 24th, 2012

Some customers get on your bloody nerves, right?  They get right under your skin.  They know how to wind you up, they know how to push your buttons, and if they don’t go too far there’s not a damned this you can do about it.  You gotta take it in good part, right?  Smile at their cheap shots.  And perhaps pull back a little on the amount of gin in their G & Ts.  There’s another way to deal with them, though, and you might want to think about trying it out.

In the mid-1970s a guy came into Drake’s Drum, the joint I was working at the time, and ordered a Singapore Sling.  I’d never seen him before.  I made him the drink–and I should point out that we didn’t use the classic Singapore Sling recipe at Drake’s Drum, but then again, neither did anyone else at neighborhood joints in the seventies.  Nevertheless, I made him a decent sling and he drank it with no complaint.  As he was coming to the end of his drink I walked over to ask if he’d like another but he declined.  He looked me dead in the eye, put a single penny on the bar, and said, “I like to be popular.”  He stood, turned his back, and disappeared into the night.

I’ve no need to tell you how pissed off I was.  A penny tip.  A bloody penny tip.  I never got upset when people stiffed me–it’s swings and roundabouts after all–but leave me a penny tip and I’m one very pissed off bartender.

Two nights later he came back, and he had another Singapore Sling.  I made it with 1/2 ounce of gin and 2 ounces of grenadine.  He paid, drank his drink, and left.  No tip.  But he drank that awful drink and then he smiled at me before he left.  The *** was playing with me.

A couple of nights later he came in again, and the same thing happened a second time.  He got a rotten drink, drank it, paid for it, stiffed me, and once again he gave me a big smile before he left.  How the hell could I get to this man?

The following Friday night at around eleven, the bar at Drake’s Drum was packed, regular customers were waving double-sawbucks at me and screaming for drinks, and in walked the Singapore Sling guy.  He stood at the back of the crowd and he smiled at me.  I smiled back.  And suddenly I knew what I had to do.  I ignored my regulars, I made him a pretty good Singapore Sling, and I handed it to him over the crowd,

“It’s on the house, mate,” I told him.  “Great to see you again.”

I never saw the man again.

Next time your most annoying customer comes in, try thinking about why he or she enjoys needling you so much.  It has something to do with them, not you.  Are they, perhaps, looking for a little love and understanding but they’re not quite sure how to go about getting it?

It’s a possibility.  Perhaps you could think about changing the way you react to them and seeing what happens.  After all, if he thinks he’s an ***, and you think he’s ***, chances are he’s going to act like an ***.  If you stop believing that, you’ve cut the odds that he’ll behave like an *** in half.  It’s worth trying, doncha think?

Posted in Mindful Bartending |

Hey! Teacher! Leave Them Kids Alone

Monday, February 13th, 2012

As I pointed out in The Joy of Mixology, I owe much to Ted “Dr. Cocktail” Haigh. He was the guy who, soon after Bartender’s Bible was published in 1991, took me by the hand and gently showed me how much I didn’t know about the world of cocktails. Oh, I already knew much about the job of the bartender–I first worked behind the bar circa 1965/6 when I was just 14 years old, and although I’d also worked as a bar manager at times, I’d been behind the bar most of my working life since then. Around 25 years behind bars. But Ted showed me the historical side, and lots more besides. Ted was also the man who pointed out that Margaritas and Sidecars are related, leading me to create the families I put together for Joy of Mixology in 2003. Do you ever hear Ted say, “Gary wouldn’t be where he is today if I hadn’t helped him.” No you don’t.
You don’t hear Robert Hess say that, either, or Dale DeGroff, yet all of these guys helped me out as I was coming up through the ranks. Paul Pacult is another guy who was incredibly generous to me in the early years. Incredibly generous. But you’ll never hear him say anything about it. And Dave Wondrich is yet another guy who should get a mention here, too. I think that all of us have had our eyes opened by some of the stuff that he has brought to light in our industry.

I’m not being overly humble when I credit these guys with helping me. In some ways I hope that I’ve helped them, too, and I give myself a bit of credit for being anxious to learn from these people. And I’ve learned from young bartenders along the way, too. Chad Soloman, for instance, was the first guy to show me the “dry shake” when he was working at Pegu Club. And Stan Vadrna showed me the “hard shake,” but I still can’t get that one right.

Lots and lots of bartenders 20-plus years my junior have taught me over the years, and if you’re a real bartender you know that the craft is a living thing–something that we’re constantly learning about.

You’re probably wondering right around now what it is I’m trying to say, so let me get to the point: A few weeks ago I heard that one bartender was putting down another bartender by saying that she taught him everything he knew, and that he isn’t as hot as he thinks he is. This truly saddened me. The best teachers don’t take credit for their students’ accomplishments.

When we put other people down, what we are saying is “I am better than that person.” And guess what, guys? Not one of us is any better than any person who walks the face of the earth. You’re no better than I am. I’m no better than you are. And neither of us is any better than the homeless guy sitting outside Grand Central trying to raise enough cash for a sandwich. Putting other people down is nothing more, and nothing less, than an ego trip. And if you’re on an ego trip, you can’t walk the Path of The Bartender.

Egos are weird things, you know. They keep telling us that we’re doing the right thing when, deep down inside, we know that that isn’t true. It can be hard work to battle the ego, and we don’t always win, but it’s a battle that’s worth fighting. Some of you out there are shaking their heads right now: “Well if he hadn’t started it . . .” you’re thinking. Well I’m here now to ask you to please think about doing yourself, and the rest of us, a huge favor: Let him start it. Be the one to end it by letting it wash right over you. Ignore it. Take the high road. Walk the Path of The Bartender.

Posted in Mindful Bartending |

How Very Dare You?

Wednesday, February 8th, 2012

There are times when I find myself getting really angry.  Know what I mean?

Why the hell does that idiot have to keep telling me about the ball game?  He knows damned well that I couldn’t give a damn about sports, but he just keeps droning on and on.  Makes me want to slap him.

Who the heck does that woman think she is?  I asked her a simple question about her drink, and she gets right in my face.  Jeez, lay off wudja, lady?  I got enough to deal with.

That guy treats me like I’m his personal bloody servant, and he never damned well tips more than five bleeding percent.  He makes me so damned mad.

We all get upset from time to time, even if we know, intellectually, that we’d be far better off if we just shrugged our shoulders, raised our eyebrows, smiled a little, and went on our merry way.  It’s part of the human condition.

As bartenders, though, if we can do our best not to get upset, we’ll be doing ourselves, our bosses, and our customers, a huge favor.  Remember that the bartender is the one person in the bar that everyone counts on.  If we lose it, if we fail to understand what’s going down, if we get irrational, or out of control in any way, shape, or form, then we’re not doing our job properly.

One way to stave off anger is to try to understand what anger is.  Anger is always based on fear.

Deep down, he guy who bores me by insisting on talking about sports, makes me afraid that nobody ever listens to me.  The woman who got in my face when I asked her a question makes me afraid that people think I’m stupid.  And the guy who treats me as though I’m his servant makes me afraid that people think that I’m not as good as they are.  Once we understand that anger is based on fear it becomes far easier to let it subside.

I know damned well that people listen to me, for instance, so the guy who goes on about sports turns out to be just another lonely soul with nobody to talk to, and sports is the only thing he knows much about.  He’s afraid of being on his own, and I’m the only guy around he can talk to.  If I give him a break, and perhaps ask him some questions about sports, I’ll be making him feel good about himself, and that can’t be a bad thing, right?

The woman who got in my face when I asked her a simple question is, herself, afraid.  She’s afraid that she doesn’t make herself understood.  That’s why she bit my head off.  When she does this, if I apologize for not understanding what she wanted.  If I make it sound like it’s my fault, she won’t feel bad about herself, and she probably won’t yell at me.

And the guy who treats me like I’m his servant is scared stiff that people will discover just how insecure he is about himself.  If I give him a break, and play Jeeves to his Wooster, there’s a good chance that he’ll appreciate the fact that I make him look good in front of the other customers.  Whatever he does, though, it won’t kill me to play along.

All this anger, then, from both sides of the mahogany, has been based on fear.  And as bartenders, we have the power to make it all go away, just by showing a little love and understanding.  One jigger at a time, then, we can make this world a better place.  What a great way to use the power that our customers give us, huh?

Posted in Mindful Bartending |

Good Day or Bad Day. The Choice is Yours

Monday, January 9th, 2012

I’ve been reading The Art of Happiness by The Dalai Lama recently, and it occurred to me that being happy, and making other people happy, is something that bartenders might want to focus on.  After all, when we’re behind the bar we aren’t there to serve cocktails–we’re there to serve our guests.  And if we make our guests feel just a little happier than they felt when they walked through that door, then we’re walking the Path of the Bartender.

How can we go about making our customers happy?  One of the easiest ways is to be happy ourselves.  Happiness can be infectious.  I’m not suggesting that we put false smiles on our faces, and I’m not implying that we can be happy all the time, but I would like to suggest that there are times when we can choose to be happy rather than choosing to be sad or angry.  Let me tell you a tale.  A true tale.

A few years ago I was sitting at my desk, looking out on one of the most dismal days I’ve ever seen.  The skies were dark, the wind seemed like it was gale-force, and the rain was pelting down on my driveway and bouncing right back up into the air.  What an absolutely horrible day, I thought.  It’s crappy out there.  I was pretty miserable.

And as I sat there, wallowing in my misery, an email came in from an old friend in Manhattan.  Someone I’ve known since the early seventies when I tended bar at Drake’s Drum.  It contained just one sentence:

Isn’t it a Beautiful Rainy Day?

That email changed my life.  I realized that I had a choice about how I felt about the weather.  I chose to see the beauty in the wind and the rain, and the gorgeous darkened skies.  I chose to be happy that I was warm and dry and had food in my stomach, and if I chose to take the day off work and make myself a big Hot Toddy with a dram or two of fabulous whiskey, then I could do that, too.  Why would the weather make me miserable?  I had so much to be  thankful for.

The weather has never ever gotten to me since that day.  Sometimes the weather has inconvenienced me, but it’s never made me unhappy since I read that email and realized that sometimes we can choose to be happy.  That email changed my life.

Once you know that you can very often choose to be happy, then every time you go to work behind the stick, no matter what mood you’re in, you can ask yourself, “Is it possible for me to choose to be happy right now?”  And if the answer is yes, then you’re walking the Path of the Bartender, because if you’re happy when you’re behind the bar, then guess what?  Chances are that you’ll be making your customers happy, too.

You don’t believe me?  Would you believe The British Medical Journal?  Click here.

Posted in Mindful Bartending |

Our Guests are Our Family

Sunday, January 8th, 2012

To see this in video format click here

I was listening to  Ram Dass on audiobook (Experiments in Truth) the other day, and he told a fabulous story about a conversation he had with his father after he released a set of albums back in the 60s or 70s.  He sold them for $4.50, though he knew that people would pay much more.

“You should be charging at least $9,” his father told him.

“But they only cost $4.50 to put them out,” said Ram Dass.

His father, a very successful businessman and lawyer, couldn’t understand this logic, so Ram Dass asked him about a legal case his father had handled for Ram Dass’ Uncle.

“It was difficult,” said his father.  “I had to do a lot of research and put lots of time into that case, but we won.”

“So you must have charged my uncle a lot of money, right?”

“Of course not!  He’s family,” said his father.

“Well it’s pretty much the same with these albums,” said Ram Dass.  “If you can find someone who isn’t family, I’ll happily burn him.”

As bartenders, it’s good to remember that all of our guests are family.  They are at our bar to make us smile, share some information, give us a hard time, make us angry, confront us with difficult situations, and put money into our tip cups.  Every single one of them is a member our universal family, though.  Try not to burn them, please.

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