UK Barstaff, what are your general bugbears of the job?

11 comments

1. Not an answer, but lol at visiting r/askuk to complain about people spouting inane chatter and asking stupid questions 😉

2. Adults who can’t order rounds properly.

   “2 gins, a vodka, 3 pints and a coke”

   How am I supposed to know you wanted a double Hendricks and tonic, a single beefeater and lemonade, a double vodka coke, 2 fosters and a Guinness from that? Order things properly and we’ll remember the round pretty easy. Going back and forth trying to decrypt 2hat you want is stupid…. especially seeing as it’s probably not the first time the person has ordered drinks at a bar.

   I run a wanky cocktail bar most of the time though and when it comes to splitting the bill at the end if you’re really the type to argue over a few quid among friends and you don’t just want to split the bill evenly and you want to pay for only what you had then do a little bit of maths….you’ve got a calculator on your phone. When I arrive at a table of 10 people who all want to pay individually I’ll ask “how much would you like to pay” to each person and I’ll often get a reply along the lines of….” 2 negronis, a Manhattan, 3 beers, 2 shots and some olives” The bill has been on your table for five minutes….add up what you had…don’t expect the person taking the payment to know the price of everything off the top of their head and /or to sit there and add everything up for each person.

3. Expectation to cover for understaffing that could have been solved by an agency staff I suppose

4. Middle aged men exclaiming “how much?!” when you tell them how much their pint is.

   They’ll usually then proceed to tell you they used to “run pubs” back in their day. I haven’t worked behind a bar for more than 10 years and it still bothers me when I over hear it as a customer.

5. I’ve got a flip question, is it as annoying as I think it is when people ask for drinks piecemeal? I go to the bar and give my order in one hit, eg 3 IPA and a G&T. I get really pissed off when behind someone asking for another drink every time the bar person brings it over.

6. People who order drinks individually, ie “double vodka coke please”, so you make it and give it to them, then “pint of peroni please”, rinse and repeat 5 times. Even worse is when they do that then ask for a Guinness last.

   When they come up to the bar, where all the taps are literally right in front of their face and they go “what have you got on draught?”

   Or when they ask some really vague question like “what shots do you do?” Or “what gins do you have”. If you take 5 seconds to look at all of the bottles behind me, you’ll quite clearly see what we have.

7. On several occasions people of the older generation would come into my chain pub and spout out their entire order at me and then go and sit down.

   I am talking, a table of 4, 4 specific drinks and 4 specific meals.

   I know well train restaurant staff that wouldn’t retain that information let alone little old pint puller me.

   Not to mention this was a place where you order, pay and take your own drinks away with you.

8. When my lady worked in a bar she hates guys (and it’s mostly guys) who walk in absolutely soaked in the cheapest deodorant/aftershave going. Like you can smell them soon as they walk through the front door

9. The pub I used to work at had a jukebox, and there was a sign very clearly on it asking to ask bar staff first if you wanted it on (as we had to turn whatever we were playing off and put the jukebox on). Cue people coming up to me when I was drowning in the Saturday night rush moaning that they’d paid for a song and it wasn’t on (NO BECAUSE YOU DIDN’T ASK FIRST!!!) and yeah, extremely irritating. This girl who was kind of a bitch to me at school tried it once and I had a great time telling her I didn’t care and getting everyone I worked with to ignore her for the rest of the night. People don’t seem to grasp ‘don’t be rude to the people who make your drinks’ lol.

10. I just left after around 10 years and I miss it so much. I always knew I would miss it because I always loved it, but something compelled me to go to college 5 years ago and I ended up with a masters degree (mainly because I was dragging out continuing to work in a bar as long as I could) so I said goodbye to the trade I love.

    I’m sure you’re going on to better things but I’m really struggling to come to terms with the fact that as I’m sat here at my desk in a room of 2 and an office of about 40 in the middle of nowhere; there is now absolutely zero chance of me getting invited to a party by a stranger, bumping into an old friend, enjoying a proper laugh with workmates, chatting up a customer, serving a celebrity, getting free staff drinks, get tipped, sending someone over the road to get a leg of salmon for the chef, etc. all of which were just another day behind the bar. Every shift was a mystery, now every day is the same. You might not want to hear whatever that customer is saying but could you please tell me because I’m done getting daily updates on what medication my colleague’s dog is on.

    So my bugbears would be that bar staff are in general treated like shit by employers; given zero-hour contracts where shifts aren’t guaranteed. Even then once on a shift you can be sent home if the bar isn’t busy enough. Sometimes there will be someone there happy to go home early but often people need those wages and there’s nothing they can do about it.

    Two places I worked at also just shut for good without having informed the bar staff up until that night; we literally all lost our jobs on the spot after a busy Saturday night shift. And that happened to me twice, six years apart. The second time there were rumours and I kinda knew, and luckily had managed to find a new job already, but the first time was just out of nowhere. But it’s horrible when you work somewhere and get on with everyone so well, and there are all sort of different friendships, relationships, in-jokes, memories. etc. between all the staff and that is all just dismantled at the drop of a hat when the owner decides it’s time to shut.

    And my final bugbear, and this was my biggest one; bar staff who constantly moan and grumble about working. Fair enough the odd customer can be a nightmare but there are bar staff out there who find a reason to moan about anything, and it sort of becomes their personality (perhaps a few in these comments haha), but I much preferred to work in a team that just took the rough and saved their energy for the good/funny/happy times, of which there was usually always something just around the corner. A difficult customer could usually be twisted into an amusing story instead of just a negative moan, so it was more just the attitude than the moaning. Moan all you want but at least try to make it funny. And I did always make sure I worked in busy bars where stuff was going on, the few quiet places I worked were quite soul destroying at times, a bit like my new work.

    I hope you find the jump easier than I have haha best of luck.

11. – String ordering

    – Moving furniture then not moving it back

    – Waving money or being like “me next”

    – “Make it strong”

    – “Whatever Barry’s having” (I have no idea who he is or what he’s drinking”

    – Trying to tell me how to do my job

    – Ordering then buggering off to the toilet whilst I’m waiting for payment

    – being on the phone and ordering

    – If your drink hasn’t been made right but not actually accepting a fresh one, just sitting there moaning.

    – “when you’re ready”

    – “Beer” shandies