Behind Bars

The life of a bartender: it's not easy. Dealing with drunken fights and customers demanding service are tasks with which Kilroy's bartender Sara Hounshell and manager/bartenders Eric Easton and Doug Lorgeree are all very familiar. \nThey all fell into the profession in similar manners. Looking to make some money, they began their careers as servers, or in Hounshell's case, as a shot girl. "I don't think anybody really wants to be a bartender, and then they realize how much money they're going to make and they kind of get stuck there," Easton says. \nWhile all three have crazy stories from their nights (or in some cases years) behind the bar, one thing is the same for all three -- they are doing it for the money. The more a person tips a bartender, the more likely and frequently they will be served.\n"You know who's a good customer, and you know who gets wasted every night," Hounshell says. "It's very funny to be on this side of the bar, to see who hooks up with whom, because it's the same group of people every night, and they just kind of mesh. But it's funny because people don't think you remember them, and people forget that they're drunk and you're sober, and you remember who pissed you off, and you remember names and faces."\nTo get in the good graces of the staff, the bartenders recommend leaving good tips and having patience and respect.\n"Give us respect, and we will respect you right back," Easton says. "It's really annoying when people are snapping their fingers at you trying to get your attention. That is not going to make me want to serve them any faster."\nAverage tipping is around 20 percent, while generous patrons will tip around 30 to 40 percent. As Hounshell, Easton and Lorgeree would verify, those will be the patrons they remember. "I am going to serve the people who are going to make me my money first," Easton says.\nFrom the other side of the bar, a bartender's life seems very glamorous, making those who pour the drinks all the more attractive. Both Easton and Lorgeree say that one of the biggest perks to being a male bartender is meeting girls. From their accounts, it appears the women don't mind the attention. \n"I've only had a few numbers just given to me," Easton says. "I do know other guys who have just gotten numbers thrown at them. Constantly. 'Here's my credit card receipt, here's my number.' Girl bartenders are even worse. You give a girl bartender your number the odds of you actually getting a call from that girl are about is point-one percent, if that. It just doesn't happen." \nFor men out there looking to pick up a woman in the bar, these ladies' men suggest not getting drunk.\n"It's a lot harder to pick up a girl when you're going on and on sounding like Homer Simpson," Easton says, "unless you find a girl who's as drunk as you are, and that's probably never good." \n"If you're going to hit on a girl, compliment her eyes, not her ass," adds Hounshell.\nWorking with the drunken youths of this nation -- people who can potentially say and do the weirdest, funniest and most dangerous things -- provides those working behind the bar with a multitude of entertaining stories. \nFor instance: the first time Easton caught two patrons having sex in the bathroom. "When I went into the bathroom to break it up," he says, "the guy looks over the stall and goes 'Just give me five more minutes, man.'" \nEaston says there are funny things every night.\n"Then I saw a guy pee on a girl one night. She felt something warm going down the back of her leg and she was in shock. She didn't do anything, she just left."\nLorgeree has similarly funny stories.\n"Probably the funniest thing I've ever seen people do is scream as they're coming down the stairs at Sports, then slipping and falling at the top and falling all the way down and then having to get up and look at everyone laughing at them," Lorgeree says. \nNot all of their stories are comical. When people are drinking, they don't always make the best decisions and subsequently can make a choice which will effect their lives, the lives of their friends and the bar itself. All three bartenders can recall 21st birthdays when the celebration ended at the hospital. \nIn attempts to combat these occurrences, bartenders closely monitor the group, and they have ways of distinguishing the birthday boy or girl. For example, at Kilroy's on Kirkwood, a birthday girl/boy gets a T-shirt, making it very easy for the staff to pick that person out of the busy crowd. \n"The customer doesn't think, 'I can die from alcohol,' and his friends don't realize 21 shots over the course of three hours is going to kill you," Easton says. All three say that by sneaking around, customers put all people concerned in jeopardy. The bar could be shut down, the new 21 year old could get sick beyond repair and the friends would be held accountable.\nBesides the long hours, with crowded rooms filled with stress and smoke, these bartenders can spend nine hours on their feet working the bar. It's a tough job and, when life revolves around alcohol, it makes it hard to come into work some morning after a long night out on their night off. \nAs Hounshell jokes, "It doesn't matter if you're hung over. You've got to pour the beer. It's the only job where you can come into work with alcohol on your breath"