How I Became a Barmaid
When I first graduated from college in 2002 and moved to New York, it was for an assistant job with the editorial department of a large publishing house. I thought it would be a glamorous and really interesting way to get into editing literature. Maybe I'd discover a great novelist and nurture her career, making us both famous and wealthy in the process.
I did get to read a lot of submitted novels, but only the "slush pile" - and one of the very first things I learned about the state of American literature is that there are a lot of really, miserably bad novelists out there hoping to get published and sending their manuscripts to every publisher they can think of in hopes of hitting the right one. And most writers worth reading in the first place are already represented by agents by the time their manuscript shows up at a publisher - so the rule for the slush pile wasn't "Give your boss the good ones," it was "Give your boss only the spectacularly magnificent masterpieces, and anything you think is a spectacularly magnificent masterpiece probably isn't." Needless to say, since they didn't care very much about the slush pile, I didn't get paid very much to read it.
The one big perk of an editorial assistant job is what we called "editorial lunches." Because we assistants weren't paid very much, it was pretty well understood that at least once a week, we'd take two or three hours for a long, relaxed lunch, and nobody would much care about our absence. In this case, there was a bar just down the block from our office that had some great Friday lunch specials, so more often than not we ended up there for our editorial lunches. It also became a handy place to spend an evening or two a week for drinks after work. Before too long we knew the staff and the managers pretty well, and a friend from work and I decided to do some guest bartending.
As far as I know, guest bartending doesn't happen anywhere besides New York City - or at least it didn't happen where I went to college and I haven't heard about it anywhere else. When you guest bartend, it's a sign you've become a trusted regular. Sure, the bar benefits because guest bartenders always invite dozens of their friends - but they're trusting you to operate the register, pour drinks without making them 99% booze or charging well prices for top shelf, and not get completely plastered yourself. The first night Molly and I tended bar in 2003 was an enormous amount of fun! It was tiring, and my feet hurt afterwards, but I absolutely loved the whole thing. Mixing drinks wasn't difficult, everyone was really friendly, and I made so much in tips that I started rethinking my career path.
I was getting paid crap to do a completely unchallenging job that I didn't enjoy (but hey, at least I had a tiny cubicle). Sure, if I stuck with it for several years, I might make pretty good money and find my way into a position where I'd have some real influence over the editorial direction of the company and the opportunity to help develop some writing careers. But the road to that "if" wasn't looking very good. So a few days after guest bartending I asked Jessica, one of the regular barmaids, if she thought I'd make a good barmaid on a regular, ongoing basis. She told me that Todd, one of the managers, had said something about me being one of the harder working barmaids he'd ever seen there. :-)
So after some minor soul-searching, a month later I was a barmaid. It's been three years, and I haven't looked back. I'm not saying that I never want to do anything more intellectually challenging, but for now I'm having a great time, meeting (mostly) great people, and making pretty good money doing good, honest, hard work.
And boy, do I have some stories to tell. :-) Stay tuned.
I did get to read a lot of submitted novels, but only the "slush pile" - and one of the very first things I learned about the state of American literature is that there are a lot of really, miserably bad novelists out there hoping to get published and sending their manuscripts to every publisher they can think of in hopes of hitting the right one. And most writers worth reading in the first place are already represented by agents by the time their manuscript shows up at a publisher - so the rule for the slush pile wasn't "Give your boss the good ones," it was "Give your boss only the spectacularly magnificent masterpieces, and anything you think is a spectacularly magnificent masterpiece probably isn't." Needless to say, since they didn't care very much about the slush pile, I didn't get paid very much to read it.
The one big perk of an editorial assistant job is what we called "editorial lunches." Because we assistants weren't paid very much, it was pretty well understood that at least once a week, we'd take two or three hours for a long, relaxed lunch, and nobody would much care about our absence. In this case, there was a bar just down the block from our office that had some great Friday lunch specials, so more often than not we ended up there for our editorial lunches. It also became a handy place to spend an evening or two a week for drinks after work. Before too long we knew the staff and the managers pretty well, and a friend from work and I decided to do some guest bartending.
As far as I know, guest bartending doesn't happen anywhere besides New York City - or at least it didn't happen where I went to college and I haven't heard about it anywhere else. When you guest bartend, it's a sign you've become a trusted regular. Sure, the bar benefits because guest bartenders always invite dozens of their friends - but they're trusting you to operate the register, pour drinks without making them 99% booze or charging well prices for top shelf, and not get completely plastered yourself. The first night Molly and I tended bar in 2003 was an enormous amount of fun! It was tiring, and my feet hurt afterwards, but I absolutely loved the whole thing. Mixing drinks wasn't difficult, everyone was really friendly, and I made so much in tips that I started rethinking my career path.
I was getting paid crap to do a completely unchallenging job that I didn't enjoy (but hey, at least I had a tiny cubicle). Sure, if I stuck with it for several years, I might make pretty good money and find my way into a position where I'd have some real influence over the editorial direction of the company and the opportunity to help develop some writing careers. But the road to that "if" wasn't looking very good. So a few days after guest bartending I asked Jessica, one of the regular barmaids, if she thought I'd make a good barmaid on a regular, ongoing basis. She told me that Todd, one of the managers, had said something about me being one of the harder working barmaids he'd ever seen there. :-)
So after some minor soul-searching, a month later I was a barmaid. It's been three years, and I haven't looked back. I'm not saying that I never want to do anything more intellectually challenging, but for now I'm having a great time, meeting (mostly) great people, and making pretty good money doing good, honest, hard work.
And boy, do I have some stories to tell. :-) Stay tuned.