An ode to Bartending

Loud RnB fills my ears as I lock eyes with the eager and slightly tipsy guest from the crowd of twenty in front of me.

“Two Amaretto Sours, one Whisky Sour, and one Tom Collins, please!”

My mind starts calculating as I try desperately to avoid eye contact with any other customers. Unconsciously, I turn around and grab the three coupes and one highball glass I need. My mind is racing: Cheapest ingredients first, lemon juice, 3 cl in each makes 6 cl in the first shaker on the counter, 3 cl in the second and 3 cl …

A customer leans over the bar:

“One Gin and Tonic, please.”

Being intoxicated and having good manners don’t go well together… Even though he clearly wasn’t trying to be rude, I make it clear that when it’s his turn to order, I will address him, and until then he can wait his turn like everyone else.

I get back to doing 6th-grade math, but this time with 95 decibels of music, drunk sing-alongs and while overhearing intense conversations about the political and economic state of the world right now. What feels like moments later, I look at my watch. It’s almost one o’clock, closing time. The last time I knew what time it was, was five hours ago at eight o’clock, when I had dinner with my colleagues.

We close up the bar, the normal routine. Thirty minutes of cleaning later, it's time for after-hours. Someone ordered one glass of champagne so there’s an open bottle to finish. I pour myself a cold beer instead and, in a mood of simultaneous exhaustion and blissful satisfaction, sit down with my nine colleagues at the table behind the bar.

This is just one of many nights during my time bartending at the cocktail bar Zamenhof in Gothenburg during the summer of 2023. As I increasingly move into the intellectual environments of university and white-collar jobs, there is something I deeply appreciated about working in that bar that stays with me to this day.

Was it intense and sometimes stressful? Absolutely! But this also meant being totally immersed in a state of flow unlike much else.

Was it difficult to learn to recall 65+ drink recipes in an environment so filled with stimuli and distractions that it makes Times Square feel calm? Of course! But doing so satiated my hunger for learning for many weeks.

Was it tough dealing with drunk people and rude customers every week? Definitely! But it taught me more about communication and people skills than any internship at some fancy office ever could.

Looking back at those months of bartending, I understand now what makes me appreciate it so much. It's fundamentally about three things.

The first is the flow that I described in the opening paragraph. When the bar is full and the orders keep coming, you enter a state of full absorption (flow) that is only reachable through activities that totally encompass your entire mind and attention. I feel and believe this is fundamentally one of the best states any person can find themselves in. Being totally absorbed in the moment is why most of us really enjoy a sport, playing an instrument or — let's be honest here — sex. Being allowed to feel this in a job is an incredible opportunity that puts the in-mind experience of bartending far above any other job I’ve ever had.

The second aspect of bartending that I appreciated is how much I was able to learn that summer. Making drinks might sound fairly simple, and in some respects it really is. However in practice there is a lot to learn and perfect in the job. From learning to instantly recall 50+ recipes, to adding up quantities across a complex order, and finally doing it all in an extremely intense environment. It took a good while to even get moderately good at it. The lessons I learned on social interactions from bartending are also worth their weight in gold.

This brings me to the third and final thing that made bartending so enjoyable for me, the social nature of the job. In almost no other job do you interact with more people in a more varied way. On quiet weekdays, I would have long conversations with regulars at the bar. Sometimes I really felt like I was fulfilling the stereotype of a bartender as your therapist. During the stormy and intense weekends, where rapid bar orders made collaboration, synchronization, and mutual reliance between colleagues became the necessity, incredible social bonds would begin to form — crystallizing as you ended the night together with a collective deep breath of calm in the form of a drink.

Would I want bartending to be my full-time job the rest of my life? Gods no! I could never live the lifestyle it requires more than a few years, and frankly I think I would grow bored of not being able to learn anything new after a few years. I do, however, recommend it to any young person looking for a job which will both teach them valuable lessons, and be an experience they will remember forever. Just like I will always remember that night of making Amaretto Sours and Gin Tonics for the exuberant crowd in front of me that I told you about.

I greatly appreciate the memories I made, the lessons I learned, and the flow I experienced bartending. This is my ode to bartending, I hope you enjoy something you do as much as I did bartending!