Why?

At first I thought bartending would be something I’d love because it seemed so satisfying - like the closest thing I could do to working construction. I’ve always envied construction workers. In my mind their days would go something like this: get up, go to work, hammer nails for 8 straight hours, come home exhausted, drink an earned beer. The idea of coming home physically exhausted from a job was so appealing. Don’t get me wrong I’ve come home exhausted after sitting in a writer’s room for 10 hours but that’s because my brain is fried from listening to people joke, tell stories, pitch stories, argue and bitch about the television business. Physical exhaustion is different. It feels more earned somehow. Or maybe that’s just some working class notion I can’t shake.

I wanted a job where I didn’t get notes on the work I was doing. I wanted a job that was less subjective than writing a script. Your drink tastes bad? Fine, tell me what you want in it and I’ll make it. There, that better? Good. Next? The boundaries for interpretation would be a little more confined. And there would be nothing to take personally -- “not responding” to my cocktail? I don’t care. I didn’t invent it. I’m just the messenger. Talk to Mr. Boston; he wrote the book on this shit.

Of course within the first hour of my first night of actually working, not training, but really working behind the bar, all the above went in the shitter. People do bitch about their drinks. Everyone has a different way of making “their” drink and yes, you do hurt my feelings when you push away the full Cosmo I made for you and ask for a Chardonnay. Oh well.

But here’s what I love about bartending:

For five hours you can think of nothing else besides the task at hand. I can’t think about:
1) How fat I am.
2) How I didn’t workout earlier that day.
3) How I didn’t get staffed on that show.
4) How old my mother is getting.
5) How fat I am.
6) How I’m not going to eat tonight.
7) How I’m not going to drink tonight.
8) How to write another pilot that no one cares about.
9) How to think up new ideas for the show I am working on.
10) How fat I am.