What I think about when I'm ordering drinks

Please and thank you.

I was speaking to a mate a while back about Murakami’s What I talk about when I talk about running and how it had a big impact on him when he first read it. And when he revisited it more recently, it fell a bit flat and didn’t spark the same flames as last time. But it got me thinking and so a new series is born. Read the first story in the series here.

It’s so easy to be a good person when you’re ordering a drink. Easiest thing in the world for most people. The key, often overlooked, is to treat the people serving you, as people. And if you sprinkle in some appreciation, it’ll go a long way. If you need some extra incentive, think of them as friends you haven’t met yet. If you look the person taking your order in the eye, smile, (bonus points for answering their greeting question – “how you going?” – instead of just listing your order like you’re a robot ordering from another robot), and say thank you, you’re so far out of the fuckwit zone, you’ve all but guaranteed any food you may order will be saliva-free. There’s a special place in hell for people who’re rude to hospo crew – that place is an eternal Starbucks line and when they get close to the front, a bunch of boomer cyclists clip-clop in and cut the line. And they’re all Sisyphus, so just as they’re about to finish their order, more of their mates walk in and cut the line.

I worked in hospitality for years. Mainly pubs but also some cafe and event work too. I hated it mostly. My favourite shift was Wednesday nights at Windsor Castle, a pub famous for its Sunday sessions where people who hadn’t slept since Friday sat slumped in the shade, hiding huge pupils behind bigger sunglasses and flat, warm half-drunk-never-to-be-finished pints. 

But Wednesdays were different. There were no loose units coming down, far fewer dickheads and Wednesday night was just me and Nathan behind the bar that usually had six people on the weekends. Wednesday night customers seemed to be there either because work had beaten them for the week and they needed a little blow out or they couldn’t be bothered making dinner. Most were there for a cheap meal really – I think it was a pie or maybe a steak special. People were sober, courteous and mostly eager to get involved in whatever inane but never boring and sometimes quite funny conversation Nathan was weaving.

‘You think dogs have sexy dreams?’

‘Hello Nathan, sorry I’m late.’

‘Sure, they’re animals but we’re just clever monkeys – some of us slightly less hairy,’ he tried to grab my beard, ‘but we’re just animals who overthink our emotions. So why wouldn’t they have sexy dreams too? It’d be other sexy dogs, obviously, but do you reckon some of the pervert dogs dream of a sexy human leg to hump?’ Nathan’s laugh started in his belly, rose into his chest and burst out his face, making his shoulders bounce.

A middle-aged man in a grey pinstripe suit walked in tucking his tie into his right pocket. It wasn’t a boxy, daggy suit like older real-estate guys wore. This was more fitted, maybe a banker, almost definitely a rhyming slang corporate banker, whatever he did for work.

‘What do you reckon, mate?’ Nathan asked the man who looked like he just wanted to find his mates. Maybe he needed the toilet. ‘Do you think dogs have sexy dreams?’ Nathan was great at hospo. I was not. While he treated customers as entertainment and entertained them in the process, I often got caught up in my head, reading microexpressions and quickly becoming furious that people could think it was okay to be so rude to the person making them a drink. My problem was I took things too personally, and still do really. Except now I can usually remember it’s their issue, not mine, although often after the fact and while I’m overthinking whatever they did. I also no longer work in hospo, which has dramatically improved my mood and the quality of hospitality service in Australia.

There were three good things about hopso – the people I worked with (most of the time), the cheap/free booze, and the rare thrill of humbling rude pricks. Nathan was good at it – more subtle and polite about it than I could ever be. I got to use one of his lines one time and watching someone have their first-ever self-reflective moment in real time was sublime.

Of course he was a white boomer in a suit. He walked up and slapped a $100 note on the bar and stood side on, surveying the room. He looked over his shoulder and let out a short, loud whistle. My eyes lit up, my face flushed hot with probably poorly veiled contempt. If I was a dog, I would’ve growled and bared my teeth. The manager who was once kicked out of his own pub for breaking the one house rule: One person per cubicle, had two sayings. ‘We are in the service industry, so serve the customer.’ And ‘If you have time to lean, you have time to clean.’ He was a good boss, always backed his staff when a customer cracked the shits. Then stiffed me $800 so good and bad I guess. Everyone deserves to be served, even rude pricks, but not everyone deserves your best.

‘Did you lose your dog, mate?’

His head snapped around. Words failed him. Nathan wouldn’t have put as much venom in it as I did.

‘You whistled. I figured you must’ve lost your dog.’

Long silence.

‘Do you want a beer while you look?’

‘Stella.’

‘A big one, or a little one?’

‘Big one.’

‘Of course.’

Everyone loves good hospo service but no one appreciates it more than someone who’s worked in hospo before. Why? Because they appreciate how hard it is to maintain that love for humanity in the face of pretty persistent fuckwittery. Until you’ve worked an 11-hour shift finishing at 2am having been berated for an incorrect drink order you didn’t mess up, cleaned vomit out of a urinal (and poo out of a sink), had to explain to a busy, irate chef that one of the dozens of steaks was slightly too well done (it wasn’t), and been called 'chief’, ‘champ’, ‘knackers’ and ‘oi’ countless times, you can’t truly appreciate the willpower and deep empathy it takes to keep a genuine smile on your face and hold the mental space for playful conversation. It’s quite inhuman really.

So next time you’re ordering a coffee, beer, vodka soda fresh lime or whatever craft beer, pet nat, skinsy thing you drink, remember to just be kind and, aside from your drink, ask nothing of your server. Oh and tip.

Anyway, sometimes, that’s what I think about when I’m ordering drinks.