This is a blog about my life as a bartender in Brooklyn. As I am the writer of my day to day life, it is my personality that will prevail. Thus, if you are the kind of person who is offended by cynicism, sarcasm, crude language or inappropriate content, then this is not the blog for you. If you are one of my customers, who decided to Google my blog as someone mentioned it to you, note that I have rules. They are as follows:
1. I will never, ever blog about my regular customers. I love them, I depend on them and we have a mutual relationship of trust that I will never break.
2. I will always blog about the crazy randoms that come in, always. Mine is the bar where people have affairs, drink too much and do funny stuff, and that is writing gold. If you choose to carry our your extramarital affair at my bar, I will be writing about you later, guaranteed.
I am a good person, with good intentions, but know that the bar for me is my place of work, and everyone else gets to use it as a place for relaxation from their work. Have you ever been irritated by your job? Guess what, so have I. So do not be offended if I am in a bad mood or am melancholy about the fact that I start my work day when everyone else gets to go home to their family, or if I am frustrated by the fact that I have finally finished grad school and I can’t get any other job. As I enter into my fourth year working at a restaurant, a job that was supposed to be temporary, note that I will continue to get more and more frustrated. And cynical. And sarcastic. Take it or leave it.
Cate I’ve just read your disclaimer and it led me to write to you. To say that you never write about your regular customers is, of course, untrue. I was very upset that you chose to use only my name in your writing about customers in a very hurtful way. A good person would have told me about what you felt about my behavior. What really hurt more is when you later said you told a vow not to write about regulars because they pay your salary. I know I always tipped you well regardless of whether you bought back or not. I never spoke to Joe I just never came back on your shifts. I still can’t believe you were so mindless that we would not have a negative reaction. I also can not believe that management took no action. If you were frustrated and discouraged that didn’t give you the right to hurt others. I aiways liked you and I am glad you found your dream job. I wish you and Victor well. I would also urge you not to carry out your vendetta against the customers. We don’t deserve it and it doesn’t help you start off a new
life with Victor. It is always better to take the high road and treat people as you would like to be treated. I wish you and Victor a happy life together and a lovely wedding Anne
I spent some time trying to find your name in this blog. As far as I can tell, Mark is the only regular mentioned by name, and in a very complimentary light at that. But then, that is the advantage of gossip: it doesn’t require any proof or independent thought, and it affords the luxury of refusing to admit to reality any evidence to the contrary.
Anne,
I am sorry you have such negative feelings toward me. I don’t know where you got the idea that I was writing terrible things about you, because I assure you I did not. In fact, I would love if you could tell me exactly where I posted the information you claim I did.
As far as calling me mindless, that is a little harsh. The blog was never something I used maliciously, or to harm anyone, rather it was a way for my family out west to keep tabs on what I was up to. In fact, if you read through everything it’s quite boring.
I also was not mindless or inconsiderate when it came to management. Rather, they knew about the blog and were regular readers. Both owners found nothing wrong with the blog.
I have no vendetta against anyone – frankly the cafe customers were not that important to me. I don’t sit around and plot all the bad things I am going to do to people, I’m a little busy for that.
As far as Cafe customer’s not deserving anything negative, however, I have to disagree. In the two years I was there I was yelled at, called pretentious, accused of under-pouring, not buying back enough, not being as good as the other bartenders – if anything the regualrs were people I spent two years trying to like me and if they didn’t, oh well. The cafe customers started all this craziness in the first place – rumors are the worst things to believe, and frankly it’s rumors.
I’m sorry you feel so strongly against me, but seriously, get over it. It’s a cafe. And I’m not there anymore, so have a celebration about it.
Cady