People go to bars to be taken care of, and the one and only goal of the bar staff is to make the customers happy. A good bartender or server treats each and every customer who walks through the door exactly the same, hopefully with a friendly greeting and a smile. But how the customer is treated after that depends on how they act. Bar employees are just like everyone else, and they respond well to good customers, and respond poorly to bad customers.
Sometimes, people go to bars and notice that over the course of the evening the service starts to get a little slower and the drinks don’t seem to taste as good. It might just be because the staff is getting tired after a long night; but it also might be because there are certain things that customers have done that evening that have driven the staff crazy, and the staff is just avoiding those customers like the plague.
It’s pretty well known that being rude, complaining about stupid things, spilling drinks, acting too drunk, and vomiting on the bar will quickly turn the staff of any bar against a customer (and probably get them 86’d); but there are also small things that set the staff off that customers may not even realize they are doing. So, if you want to have a great experience the next time you go to bar, just make sure that you don’t do any of the following things:
Rearrange the Tables
So six friends walk into a bar and find that there just aren’t any free tables that fit six people. This is not a very big problem for them because there are two four-person tables next to each other, so they simply decide to take those two tables and push them together in order to make a table which can fit all of them.
While doing this may seem innocent and harmless, it might actually cause problems for the bar staff. When tables are pushed together and a big group crowds around them it can be much harder for the server or bar back to reach the entire table to serve drinks or collect empty glasses. Basically, it makes it harder for the staff to do their job and because of this they will just avoid the table completely.
It’s absolutely OK to move chairs and tables around, just ask first and let the staff do it for you.
Order Out of Sync
Keeping customers in a busy bar happy hinges on the ability of the server or bartender to be fast. The last thing they need is to have their time wasted, especially by just one customer or table. Unfortunately, this happens all the time when people order out of sync with the other people at their table.
The following situation happens every night in bars around the world, and never ceases to drive the staff crazy. The server will come to a table to check on a group of four, and two people will order another drink while the other two are still working on their drinks. Then, in the few minutes that it takes the server to bring the two new drinks, the third person will finish and order another drink. So the server has to go back to the bar, get the drink, and when they bring it to the table, now the fourth person wants another drink. For those of you keeping track, that is three trips the server just made to the same table for four drinks, when it could have been done in one.
Once this has happened once or twice, the server will just ignore the table until everyone has finished what they have; leaving the faster drinkers’ glasses empty while their ruder, slower friends catch up. It is always better to just think ahead and order when the server comes than to make them come to the table over and over again.
Play With Fire (Literally)
This particular point only applies to those bars which have candles around the bar as mood lighting, or in places where it is still legal to smoke in bars and restaurants. Human beings have a primordial connection to fire as the bringer of light and warmth, and as such we treat it with wonder and reverence. However, when people get a few drinks inside them, they seem to forget one of the most basic rules that everyone learns in pre-school: don’t play with fire.
There are always those people that think that lighting the menu on fire or making sculptures out of candle wax are a good idea once they have a few drinks inside them. But the very last thing that the bar staff wants to deal with at the end of the night is cleaning wax off the tables; so it’s best to just leave the fire alone.
Ask to Pay Separately
Even those customers who have done everything right over the course of the night can ruin it all with just one simple question: “Can we pay separately?” Most bars have systems where they can keep track of individual tabs and bills, but that only works if the bartender or the server knows that you want to pay separately from the very beginning. Otherwise, the drinks for the table are recorded for the table in general, and not for each person. When paying separately, this becomes a problem.
Firstly, drunk people have no idea how much they’ve had to drink. Invariably, the guy who is slurring his speech and can barely stand up will insist that he only had two beers, and that he will only pay for two. Then the poor person who ends up paying last is on the hook for thirty-four beers they didn’t drink. Secondly, dividing the check simply takes forever to do and prevents the staff from helping everyone else. The best thing you could possibly do is ask for the check, and then take the time to divide it up by yourselves. You will make sure that everyone pays for what they have, and the bar staff will love you and look forward to the next time you come in.
If you want to pay separately, you have to tell the server before your first order. Or, you can just use your elementary school math skills to divide the check up on your own. If you do that, then the staff will eagerly look forward to your next visit.