Personal reputations are huge
here on campus, especially when it comes to bar life. Although frowned upon by
the owners of the bars, everyone knows the bartenders heavily reduce the final
total of tabs for their friends. It’s a common practice across campus that
helps the owners because it gets people out to the bars, but helps the friends
because it leaves their wallet a little more full. I have a friend on campus; I
will call him “Brad,” who does this for my group of friends and me. We always
go to him when he is working because we know he will slash our tab at the end
of the night. That is his reputation amongst us.
He also understands that he has
that reputation. This is because in order to be a bartender, you need to win
bar battles. A bar battle is a competition for the highest totals between
certain doormen at a bar who have been working hard. These totals are typically
heavily influenced by the doormen’s friends, which come out and spend their own
money in order to gain the blessing of having a friend bartender at that bar.
Brad understands that we supported him in his quest to get a promotion both in
name and in pay, so he must pay it forward to those who got him there. All Brad
must do to maintain this reputation is to continue to keep us happy, which he
likes to do anyways because he is our friend.
There are some situations where
Brad strays from his reputation as the good bartender, and that is when the bar
is completely empty and he has no one else buying drinks from him. When this
happens, the drinks that Brad “gave away” are much more noticeable at the end
of the night when there is significantly more alcohol missing than sales at his
register. When this occurs, he could lose his job, which is bad for both Brad
and our friend group. When this happens, he happily tells us there is nothing
he can do for us and we oblige because if he loses his job, every party is
worse off.
There is a way for Brad to
“cash in,” and ironically enough this happened to Brad the last time he went
out. He ordered from a friend that was bartending all-night. He ordered drinks
for himself, his friends, and even some other people all thinking that and the
end of the night he will receive a small tab. Upon closing his tab, he looked
at his total and to his surprise, $212. No warning, no nothing, just an
astronomical amount of money he was now on the hook for. Here, this bartender
“cashed in” on Brad. By not telling him that she was charging him for full
drinks, he was under the impression he had a lot more money to spend than he
did. Had he knows previously that he was being charged full price, he would
have stopped ordering for others and possibly even himself. The bartender
benefitted from this situation because she added money to her totals and she
looked good in front of her manager for having high sales totals. Even though
these sales totals were not necessary to not tip off her manager, she did this
anyway and had some immediate gain, and because of this, she also lost the
reputation of a good bartender in his eyes. This hurts her because if she was
to have a bar battle, and she needs his and his friends support, not only do we
no longer want to support her, most likely we can’t even afford to.
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