Lounge I owned a bar for 3 years

I owned a bar for 3 years. After a while you quit figuring out who is drunk and who is stupid and just assume they're all stupid. At first you feel sorry for the drunks, but that quickly goes away and you just loathe them generally. They are their own worst enemy. You will eventually have no patience with them. The women drunks are the absolute worst, they are every bartenders nightmare. They know that you can't lay a hand on them so they will scream and yell and act melodramatic until the cops get there. After three years of being in the business I was turning into an alcoholic, drunk every night on the job just to be able to put up with them. Thank God I got out. I knew all the other small bar owners in town and every single one of them was a drunk. If you can't beat them you join them, a saying that's very true. That thing on the TV show Cheers where Ted Danson was the bar owner and bartender but he was a recovering alcoholic. Pure BS. Some Hollywood writers fantasy.

 

More pure BS from EvenBob. Successful bar owners are just like other successful business owners. They aren’t drunks and don’t drink at their own bars, if at all. Failures in business look for excuses and you just did that.

Why couldn’t you “beat” them? Why did you join them? You should have run the business properly, banned alcoholics who hurt the business and built a business with better customers. Not every person who drinks or enters a bar is looking to get obnoxiously drunk. Regular customers will spend good money and want a place where drunks are welcome or tolerated. It’s why it a multi Billion dollar industry. But in your world “everyone” is a drunk and a profitable bar is a Hollywood fantasy.

Thanking God for your own inability to manage a business, now that’s funny and what I would expect from you.

 

This was 40 years ago and they most certainly did drink, every one of them, at their own bar. We had a local bar association and we met once a month for lunch and drinks. So I knew every single one of these guys and we all drank in our own bars. Maybe they don't now , but they sure did then.

"Why couldn’t you “beat” them? Why did you join them?"[/QUOTE]

I did at first, beat them. But when you own a bar the customers are always wanting to buy you drinks. I gradually started accepting them more and more. I eventually joined them because the stress of owning a business like that was just too much for me. I was only 30 years old, and I wasn't prepared for the psychological impact of being continuously surrounded by alcoholics all day. Maybe it's different now. Maybe small bar owners are super strong individuals who don't drink and don't get sucked into that lifestyle. Maybe human nature has changed so much in the last 40 years that it's almost a miracle. Naw...

 

This was in the late 70s and very early 80s. It was a different time, especially in California where I was. If you got a drunk driving ticket it was little more than a slap on the wrist. We used to joke about it all the time. I was still pretty good at cutting people off if I knew they were driving, but it didn't matter they would just go to another bar and continue getting drunk. In late 1980 a California woman formed a group called Mothers Against Drunk Driving, MADD. We all thought it was hilariously funny, although I would eventually know of at least five regular customers of mine that died in drunk driving accidents. It wasn't from leaving my bar, but who knows how many drinks they had in my bar before they went to another bar and drank themselves under the table. By 1982 when I got out of the business MADD was having a real effect on the drunk driving laws in the state. It was no longer a joke to get a DWI. It now involved serious fines and serious restrictions on your driving. And that was only the beginning.

So maybe bar owners don't drink in their own bars now, I don't have the vaguest idea. I have never set foot in another bar since I got out of the business. I don't even go into casino bars. I don't drink in public, it's too expensive. I used to pay $3 for a liter of bourbon, gin and vodka. And sell the bottle one shot at a time for $33. Owning a bar is a license to print money and I had the mortgage paid off in the first 18 months I was there. And that was during a recession. There is no bad time to own a bar. They thrive during recessions and they thrive during boom times. People always gotta drink. I can't stand to pay retail for liquor in a bar knowing what the bar owner pays for it. Plus being in a bar really turns me off. Depressing.

I do have to say I drank nothing but top notch stuff when I had the bar because I wasn't paying retail for it. My favorite drink was Johnnie Walker Black Label, Amaretto, and heavy cream. A very expensive and terribly decadent drink. Scotch and Amaretto is called a Godfather. Scotch Amaretto and cream is called a Godson.

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All you have to do is watch a few episodes of bar rescue.... Do owners still drink on the job..... I would say from the show the number one cause of failure for the business is the owner and the employees getting drunker than Cooter Brown..... It's fun watching the drunks on t.v. but not so much fun having to deal with an obnoxious one in person........I also would think it would be hell not drinking as an alchoholic working a bar.....Not all alchoholics are drunks and not all drunks are alchololics...... One of the main differences is drunks don't have to go to those damned meetings.....

 

It's a constant temptation when you work in a bar because if you're the owner or even a bartender people are always offering to buy you drinks. And after a while it's easier just to go along with them then it is to constantly refuse. So now you're headed down that slope of being drunk half the time. At first my daytime bartender when he was done with his shift would just go to the other side of the bar and sit there for hours off duty letting customers buy drinks for him. I eventually had to make the rule the employees cannot drink in the bar they work at. This is a rule in a lot of bars because it makes it look bad for you if your employees are drunk every night. I've never seen that show you mentioned but it was certainly the case when I was in the bar business, every owner I knew was an alcoholic. A functioning alcoholic, but basically they were drunks. And I was turning into one and I got the hell out.

 

Buying the off duty bartender drinks isn't to just be friendly. They hope that they will be remembered. Regulars and friendly? Now will the bartender make their drinks stronger? Every drinker in town knows which bar makes the strongest drinks. The bar and certain bartenders will get known for it. Does it help the business? Usually not it ends up costing the owner in alchohol loss. Also documented in bar rescue.
I love draft beer and any fried bar food. Gotta go alot less now than back in the day. But I could tell you which sports bar brought the picture full with two full mugs. Then when you got a mug out of the picture they would bring a bag of ice and drop it in the picture.
Now days I never see that..... Even girls that know you tip well will bring two empty mugs and a picture with an Ice container built down the middle......things change but everything stays the same....especially in bars...