When I was a Bartender Archives
Now I’m feelin’ Zombified
9:30 am | 0 | Internerd | Places, When I was a Bartender
Beachbum Berry cracks the code of The Zombie with the New York Times.*
*The Times must have a tikiphile on staff.
A murder mystery
4:13 pm | 2 | Blog | When I was a Bartender
I bet you didn’t know I was involved in a murder case, did you?
Typically, my involvement in crimes is limited to my job as a journalist, where I research and write about them. But this time, I was actually a witness — sort of.
Last October, Christopher and I spent Halloween in New Orleans. Our stay there had to be extended due to some minor complications, but that’s a whole other story.
When we finally got back to Houston, on Nov. 3, the first thing I did was head to the bar to pick up my paycheck and leftover tips. I made this my first priority because spending Halloween weekend at a scooter rally in New Orleans tends to be a little taxing on the pocket book.
At this time, I was still for the most part enjoying my job as a bartender, so I decided to stick around for a few minutes, have a drink and visit with one of my coworkers and some of the regulars. Everybody wanted to know how my trip went and why I was mysteriously missing for three days.
Unfortunately, my personal drama got trumped by a woman who rushed in, ran up to my coworker and shoved a piece of paper into her face. Eavesdropping, I found out that this woman, who was accompanied by her sister and a man, was waving around an affidavit that she wanted my bartender pal and Kevin, a regular at the bar, to sign. She told us her ex-husband had been killed in Virginia over the weekend, and she wanted them to sign the papers, proving that they had seen her at the bar on the night in question. She had to provide an alibi for the police, and she had brought with her a notary public, the man.
Of course, both Kevin and Cheryl, my coworker, said no. “If the police are doing an investigation, you can tell them to call me,” Cheryl said. “And I’ll answer any question they have.”
Well, the police did call. And they came to the bar. And they wanted to interview all the regulars. Then the reporters started calling. Then the lawyers. Pretty soon this crime of passion was the talk of the Volcano. Each day as the story unfolded, the regulars at the bar scoured the newspapers, looking for more details.
Piper Rountree and Fred Jablin had been married 19 years. She was a lawyer and he was a doctor. She began having affairs with another doctor, and the divorce was messy. Messy enough, in fact, that the judge gave him full custody of their three kids.
Throughout the high-profile divorce, there was a lot of bad publicity about her. Although she had a good education, she had a hard time holding down a job for more than a year. She racked up huge credit card bills in his name. She was addicted to prescription amphetamines.
Her sister Tina, who had been with her at the bar, was a prominent OBGYN in Houston. After the divorce, the sisters stayed in Houston while Jablin moved to Virginia with the children. There, he gained a loyal following as a professor at the University of Richmond, which is why his death received so much coverage.
Piper Rountree used her sister’s driver’s license to go to a shooting range three days before the murder. She also used Tina’s identity and wore a blonde wig when she flew from Houston to Richmond a couple of days before the killing. Fred Jablin was shot in the back as he walked out of his house on the morning of Oct. 30 and bent over to pick up the paper. That night, Piper Rountree was at Volcano. Investigators believe she killed her ex-husband so she could get custody of the children.
I learned all this through conversations at work and from accounts in the paper (which you can read here). What happened on Nov. 3, the day Rountree tried to secure her alibi, I know because I was there. Luckily, I kept quiet about the whole thing, and I was not called to testify, even though Cheryl and Kevin were.
On Feb. 27, the jury in Richmond found her guilty and recommended life in prison.
This is the type of story people go bananas about. Just look at all the coverage it received in Richmond. According to the Times Dispatch’s archives, the only camera allowed in the courtroom during the trial was a camera for the CBS program 48 Hours. 48 HOURS is even covering the case, for an episode in May for crying out loud!
Here’s the best part. Tonight, they’re filming for a scene for the series at Volcano.
UNDER THE VOLCANO, A HANGOUT FOR MURDERESSES AND ALIBI SEEKERS. I knew I was doing the right thing when I left that hellhole. My jerky former boss has got to love it. You can’t just BUY that kind of publicity.
Thoroughly Modern Brittanie
3:08 pm | Comments Off | Blog | When I was a Bartender
This weekend marks one whole month since I was freed from the bondage of indentured servitude. (Throw that image around in your head a bit, you dirty, naughty reader).
Thanks to the utter generosity and complete support of my wonderful, understanding boyfriend, I quit my second job slingin’ Singapores at a local college bar.
A few weeks ago, when we had company at the house, C was giving them the grand tour, except for our house is really just a big loft-style condo, so the “tour” basically consists of him leading our guests around a big circle pointing out all his antique Polynesian kitsch.
On this particular tour, when he got to the “bedroom,” which is basically just our bed, pushed up against the wall, he said, “And this… this is where the magic happens. Or as Brittanie calls it, ‘rent.’”
Very funny. I think it’s safe to say I have never asked him for much, so the fact that he allowed me to move all of my things into his house, and all of my dog’s things as well, makes him a pretty remarkable man. I especially recognize this sacrifice, considering he is an only child who has lived alone as an animal-free bachelor for a better part of the last decade.
When I first moved to Houston, I had no money in the bank, no job and no permanent place to stay. I decided that the best kind of job to get would be a job where I made tips, since I wouldn’t have to wait for a paycheck.
I moved on a Sunday, went job hunting on Monday, and was hired by the first place I applied to. They asked me to start the following weekend. Score!
I should have known it would be drama from the start. Here are a couple of the warning signs I chose to ignore:
- For one, I may have fibbed a bit on my resume. I said I’d worked as a cocktail waitress, when in truth, all I’d ever done was serve over-priced fried seafood (in Oklahoma, nonetheless. NEVER eat seafood when you’re no place near the sea.) at a hokey themed restaurant that required me to wear a fishing vest complete with tackle.
- They called me in for three, count ‘em, one — two – three, interviews. For a job as a bartender. At a college bar. I mean, who do they think they are, the Playboy Mansion?
- During my third interview, one of the managers (how many managers do you need in a place with five bartenders, anyway?) actually tried to hit on me. I like to refer to him as “Soul Patch,” only because no one pushing 40 can really carry that off, no matter how hip they once were. None of his questions had anything whatsoever to do with bars, bartending, my resume, the job, booze or beer. I later found out that Soul Patch was a Serial Employee Dater, having sexed up no less than three of my five coworkers, plus some that were no longer there.
But you know, I digress. I was broke and they were willing to hire me right away. And to tell you the truth, if you take away the Emotionally Manipulative Boss, the Boss Who is So Obsessive Compulsive The She Labels Everything with a Brother™ Label Maker, The Boss That Wants To Get Into Your Undies, the drunken frat boys, the snooty sorority girls, the cheapskates, the jocks, The Guy That Hits On The Bartender Immediately After She Overhears Him Getting Rejected By The Girl That’s Sitting Right Next To Him, the drunk girl who hangs her panties from the longhorns every Saturday night I DON’T WANT TO CLEAN UP YOUR PANTIES ANYMORE DAMMIT!, the “It’s My Birthday, Whaddo I Get For Free” types, the “How Much Is…” types, the “Do You Have Any Specials…” types, the non-tippers, the 25-cents-on-a-five-dollar-tab tippers, the cigar smokers, the angries (Why are you so angry?), and the hungries (“Uh, can I, like, have some chips or something?”) and The People That Just Won’t Leave At 2 a.m. Alreadies, bartending was pretty fun. I liked almost all of my coworkers, I got to wear whatever I wanted, I got to say whatever I wanted — so long as it was out of earshot from the owner — the money was real good, and I loved my regulars.
After a while, though, I figured that I should put my degree to use and get a real job. Sadly, however, my degree, which equals roughly $40,000 in solid education, nets me a career in which I make only about half that much a year, pre-tax. I reconcile this in my head by saying that being a starving writer gives me so much more street cred, but apparently the company that financed my car could care less about my street cred.
I’ve done this before, moonlighting. In fact, I’ve done it my whole life. Ever since I was 16 I’ve had a job, sometimes two. I worked all the way through college, full-time, and still managed a 3.8 GPA. And as soon as I was out of college and in my first REAL job, I had to get a second job because my REAL job didn’t pay my REAL bills.
So my second job, bartending, made it possible to do my first job, writing. Without one, I could never have afforded to do the other and, you know, have a roof over my head.
But my part-time job was getting more and more stressful. Four shifts at the bar a week equaled about 40 hours, on top of my REAL 40-hour job. I was getting about 4 hours of sleep a night, getting to work at 9 a.m., working until 6 p.m., getting to my other work at about 7 p.m., getting home at about 3:30 a.m., over and over and over again. The only full day I had off was Saturday, and most of that time I was sleeping. Plus, suddenly, my bosses started to get medievally neurotic, making those late nights even less pleasant.
Still, I stayed at the bar. It was like a bad relationship you just can’t leave. Anyone who has ever worked for tips can understand this — you get addicted to the lifestyle. You always have money in your pocket, usually two to three hundred dollars, after a shift. If you are broke or need some quick cash, you just pick up a shift and bam!, cash money ho. No waiting two weeks for your paycheck, no credit cards, no waiting for checks to clear. Soon you wonder how you ever lived without all that money, and you laugh in that face of anyone who doesn’t carry at least three Benjamin’s in their wallet at all times. I, personally, am all about the Benjamin’s.
My bosses were getting worse and worse. Yelling at us for stupid things, like not putting enough ice in a drink, or then, putting too much ice in one. ONLY HIRING WOMEN (isn’t that illegal?) Don’t pour the Guinness like that. Don’t pick up the tips immediately. Smile more and don’t yell at the customers. Make more small talk. Quit talking already, customers are waiting. Why didn’t you talk to that person?!?
As I got more fed up with it, I started apologizing to my coworkers. “On the day I decide to quit,” I’d tell them, “I’m going to pick the busiest day, and just not show up. It’s supposed to be a big Up-Yours to The Man, but I know you guys are the ones who are really going to suffer, so I’m sorry.”
Poor C was sick of it too. He never got to see me, and when he did, I was always exhausted or cranky or both. I have lived in Houston for more than a year and have never been to any restaurants or bars, because I was always at work. So finally, we decided I should move in, that way I could live on just one job. That, so far, was the best day of my life.
In spite of what I’d told my barmates, I gave my bosses a three-week notice, just to be nice. Two weeks passed, they hadn’t even tried to hire someone. Three weeks passed, no replacement. On the night before what was supposed to be my last night, Soul Patch pulled me aside and said, “Yeah, umm, when do you plan on your last day being?”
“I dunno,” I told him.
“Well, you know, uhh, that when we hire the new person, we’re gonna want you to, like, stick around a week or so until she gets trained.”
“Umm, oh.. okay.”
And then I did it! One Friday last month, after I came home from my REAL job, I just didn’t go to work. I just didn’t show up. It was awesome, liberating, redemptive. That same night, another bartender called in sick, so they had half the staff they should have had, and the bar ended up doing $10,000 in business that night (which is HUGE in one evening. We used to think $7,000 was good). They were screwed, but they screwed themselves. I had given my notice.
One of the best things about that job was the overwhelming amount of gossip I was exposed to. Part of what made my last few weeks there so stressful was this new barback we hired. Steve annoyed the wits outta me, especially while I watched him talk on his cell phone instead of washing dishes and sit on a barstool smoking a cigarette while the other barback mopped the floor. When I called him on it, he’d mutter expletives at me under his breath. Luckily, the owners were on the verge of firing Steve when he gave his two-week notice. Perceptive little jerk, huh?
Anyway, I called an old coworker the other day to get an update on the gossip, and she told me that a week after Steve gave his two-week notice, he asked to rescind it. Fool! How you gonna take back a two week notice?
Electrified
1:01 pm | Comments Off | Blog | When I was a Bartender, Writing
I had been working at the bar for about a year when my boss finally had the confidence to leave me alone during the day shift.
During times like these I slowly began to develop my personal theory that the bar had taken on a human-like Jekyll and Hyde persona — some nights it was clogged with sweaty overconfident and testosteroneous frat boys and dozens of young girls vying for their attention. Other times it was boring as watching paint dry, and on these nights I hated working because the early morning hours would drone on and I knew I’d be leaving with very little money in my pocket.
I came to dread going to work each night, and on the drive I tried my best to prepare myself for whatever kind of night it might be. Each night it was a guessing game — “Will we be busy or will I have to pay my electricity bill late again? Will we get slammed at 1 a.m.?”
My favorite times to work were the day shifts, when I would open all the windows and turn on all the fans and let the breeze clear the bar of the Houston heat and the smell of smoke that saturated every wooden or cloth surface. I found these days to be the most predictable, and between the busy-work — cleaning lamps and glass shelves — and the pleasant and often philosophical conversations with my daytime regulars, my six-hour shift always passed by quickly.
My boss was obsessive compulsive and also extremely controlling, which is a nauseating combination. He’d hover behind the bar, his massive six-foot-five body taking up the precious little space in which I had to navigate, and instruct me over and over again on how to pour a pint of Guinness just right so that there was exactly a half-inch of foam left floating on the top of the beer.
Inexplicably, once he felt confident in me, he would also leave me alone for hours on end without any supervision, any money in the drawer, any keys to the back-up liquor closet or any help in the event that I needed it.
Normally, this was not a problem. Even when I was busy and working all by myself, I was happy that he wasn’t around to criticize me for not saying thank you after a customer left me a fifty-cent tip on a round of five drinks.
I usually worked the Sunday day shift. Often, Midtown types would come in after brunching, already slightly tipsy and loud, and demand from me the most complicated and poofy drinks on our menu. Also on Sundays, Doug, the customer who rode his bike from the zoo, where he worked, to the bar, where he practically lived, would visit me, along with Larry, Richard and Kevin. Collectively, they called themselves “Team Martini.”
Part of the charm of the bar was its rustic feel. The owner’s wife and sister-in-law were South American, and the bar was decorated with lamps made from dried gourds and masks depicting the Mexican Day of the Dead. The phone that hung behind the register was an old Princess-style model with an actual brass bell ringer inside, the receiver held together with black electrical tape. All of our drinks, most of which contained rum or tequila, were made by hand, and I spent countless hours in my time there mashing fruit with a muddler and pestle.
One day, I got to work just in time to greet my boss as he was walking out the door. He explained that he had just come in to unlock the place for me and that he was going out to run errands and wouldn’t be back for a while. I was pleased.
When it was slow, I passed the time by doing dishes or cleaning. I walked in the bar and set about the task of setting everything up. I opened the heavy wooden shutters on the back patio, and slid the windows to the main part of the bar open.
There were no customers yet, so I filled the well with ice and put menus and ashtrays on every table.
Then, I moved through the bar systematically, turning on all the lights and fans. It was early in the day, but the Houston heat was already making me sweat.
We had recently began serving food at the bar, and had compiled a small but extensive menu of tapas. As a result, the already small kitchen, if you could call it that, was getting more and more cramped with the items used to prepare this new food. All the surfaces in the kitchen were stainless steel, and hordes of stuff, from pots and pans to gallons of olive oil, were stored both above and below the shelves.
If the bar was hot, the kitchen was like a Roman sweat bath. It got so humid in there the drops of water on the freshly washed glassed had difficulty drying. So, like in the rest of the bar, we had a motley collection of several huge, old Westinghouse fans that blew from both above and below to dry and cool the racks of glasses.
I stood on a milk crate to turn on the fan above my head. I then had to get down on my hands and knees and crawl under the stainless steel counter suspended from the wall to plug in the other fan. I wiggled under there, balanced on the balls of my feet with my knees tucked to my chest, and used my left hand to hold on to the leg of the counter while I stretched my right hand as far as it could go under the table to plug in the fan.
And then time stood still.
I am vaguely aware of the noise that emanated from my body. It was definitely a cry of pain, but primal, deep and guttural, like no noise I have ever made before or since. It was almost like a roar.
I am keenly aware of what was going through my mind. My first thought was “I am being electrocuted.”
I sat there, huddled under the counter for what felt like a full minute, my left hand firmly gripping the stainless steel leg, my right hand still holding the plug, which was now engaged in the socket, completing the circuit that was allowing 110 volts of electricity to surge through my body.
It’s a funny thing about being electrocuted. Your body becomes stunned, but your brain is still fully functional, and, devoid of other sensory information, is extremely clear. So while your synapses are so stunned by the electricity they can’t obey your brain’s order to “Move your hand,” you are able to think in detail about what exactly is happening to you.
For what felt like an eternity, and which I’m sure was at least 60 seconds, I sat there, unable to react physically but thinking all the while to myself, “I am here, alone, and I am being electrocuted. Nobody is here to help me, and it could be a number of hours before anybody comes in to find my body. This is how I am going to die, alone in the kitchen of the Volcano.”
Finally, my body caught up with my brain, and simultaneously, I let go of the socket and fell back onto my back on the kitchen floor. I laid there for a few seconds, trying to catch my breath and slow my heart, repeating over and over again, “Jesus Christ. Jesus.”
I lay there a few seconds more, then turned my head to the left and looked out the door of the kitchen to see Larry, standing on the other side of the bar, watching me silently with his mouth slightly open.
I jumped to my feet, brushed myself off and ran out to the bar awkwardly.
“Hi, Nu,” Larry said flatly. “Nu,” or new, was the nickname he had given me when I first started working there, and he continued to call me that even after I held the most seniority at the bar.
“Larry,” I breathed with a sign of relief. “I didn’t know anyone was here.”