Jeff Burkhart: Once a bartender, always a bartender

“I wiped up that table over there,” said the 40-something woman dressed in black from head to toe as she tossed the bar towel onto the bar.

“And here are these,” she added, plopping a handful of plastic New Year’s Eve accessories onto the bar, including a paper top hat, two plastic tiaras and some noisemakers.

“Thank you so much,” I said, grossly understating my appreciation.

The sound of a popping balloon startled both of us. But at 12:35 a.m. on New Year’s Day, some things are to be expected.

We both laughed.

“This is not how I expected the night to end,” she said.

“Neither did I,” I said, reflecting on how the evening began.

8 p.m.

The woman in all black sat at the bar. Her slightly gothic dress displayed both her arm and chest tattoos. Noticing is not the same thing as gawking, and bartenders notice quite a lot.

She ordered a nonalcoholic drink with her prix fixe dinner, which was available at the bar for people without reservations, and that, coupled with the platform heels and Betty Boop-ish haircut was a lot to notice.

“We are going to rage all night,” said a different woman wearing a plastic New Year’s Eve tiara and already teetering on glittering rhinestone-bedazzled heels.

“Shots!” said her equally festively attired friend coming over to the bar.

This would be repeated again and again for the next hour.

“I don’t think they are going to make it,” said the woman in black, slicing into her beef Wellington in European fashion, keeping the knife in her right hand and using the fork in her left.

Amateur nights are always full of amateurs, regardless of age. It’s the same whether it’s Cinco de Mayo, St. Patrick’s Day or New Year’s Eve. For most, once you’ve reached a certain age, behaviors begin to change. But for others, they never do, which is why on those nights a mop bucket is often kept handily nearby.

I looked over in the corner. Yep, there it was.

9 p.m.

“Ma’am, you can’t put your head down on the table,” said the bar server.

The woman looked up briefly, her tiara and big teased hair now a tangled mess.

“Shots!” she mumbled.

She did not get them. But 10 minutes later out came the mop bucket.

“Told you so,” said Miss Boop annoyingly.

10 p.m.

“You can’t cut us off; we aren’t driving,” said a different woman in a sideways top hat.

Not driving does matter. But the standard is “visibly intoxicated.” And this group definitely fit that.

“Sorry,” said the manager.

“So,” said one of the men in the group, straightening his hat officiously. “Are we all cut off together? Or is it each of us separately?”

The manager looked at him and thought about it for a second.

“Yes,” was all he said.

That group left in their ride-share, alleviating us of the problem. They were now someone else’s problem. And that shows just how most amateur nights work. Water might seek its own level, but so does booze, and so does behavior.

11 p.m.

“We’re going to rage all night,” said the new woman in the new group, which had just walked in the door.

Shots were ordered. And shots were drunk. And sometime later out came the mop bucket again. And then different people were asked to leave.

This is the first year ever at the restaurant where I work that our hard liquor sales have outpaced our wine sales. And by a lot. I don’t know what that means in the long run, but it’s an interesting fact in the short run — to me, not so much for the barback.

Midnight

The woman in black was helping hand out complimentary champagne toasts, which was appreciated. It normally wouldn’t be, but the people who were supposed to be doing that had all disappeared. They say you will be doing all year what you do at midnight on New Year’s Eve. I guess bad decisions were on the horizon for the whole lot of them.

“I just need four more,” said the woman in black, handling a cocktail tray like a pro.

Four more she got.

“In another life I was a bartender,” she said, winking.

Leaving me with these thoughts:

• Once a bartender, always a bartender.

• The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once said, “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”

• I really hope that saying about what you are doing on New Year’s Eve isn’t correct, or I’ve got some bad news for the barback.

• Finally, if any ladies out there are looking for a lost bedazzled heel, we’ve got several here at the bar.

Jeff Burkhart is the author of “Twenty Years Behind Bars: The Spirited Adventures of a Real Bartender, Vol. I and II,” the host of the Barfly Podcast on iTunes (as seen in the NY Times) and an award-winning bartender at a local restaurant. Follow him at jeffburkhart.net and contact him at jeffbarflyIJ@outlook.com