Emma Witman
The author, Emma Witman, is a bartender from Asheville, North Carolina.
- Being a bartender involves a whole lot more than just making drinks and taking people's money.
- Bartenders like me have to do hours of prep work and cleaning while memorizing people's orders, keeping an eye on unruly customers, and honing their knowledge of cocktails, to name a few.
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Like ballerinas, bartenders have a way of making the job look effortless.
We spin the tin in our hands with ease. We nod when you ask for a classic cocktail like a Last Word. And we never break a sweat - it's just another one of the hundreds of cocktail recipes we can instantly summon. We're human databases of hundreds of recipes.
But there's a lot more that bartenders have to do besides make drinks. A lot of customers probably aren't aware of all that goes on from our perspective, from the inexhaustible cleaning and prep work to keeping an eye on customers who are getting a bit too rowdy.
Here are 11 of the things bartenders do behind the scenes that you may not realize.