We don't HAVE that here.

Recently it has come to my attention that I am now a part of the elite few. NO i'm not a scientist, or a lawyer or a proffesor. I am a bartender. 

There are two bartenders everyone has known in their life. The first, is the kind of person that ultimately gets you what you want. This can be everything from the run down pub where you go to get a beer but you know you won't strike up a conversation- to that "craft cocktail" bar you heard of that talks to you about different kinds of gin and you end up getting a (gasp!) egg drink. 

The second is much much worse. Somewhere along the way people thought that if you became a bartender it was free game to look down on other people. "Ummm, no we don't HAVE that liquor" to "I refuse to make that because it's against my own palette."

This second bartender is awful. We have all been in a situation where we knew less than the other person, and really hoped for a little bit of kindness and some mercy. Aside from the handful of us that can tell you that the Sazerac was originally made with cognac (look it up- I'm a nerd but I'm right) and that potable bitters are not the same thing as non-potable bitters, most people just want to go to a bar that provides these three things:

1. A friendly face. Look, Cheers wasn't all wrong, in our own way we are all looking for a place that knows our name, that knows we take ice in our water, or lemon, or no ice, just something to make us feel like someone remembers us. 
-When I lived in Portland Maine, me and two friends would have breakfast 3 times a week at Marci's diner. Biker memorabilia littered the wall but you know what was waiting for us every morning we arrived? Three coffee's, super hot, and two oj's. THAT my friends is service. Even if it is served up by a man who could crush you with one hand covered in jail tattoos. 

2. Something interesting. Be it decor, food, personality, cocktails or a combination, no one ever says: "hey we can go to that bar I hear serves mediocre food and drink and the people there don't really seem interested you are around but they can't leave so they speak to you"

3. And this is the most important one ladies and gentleman.......comfort. 
No one is comforted by pretention. No one is comforted by ego. No one likes being looked down on and they certainly don't don't like walking into a place and thinking "Will these people be nice to me" 

So I have landed myself in a realm of individuals that can just as easily be known as "assholes" as we can be defined as "bartenders". I will let everyone know this, right here and now, I don't care if you come in and order a gin and tonic. I don't care if you come in and ask for a "fruity drink" (many of which I can make well and know even men will be jealous of them if they only had the balls to order them) , I don't care if you ask for a Corpse Reviver #2, I will put as much effort in the first as the last. Pretension has nothing to do with it. My JOB is to make the best drinks I can, and to make people a little a. happy, b. interested, and c. comfortable.

Fuck pretention, I've got cocktails to make.