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The bartender-less bar
"Bar Month" at OnMilwaukee.com – brought to you by Hornitos, OR-G, Party Armor, Red Stag, Absolut, Fireball and Malibu – is back for another round! The whole month of February, we're serving up intoxicatingly fun articles on bars and clubs – including guides, the latest trends, bar reviews and more. Grab a designated driver and dive in!
I've gone to bars for a long time, but recently, I experienced something for the very first time at a local tavern. There was no one working behind the bar.
I knew something was off as soon as I walked in and everyone at the bar stared at me. It was strange at first, but later, I realized they thought I was the bartender, late for my shift.
I've known a bartender or two to disappear into the restroom for an extended period of time, but this was different. A guy with an empty Pabst bottle said the barkeep was there, and then he was gone. Ten minutes went by, then 15, and those of us sitting around the bar started to chat even more.
What happened to him? Where did he go? Is this like in college, if the professor doesn't show up within 10 minutes you get to leave? Can we just start serving ourselves after a certain amount of time? Anyone know how to make a mean Manhattan?
These rare moments when strangers interact with each other usually only occur in the face of extreme tragedy. (My father told me random shoppers started hugging him and his mother when the department store manager announced that JFK had been shot).
This was no extreme tragedy, yet we bonded around the realization that we could not get any more booze. And we were confused by the glitch in the way we expect things to be. You go to a bar, there's a bartender. We could barely wrap our minds around this bizarre concept of a bartender-less bar.
Even when the bartender returned, with some excuse about fixing something somewhere, we drinkers, now bonded, bantered back and forth the rest of the night. It's funny, but this experience brought us together. I probably never would have talked to any of these people under other circumstances, nor would they have talked to me.
Humans are so weird.
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johnnyhep | Feb. 3, 2012 at 7:51 p.m. (report)
You know what I find interesting about this post? Its interesting that someone might read all the way to the end trying to figure out why it was written. Take-aways? Maybe that Molly wouldn't normally talk to the people she meets. No that's not interesting either...
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beefsupreme | Feb. 1, 2012 at 12:55 p.m. (report)
I hope he or she gave out free drinks for the confusion.
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college_dave | Feb. 1, 2012 at 12:30 p.m. (report)
No breaks!
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gwanes | Feb. 1, 2012 at 12:17 p.m. (report)
I like this commentary on how humans are weird. It would be interesting to compile a number of times where whatever seems like the social order breaks down and people interact differently. And thanks to EnricoPalazzo for posting the link about actual bartender-less bars, that's cool.
Also, and it's annoying to me that people make it necessary to write stuff like this, but the occasion for the commentary, being in a "bartender-less bar" is only just that, an occasion to make the observation. Blogs are useful for observational writing, sharing thoughts about everything from stupid tv shows to even human psychology. If people don't know what a blog is, maybe they should stop reading things on the internet and share their stupid comments with their mirror at home.
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