St Patricks Day
I had the day shift from around opening at our pub. It was fairly quiet until we got a huge group of about fifteen guys come in and line up along the bar. They were drinking rounds of beer and Guiness for the next few hours and we just gave them the promotional stuff that Guiness had sent. - It was supposed to be four Guiness = a hat and four Jameson = a shirt. They were a gorgeous sight lined up with Guiness hats and their cheeks getting ruddier as the afternoon wore on. It was amusing :P
I got sent over to Aiden's pub for the evening shift. Finding the place was a nightmare and then he wasn't there (hed' abandoned his own pub to go to some Irish event elsewhere!) and hadn't told anyone I was showing up! I had to fight my way to the bar and eventually flashed my work shirt at one of the girls who decided to take my word on the matter, got me a security tag for the till and got back to work. *g* There's a much bigger pub than ours and I spent a minute or two trying to see what beers/lagers etc... they had (the labels are always facing the customers rather than us y'see) before deciding f*k it and yelled out 'Who's next?' at the waiting mob. I found stuff as I needed it, or didn't, and learned to make a few cocktails although they had to be in brandy glasses as none of us knew where the martini glasses were. Kelly was the only one that worked there and she'd only been there a few months. Everyone else worked elsewhere for Spirit Group and had been pulled in to help for the night. A few had helped there before but even so it meant that none of us really knew where anything was. It was a right laugh though and since we were all in the same boat it didn't matter. The hours flew past as it was so busy. Trying to go out and find glasses was like entering the jungle. You had to try and forge your own path through the impenetrable mob only to bump into someone else who was similarly on a glass gathering mission. We ended up dancing Irish jigs behind thae bar (not that we knew what we were doing but the Riverdance cd was on so heh!); lining up for pints of Guiness (we only had two taps) and stealing each other's pints as often as we poure them for someone else. It was so busy we'd end up pouring two pints at the same time and taking the payment at the same time (only doable because one of those pints is a Guiness and it pours slow). We finally collapsed onto a couch around 3am and sat around talking over champagne while Aiden and a crowd of his mates staying after the doors had been shut tried to drunkenly sing. There were a few Danny Boy's and increasingly rude lyrics to Sweet Chariot but they mostly couldn't remember the lyrics to Irish songs. We even got Waltzing Matilda at one stage!
It was good to finally hang out with a crowd my own age. The crew at the oub and our regulars are in their forties and fifties. It was good to hear other people bitching about similar stuff to - like even though you ask and ask for them to tell you anything else you need to know - you don't get told there's a rule until after you've broken it.
Hopefully I'm going to be loaned to them every Friday night that they're expecting to be busy which would be awesome! Kelly and the rest are really cool and since they're closed on the weekend they often get extra help in for Friday.
So, I scored a Guiness hat, a baby-t Jameson (or is Jamieson whisky?) shirt, a Guiness shirt, two badges, £5 in tips and a pair of sore feet. I staggered back to work and got to sleep around 4.30am only to be on open & close for the next two days. I spent the wekend absolutely shattered. I had to go out to buy milk and it was the stage where despite locomotion normally being a relatively autonomous function, I was fairly certain that I'd fall over & be asleep before my head hit the pavement unless I specifically concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.
I got sent over to Aiden's pub for the evening shift. Finding the place was a nightmare and then he wasn't there (hed' abandoned his own pub to go to some Irish event elsewhere!) and hadn't told anyone I was showing up! I had to fight my way to the bar and eventually flashed my work shirt at one of the girls who decided to take my word on the matter, got me a security tag for the till and got back to work. *g* There's a much bigger pub than ours and I spent a minute or two trying to see what beers/lagers etc... they had (the labels are always facing the customers rather than us y'see) before deciding f*k it and yelled out 'Who's next?' at the waiting mob. I found stuff as I needed it, or didn't, and learned to make a few cocktails although they had to be in brandy glasses as none of us knew where the martini glasses were. Kelly was the only one that worked there and she'd only been there a few months. Everyone else worked elsewhere for Spirit Group and had been pulled in to help for the night. A few had helped there before but even so it meant that none of us really knew where anything was. It was a right laugh though and since we were all in the same boat it didn't matter. The hours flew past as it was so busy. Trying to go out and find glasses was like entering the jungle. You had to try and forge your own path through the impenetrable mob only to bump into someone else who was similarly on a glass gathering mission. We ended up dancing Irish jigs behind thae bar (not that we knew what we were doing but the Riverdance cd was on so heh!); lining up for pints of Guiness (we only had two taps) and stealing each other's pints as often as we poure them for someone else. It was so busy we'd end up pouring two pints at the same time and taking the payment at the same time (only doable because one of those pints is a Guiness and it pours slow). We finally collapsed onto a couch around 3am and sat around talking over champagne while Aiden and a crowd of his mates staying after the doors had been shut tried to drunkenly sing. There were a few Danny Boy's and increasingly rude lyrics to Sweet Chariot but they mostly couldn't remember the lyrics to Irish songs. We even got Waltzing Matilda at one stage!
It was good to finally hang out with a crowd my own age. The crew at the oub and our regulars are in their forties and fifties. It was good to hear other people bitching about similar stuff to - like even though you ask and ask for them to tell you anything else you need to know - you don't get told there's a rule until after you've broken it.
Hopefully I'm going to be loaned to them every Friday night that they're expecting to be busy which would be awesome! Kelly and the rest are really cool and since they're closed on the weekend they often get extra help in for Friday.
So, I scored a Guiness hat, a baby-t Jameson (or is Jamieson whisky?) shirt, a Guiness shirt, two badges, £5 in tips and a pair of sore feet. I staggered back to work and got to sleep around 4.30am only to be on open & close for the next two days. I spent the wekend absolutely shattered. I had to go out to buy milk and it was the stage where despite locomotion normally being a relatively autonomous function, I was fairly certain that I'd fall over & be asleep before my head hit the pavement unless I specifically concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.
posted by Nixie! at 7:45 am
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