Remember, the holidays are for everyone

“What’s that bottle over there?” asked the man I didn’t know, pointing at the back bar.

“Which bottle?” I said, gesturing at the hundreds of bottles lining the back bar in the direction he was pointing.

“The one I don’t recognize,” he said, as if I would know what he knows.

“You’ll have to be a bit more specific,” I said.

“The brown one,” he said.

That did not help at all.

“That one.”

“This one?”

“No.”

“This?”

“No.”

“This?”

“To the left.”

“My left? Or your left?”

“Yours. No, wait, mine.”

Time is money, they say, and that’s absolutely true in the bar business, especially as we head into the holidays. To everything there’s a season, says Ecclesiastes, Pete Seeger and the Byrds, but no matter the source, the sentiment is true. Every restaurant has its season; if it doesn’t, then it’s usually not around for long. And ours is definitely the holidays.

Our business can triple on a Friday night. The size of our bar doesn’t triple, and our staff size — directly linked to the size of our bar — also doesn’t, because it can’t. But our volume does.

Not that people care. One thing you can count on, especially from that person who only comes in once a year, is that they only care about the situation from their perspective.

For instance, take that woman who ordered a $60 bottle of cellared wine and seven glasses while standing behind two separate groups of people, four sitting and four standing. Exactly how do you propose we do that? I will have to go get that bottle, present it, open it, have you accept it, pour it and then collect payment for it. Shall I just toss all of that to you over those eight other people?

Or that man who wanted to order dinner for four in the lobby. Where do you think we are going to set the food down when it comes? And who’s going to bring it? Or set the table? Or clear it?

“I don’t understand,” both of them said.

Yes, you do. You just want a different answer.

Just because you manage to get your foot in the door doesn’t mean that we have to accommodate your every whim, especially if you don’t have reservations and don’t have a seat. Guess what? My job is to take care of those people first. But just try telling those foot-in-the-door people that. We will do our best, but that might not be “the best.”

There’s a term in psychology called “narcissistic rage,” and it’s defined as the intense anger or passive aggression that’s experienced when a person has a setback or disappointment, which shatters the illusion of their grandiosity, entitlement and superiority. And we see that every day in the restaurant business. And we see it exponentially during the holiday season.

And then there’s always the person who did manage to get a seat who’s blissfully unaware of all those other people.

“What’s the history of this building?” they will ask when sweat is literally trickling down their bartender’s nose.

“Can you describe to me the provenance of the fish you source?” someone else will ask, with a sea of undulating hands waving behind them.

They don’t really care about the provenance of the fish; they only care about asking the question.  I can virtually guarantee you that if I asked them what I said five minutes before about that fish, they wouldn’t remember.

Do you have any idea how many people tap their empty wine glass and say, “I will have another,” not realizing that I was nowhere near them when they ordered their first? It’s especially ironic when the other bartender looks nothing like me and is a foot shorter or taller. A good bartender would remember, they always say.

And even if I did wait on you, do you think I can remember every single drink that I make for every single person at the bar? Could you? I doubt it, because you can’t even remember the one and only drink that you were drinking.

But that’s your job, they say. No, it’s not. My job is to bring you what you ask for, not assume what you want.

Leaving me with these thoughts:

• Someone wasting their server’s time is ultimately, and eventually, also wasting yours — or at least the time that can be dedicated to you.

• The holiday season is upon us — all of us.

• “The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject,” once wrote Marcus Aurelius.

• Guess what all those crowds of people swirling around you want? The same thing as you.

• If you think your holiday season night out was ruined by that overwhelmed server or bartender, just imagine for a second how swell their holiday season night must have been.