Don’t ask the question if you cant handle the answer

“I would like a martini,” said the woman perched halfway on her barstool.

“What kind of martini would you like?” was the obvious question that I asked when it became apparent that no more information was going to be forthcoming.

“You know,” she said. “The kind in a martini glass.”

Questions are a part of the bartending game: questions for me and, of course, questions for you, too. The ones for me are easy, and I’m used to answering them. The ones for you are a little trickier.

“What are you trying to accomplish?” I once asked a man after four or five questions regarding gluten.

“Accomplish?” he asked.

“Yes, what are you trying to do?” I asked.

“I’m not trying to do anything,” said the man, with a heavy emphasis on the trying part. “I’m avoiding gluten for my health.”

If he had started with that, we could have avoided all the questions, not to mention the drama. But sometimes the drama is the goal.

When ordering drinks, there are three primary pieces of information needed: the type of liquor (brands certainly help too); the type of preparation (martini, for instance); and any special considerations or garnishes.

So instead of a “martini,” you say: a Grey Goose vodka martini, up, with an olive. If you don’t do it that way, I, or any other bartender, am going to have to ask you all of those other questions. It’s inevitable.

“I want vodka,” said the half-seated woman before adding, “No vermouth. No olive juice. No olives. No twist. Just an orange.”

“Oh, and add Cointreau. And a splash of cranberry.”

Less than a minute later, her slightly pink concoction in a martini glass sat in front of her.

“This is perfect,” said the woman, smiling.

“Can I ask you a question?” asked the woman, missing all the irony in just such a statement.

“Am I ordering this correctly?” she asked.

It was a setup if ever I saw one. Damocles may have had his omnipresent sword hanging over his head, but bartenders have questions like that.

Telling someone that they are doing something “incorrectly” is always predicated on how much self-awareness they have. Often people who ask questions like this aren’t actually looking for an answer. What they’re looking for is validation. Servers will often tell customers something’s an “excellent choice” after they’ve ordered, but have you ever heard a server say, “That’s a terrible choice?” I am guessing you haven’t. And there’s a reason for that.

I looked at her and at her “martini” and thought carefully about my answer. Instead of an answer, I chose to ask her a question.

“Do you always get the drink that you want when you order?” I asked.

She seemed unprepared for that question. She looked at me for a minute. Then, she looked at her drink. Then, she shifted uncomfortably halfway on her barstool.

“No,” she said. “It’s almost never right.”

“Then, I think you’ve answered your own question,” I said.

There’s an old saying about square pegs and round holes. The saying is not really about the pegs or the holes. It is about the person, because there are some people who just want things to be the way that they want them to be. No amount of contrary information is going to change what they believe or what they do.

“OK,” she said. “Teach me how to order it.”

“Alrighty,” I said.

First, I explained that she wasn’t drinking a martini; she was drinking a cosmopolitan: a drink made with vodka, triple sec, cranberry juice and lime. Invented sometime in the 1980s, it’s often served in martini-style conical glasses. Furthermore, a cosmo is a riff on the kamikaze cocktail and not a martini. In fact, the only thing a cosmopolitan has in common with a martini is the glass — and maybe the vodka. Maybe.

“You’d be better off ordering a kamikaze without cranberry than ordering it as a martini,” I said. “That way you’d be sure to get what you want.”

She didn’t say anything after that. But the next time I turned around, she had moved three seats over — closer to the other bartender.

And about half an hour later, I heard her order another drink from the other bartender.

“I’ll have a martini,” she said.

“Just like this one,” added the woman, pushing her empty glass forward.

Several questions followed, as did several answers, all followed by this: “So, you want a cosmo?” asked the other bartender.

Leaving me with these thoughts:

• It’s far easier to change a location than a belief.

• One person’s martini is another person’s cosmopolitan — minus the Cointreau, cranberry and lime.

• “Don’t ask me a lot of fool questions if you don’t like the answers,” wrote Ernest Hemingway in “The Sun Also Rises.”

• “Questions don’t have to make sense, Vincent,” said Miss Susan. “But answers do,” wrote Terry Pratchett in “Thief of Time.”

• Asking questions until you get the answer that you want is not the same thing as following the answers to where they go.