15 Reasons that Your Bartender Hates Thrillist/Buzzfeed Lists about Your Bartender Hating You.

Social media feeds are full of Thrillist and Buzzfeed lists. One of their favorite subjects is Bartending. More specifically, reasons why “Your Bartender Hates You.” Reading through these lists, it is easy to come to the conclusion that we do indeed hate you, but we don’t. What we actually hate is people outside of our trade trying to convince you that we do. The following is a list about why Bartenders hate lists about Bartenders Hating You. Let’s set the record straight on these “pet peeves” and so called things we as bartenders “hate.”

1. Do we “hate” charging your phone? No, we’re Bartenders. Our job is to “tend bar” aka “tend to the customers needs.” This doesn’t mean we grant your every desire, but yes, of course, we can charge your phone. Why not? We’ve got a powersource, and you are posting pictures of our cocktails on your social media. Not a big deal. Unless of course you write for Thrillist about bartending. In that case, good luck with your dead phone
2. Ordering a “Bartender’s Choice” is actually awesome. We love to create something tailor made to suit your mood. This is one of the most genuine interactions we can have with our patrons, and it often makes our night and yours. No problem! Unless you write for Buzzfeed about how much we hate it, then you get what you get and consider yourself lucky. Buzz off.
3. There are more than “19 Types” of Bartender. There are hundreds of thousands of us. Each with different skill sets, service styles and personalities. That would be like saying there is only one type of uninformed hack writer at Thrillist. Which of course by reading their articles about bartending, you can tell clearly is not the case,
4. Complaining that we can’t make your cocktail, or don’t know how to is a fair hit. It’s our job to know hundreds of cocktails, and sometimes we falter. Sometimes we forget, sometimes we don’t have a certain ingredient. In such cases, it is our job to guide you into something similar or if we don’t know…inquire. Perhaps we can Google it on your phone that we charged for you earlier. Unless of course you write about bartending for Buzzfeed, then we can just assume you know nothing about cocktails anyway.
5. Asking for a drink to be made “strong” is actually not a hassle, it is a qualifier we were probably going to get to with you anyways. Figuring out what you are in the mood for is a major component of our main job, which is tending to your experience. Thank you for letting us know you are in the mood for something spirit forward. Unless you work for Thrillist, in which case we can assume you can’t handle the hard stuff.
6. We are not anonymous. Thrillist and Buzzfeed can ask all the “surly” or “Anonymous” bartenders they want about their pet peeves, it just makes their arguments seem more ridiculous and possibly fabricated. Unless of course they are not fabricated sources, which would just make them cowards.
7. If you have to have a list higher than 2, for reasons you hate customers, you should not be bartending at all. Which is why we’ll stop here. Bartenders who love what they do don’t need 15 reasons to hate the Bartenders who don’t and the “journalists” who give them light. We just need one: Bartenders love tending bar. We have gone through the experiences listed in these articles and we still love tending bar. If you don’t, quit. Quit your bitching and chewing about how much you hate the people who pay your rent and quit. Get out of the service industry and go find a job that caters to your negativity and lack of skill to what we do every night with class and grace. Go write lists for Thrillist or Buzzfeed.