The barkeeper that didn’t know a single drink’s recipe
How I moved out at 16, got a job, and made 10k+ a month selling random drinks and trinkets
When you have no income and bills piling up, any job will do. This is how 16 year old me went from minimum wage floor sweeper to 10k bar manager in 3 months without ever memorizing any drink recipe. I tried, but my ADHD brain had different plans.
My First Job, 99 Bottles On The Floor
I visited the bar with my friends. I had just turned 16 and in Germany, that means you are allowed to drink beer, so I and my friends went. They would never skip an excuse to drink. I had different worries. My parents had just kicked me out and I wanted to show them. I had to become independent asap, but the rent wasn’t free. Neither were groceries.
I had about $480 in the bank and the bunk bed in the 10-bed-dormitory I scored last-minute cost a solid $200. With groceries and other expenses, I came down to exactly $400 meaning I was left with about $80. That also meant I had a little over 4 weeks to make this work or drag my sorry behind right back to my parent’s place.
Supposedly celebrating my birthday, I went to the bar with my friends, but when the local barkeep asked me what my wish was, I told him: a job, any. He probably only tried to hook me up with a free drink, but before he could say anything, I pointed to a table stacked with used beer mugs that had been there for an uncomfortably long time.
Not wanting to ruin the good mood, I was given a phone number. Call Jamie, he said. Tell him you’ll do dishes when the rats are out. This was code for cleaning the bar up after it closes and the sun was about to rise. I didn’t mind, except I also had school. My schedule went something like this.
8 am to 5 pm — school
5 pm to 6 pm — soccer club
7 pm to 3 am — homework and other stuff like counting my remaining instant ramen to fall asleep early enough
5 am to 9 am — go mob that bar floor (and clean up all of the other mysterious liquids everywhere)
Notice the problem? I was always late. The teachers honestly didn’t care. Pass your tests during lunchtime and don’t miss more than 10% of all classes and you are good. Except I was always sleepy in the first couple of lessons each day, but I managed.
Promotion for the Last Boy Standing
The job was gruesome. The bar was quite frankly utterly disgusting. Abyssal. Picture a public bathroom gone soccer lounge featuring 3 concerts worth of spilled beer cups.
Now imagine the stench of 100 overconfident Germans emptying their wallets for beer, and then said beer from their stomachs. That was my wish mobs main sustenance and my subscription to a daily reminder of how easy it is not to have to pay rent and party instead.
Why am I doing this? I should just beg my parents to take care of me for a few more years!
I’m stubborn and I don’t want to. Plus I finally have some cash, I don’t want to be broke again. When you’re 16 years old a couple of hundred dollars feels like having some cash.
One day the barkeeper didn’t show up for work. He just vanished, and neither the backup barkeeper nor the manager’s wife was free to take over. No friends were willing to jump in either.
So it came that one Wednesday afternoon where I had once again failed to fall asleep early and stay asleep, I glanced at my phone around 9 pm and read the following:
Hey Val, sorry to bother, but think you could jump in for a few extra hours? Just serve beer, easy enough. I’ll double your tips if you make it here in a suit before 10.
I almost fell right back asleep. I wasn’t fully conscious when I read it and after I blinked, it was suddenly already 10:34. Half-asleep me luckily had replied with an elaborate “k” and my heart suddenly gave its best speed metal drum solo impression.
With 2 different socks and a yet-to-be-tied tie around my neck, I ran block for block to the bar. I had barely made it and Jamie welcomed what looked like a pickpocket that had just been chased for 10 miles.
His promise, however, had changed. Double the tip, but I had to make all drinks. I had no idea how to make them, but my wallet held me at gunpoint.
Roger that
Mixing cocktails like a mad scientist
What do you do when you are asked to make a Long Island and you’ve never made one? No Google, no asking.
You wing it. My go-to method was remembering only the most obvious core ingredient, sometimes even guessing it, and then grabbing the first 4 bottles on the shelf that I happened to grab. In this case, it was coke and anything from rum to that Ol’ Jim Janglings private syrup mix. It may or may not come with a tiny umbrella, party straw, or a napkin I misidentified as décor.
The customers loved it for two simple reasons. More alcohol than they paid for, and more sugar than a dentist’s mental health can cope with.
Tips poured in, and by the end of the night, I had made 3 times my salary just with tips. Virtually no beer was sold (the cheapest and for that reason usually most often sought-after refreshment).
I’ve seen enough. Derek didn’t show up, you did. Job’s yours if you want it
I had earned my independence and more. I could finally afford that motorbike I always wanted, but damn was I tired.
In the morning learning about how the human body hates toxins. In the evening I distributed them like an overly zealous ammunition carrier on d-day, and in the morning I cleaned right the fudge back up. I’d gone full circle.
Upselling My Grandmother’s soul
At this point, I had made the bar my warship. I knew every cranking button and wheel. Every knob, and every cranny. I even had my own assisting employee on the more packed weekends.
Everything changed when I picked up that cigar stump. I had never seen one before, safe for movies. I didn’t waste a second. My gut told me to sell them yesterday. I bought an old plastic box from eBay and re-designed it to look and function like a humidor. A box to keep the stuff inside moist. Then I got to ordering cheap cigars, tiny fancy looking but equally as cheap wine bottles and many other random things.
It looked like an adult version of a prize wall. Weird dragon emblem Zippo lighters (from China), the world’s tiniest wine bottles (about a coke can’s worth of liquor), cigars from Cuba (if the shop Cuba in Berlin, not the country), fake roses, and more. If I had a hunch it would be bought, it was up there.
Most stuff turned into more décor, but the cigars sold like hotcakes. I only later realized how big of an impact the self-made humidor had. It made the cigars look legit and next to my fudged-up prize wall even a moldy banana looked like a luxurious artifact.
10 cigars in a little wooden box cost me $10. They even had nice labels and looked just like the ones in the Unsplash photo above this paragraph. I sold every single one for $15 upwards depending on what I felt they were willing to pay, usually accompanied by a free drink. My salary went from $600 when I mobbed the floor, to $1100 (+~800 in tips) when I became a barkeeper, to $4000+. Some months, I even breached 5 figures.
Everything Went Bad After Renovation
The former manager now only referred to as the owner had the great idea of renovating. The bar looks too old-fashioned, we will lose all of our clients! He argued. He couldn’t have been more wrong.
Our customers were quite the colorful bunch. From teenagers barely allowed to drink, old truck drivers, to geezers about to turn cold yet glued to the bar, we had them all, and they all loved the good ol’ Inn looking bar. Except for the owner, as it appeared.
With the renovation went the old design and with the design most of the windows. Ventilation became a problem and after the city hall kept teasing a new indoor smoking tax for bars, the decision to partially ban smoking and no longer sell Tabaco was made.
I’m kidding. In reality, the owner saw how much money I made selling cigars, made up an excuse I couldn’t say anything against, and took over my business. Thanks to the renovation, fewer and fewer people showed up and most of our sales were just my sales, more specifically the cigars.
When you have people show up to buy non-drinks to go, your bar is not working the way it is supposed to. Eventually, I was let go. The bar kept stagnating and people moved on before the owner realized. I tried to tell him, but it was bread before tigers as my friends used to say.
Epilogue
I heard back from the owner half a decade later. Won’t you come and work at the bar again for a few shifts? He asked. I ghosted him. I wasn’t resentful or anything, but it was simply not in my cards anymore. I had graduated from school, started my own company, and moved across the world.
Meanwhile, he still argued how the economy went under and his renovation was the only thing that saved the bar. However, saved a bar with 2 customers a day is. Especially when it used to keep hundreds entertained. Still, I look back fondly.
These were precious days. I made many friends and I will forever be grateful to him and the guy that got me first started. From not cleaning my room and getting kicked out for that, to following a drunkard’s request to drink for my 16th birthday, to a job offer on the fly. It was a beautiful chain only broken apart by time.
In the end, curiosity rewrote my story. If it hadn’t been for this chain of events, I would have gone back home on all fours begging for some more free housing at Le Hotel Parents.
