So You Think You Want to Own or Manage a Bar?

It's Friday night, and the regulars have gathered at the local watering hole. Every bar stool is occupied. The girls are dressed to kill in jeans they starved themselves for a week to squeeze into. The guys in the corner are ordering up another round of shots and laughing over a joke that probably wouldn't have been nearly as funny an hour ago. Someone pops a few dollars in the jukebox, and a song by your favorite band floats on the night air.

You glance down at the bar to see that someone has put a fresh beverage in front of you. The guy beside you is telling a story about the time he caught his wife cheating. He's drooling a bit too, but you're filled with rum-induced contentment and compassion, so you pretend not to notice.

Gone are the fluorescent lights of your cubicle and the boss who glares down at you through his glasses. The pile of bills on your kitchen table and the dishes you haven't done in a week are miles away. The workweek is over, and the masses are celebrating their freedom with music, shooters, pick-up lines and laughter.

Your friend returns from her fourth trip to the bathroom in the last hour, and you clutch her arm and share the inspiration that has just popped into your head.

"I want to own a bar someday," you say.

"What?"

"I want to own my own bar. You know, a little joint like this one. A place where everyone comes to eat, drink and be merry. Look around you! What could be a more perfect way to make a living?"

I can't tell you how many times I've heard someone say that. There's something about a few too many beers and drunken conversations that invites us all to believe that owning or running a bar is a way out of the daily grind.

My father thought the same thing himself, 20 years ago. So he took early retirement from his day job and used his savings to go into a partnership and open his own pub. If you asked him, he'd admit that he wouldn't change it for the world. But if you told him you were thinking of doing the same thing yourself, he'd give you a deep chuckle and pour you another drink. Then he'd ask you the following questions:

1. How do you feel about scrubbing toilets?

What is your take on cleaning bathrooms? Or tables, countertops, or walk-in freezers, for that matter?

There's a lot more to running a bar than learning to twirl bottles like Tom Cruise in Cocktail. Sure, there's a lot of pleasing the public involved. But if you're running a bar, you're going to spend a large portion of your time doing grunt work.

The antics of drunks can be some of the most humorous spectacles on the planet. But drunks are more than funny. Sometimes, they're just plain nasty. So we're not talking your typical grunt work here. A drunken man has the poorest aim you've ever seen. You can guarantee that he'll forget to lift the seat and pee all over it, and that's if you're lucky. If you're unlucky, half your male customers will also hit the floor, and a few of them will mistake the bathroom sink for the toilet, aim too high and splash the mirror.

The women's room isn't any better. Every woman knows she shouldn't put her bare backside on a bar's toilet seat. Who knows who was there before her, or what kind of germs she was carrying with her? So your female patrons will practice the art of squatting when they go. Women get a regular workout when they drink. After the third beer, a girl who normally goes once every two or three hours will find herself hovering over the seat every fifteen minutes. The Pee-Squat, once a perfect science, becomes a very sloppy art form when she's under the influence. A drunken gal who's practicing The Squat has about as much chance of hitting the bowl as the guy who is aiming from across the room.

Sure, if your bar is doing a successful business, you can hire someone to do your dirty work for you. But on that person's night off, or when he starts nipping on the bottles in the walk-in and can't quite figure out where he left the mop, it's all up to you.

When the toilet gets clogged, be prepared to hear "Whoa ... that's not in my job description!" Honestly, can you blame him?

While we're at it, let's not forget vomit. Everyone who spent college or some other point in their life on frequent drinking benders remembers the term "worshipping the porcelain god."

You'll be happy if that's all your customers worship. But it's just as likely that every now and then, you'll have someone worship the top of your bar or a table instead. The considerate drinker might aim for the trash can, but miss and give your carpet a Technicolor look.

Barf happens, even when you and your bartenders are vigilantly monitoring the alcohol intake of your patrons. Someone had a bacteria-laden dinner before coming to your establishment, or didn't realize they had a stomach flu coming on, or killed an entire bottle of vodka before they set foot in the door. You may not have served them any more than you thought you should have, but that won't protect you from scrubbing up the remnants of their dinner.

2. Do you like talking to drunks even when you're sober?

The old man who tells stories of the time he lived alone in the Alaskan wilderness for six years is entertaining when you're matching him beer for beer. The girl who thinks every guy in the bar is hitting on her, even the gay guys, amuses you and your friend with her inflated image of her own desirability. You've even made a drinking game out of her antics, and can get quite toasty by doing a shot every time she approaches one of you and says "See that guy over there in the corner? He wants me."

But before you decide you want to earn your livelihood listening to these people, spend an evening in a bar drinking water or soda.

Drunks tell the same stories over and over. They might be interesting tales the first time around, but by the tenth recap you're ready to stuff bullets in your ears. That Alaskan wilderness tale? You didn't realize it, but you've heard it three times a night every weekend for two months now. You've just been so tipsy yourself while hearing it that you'd forgotten it by the next day.

The girl trying to tell you that the blind 80-year-old priest down at the other end of the bar is dreaming about her cleavage isn't so entertaining when you're sober, either. The longer the evening goes on, the more you'll want to drag her into the bathroom, show her a mirror, and say "look, you've got a zit on your nose the size of Texas and you really need to dye those dark roots. If he does want you, it's only because he IS blind."

But you can't, because you're running the bar, and your job is to make everyone happy.

3. Have you ever met someone who's been abducted by aliens or a top-secret CIA agent who knows for sure when the world will end?

If you haven't, you will. At least, you will if you follow through on that dream of running a bar.

You talk to almost anyone once you're on your sixth beer. But even then, you have your standard. Everyone in the bar knows to avoid the man who swears a spaceship lands in his yard on the third Wednesday of every month. It is also common knowledge that after his fourth shot of Jim Beam, Joe from around the corner forgets he's in public and starts picking his nose and leaving his findings under the bar.

As a patron, you just stay away from these people, maybe pointing them out to newcomers now and then as oddities to be observed but avoided.

As the owner or manager of the bar, you don't have this option. You're not just in the hospitality business. You're a therapist, too. Never mind that you've never taken a psychology course in your life. It's your job to help pour the alien guy in a cab so that he can get home before the spaceship arrives. Once you've done that, you'll be making sure Joe gets a tissue and a non-alcoholic beverage.

4. How do you feel about personal space?

Does it make you nervous when the person you're conversing with is a "close talker?" Do you get irritated when total strangers throw their arms around you and tell you that you're their best friend?

If so, then don't quit your day job.

Happy drunks are the most touchy-feely people in the world. They love everyone, and want to express their affection with big sloppy hugs and wet smackers on the cheek. That goes double for you, because you own the bar. You're the reason those glasses or bottles of happiness keep coming their way.

Even if the drunk in question isn't of the bear-hugging variety, your personal space will be invaded. Inevitably, the woman who drinks fuzzy navels all night will have the urge to tell you about her lonely, sexless marriage. But since she's sharing a top secret with you, she'll need to lean in and whisper. She thinks she's whispering, anyway. The truth is a bullhorn couldn't make her louder, but that doesn't stop her from standing on your toes while she tells her tale.

5. Are you OK with people thinking you suck?

No one loves you more than a happy drunk. No one hates you more than an angry one.

If you own a bar, it is only a matter of time before you make a drunk angry.

It is the job of a bar manager or bartender to determine when someone has had enough to drink and cut them off. You can bet your last dollar that when you tell Joe the nose-picker that the Jim Beam fountain is dried up for the night, he's going to want to kick your butt.

You're also responsible for making sure people get home safely, and that can mean taking their keys and/or calling them a cab. It is only a matter of time before your best friend or a former co-worker comes by to check out your new venture and has a few too many, then decides you're the devil because you won't let him kill himself or someone else getting home.

The nicest folks in the world can become bitter, angry and hostile when drunk. That couple who are always smooching and snuggling in the corner will eventually end up shouting and shoving and scaring your other customers away because she swears he's checking out the bartender's backside or he's sure she's flirting with the 80-year-old blind priest. They'll go from being desperately in love to dredging up how much her mother hates him and how her snotty friends treat him like he's not good enough.

That's where you come in. It'll be your job to calm them down or ask them to leave. All the sudden, they'll be back in love again, united by their mutual conviction that you are a mean, horrible person who doesn't understand anything. Their breakdown in communication is your fault, not theirs. So, for that matter, is the war in Iraq and the fact that they're hungry and there's no place close by to get breakfast.

Those experiences will be your good evenings, the ones you'll chuckle about later. The bad ones will be when words among your patrons turn into shoving and fists flying, and you have to have your next-door neighbor plopped on the sidewalk by your bouncer and your accountant taken away by the cops.

6. Can you let people down gently?

Remember your days on the other side of the bar? Closing time comes, and you're just getting started. Never mind that last call came a half hour ago. You put on your best smile, let out a belch you're far too drunk to realize was coming, and charm the bartender into one more beer. Or you try to, anyway, and then fume in the backseat of your designated driver's car all the way home because she just smiled and said "sorry, honey, time to go home."

If you're doing your job well, your regulars will want to stay forever. And since you run the place, they won't understand why you can't just let them. Local laws forbid serving alcohol after a certain time? They won't tell. You've been there all day and want to go home and get some sleep? No problem, just leave them the key. They'll lock up.

Your regulars will also not hesitate to remind you that they're good loyal customers. They've been coming to this joint forever, and always drop a pretty penny in the register. So if they're short one week, shouldn't you let them run a tab? You know they'll be good for it at the end of the month, don't you? Better yet, let them drink on the house. If you do, they'll bring in all their cousins and drum up your business. Never mind that their cousins haven't worked since the 80's and will soon be asking for tabs themselves.

To run a bar, be prepared to say no with a smile, and let people know you love them anyway.

7. Have moral hangups, and if you do can you hang them up?

So you think the guy who is coming on to every female patron in the bar while his wife is home taking care of their three children is a jackass? Does the girl who is making obvious plays for the love of her best friend's life remind you of that sleazy college roommate who did the same thing to you? Does the couple who dump a hundred bucks a week into hanging out at the bar, and then sit and complain about how they're going to have to take money from their kid's college fund to pay the rent again make you a bit queasy?

He is a jackass. She's a sleaze. Look up "nauseating" in the dictionary, and you'll see a picture of the couple. But guess what? They're also patrons in your bar, and they aren't doing anything to you other than putting cash in your register.

The things you see and the stories you hear while running a bar will test your moral fiber and your faith in humanity. You'll go home many a night envisioning the entire human race as a bunch of swine oinking it up in a pig pen. Whether you can continue to see the kinder, gentler side of human nature is entirely up to you.

Closing Time

So, get out your mops, buckets and iron stomach. Learn to turn the other cheek. Be prepared to send your best friend or your brother home because whisky makes him obnoxious. Humor the delusions of others and get them home safely. Say no with a smile on your face.

If it all sounds doable, owning or running a bar may just be the perfect career for you. It has made my father happy for two decades.

I was visiting with him at his bar the other night, which is something I do often. He was laughing to himself and shaking his head as one of his regulars threatened to moon a group of newcomers in the corner. He gestured towards this assistant manager, who was scheduled to close that night.

"I'm paying him to be here," he said, "yet here I sit. I'm the biggest idiot in this place." Then he took another look around and pointed to two older men laughing catching up over a few pints. "Then again, maybe I'm not," he grinned. "I just love this bar."

I grinned back, knowing I was looking at a man who truly loves what he does for a living. Then I pulled on my coat, because two a.m. was just around the bend, and love it or not, Dad kicks us all out at closing time.

Yeah, even me.