Jeff Burkhart: Is this for business or for pleasure?
The stage of seduction was set, as it so often is, with both soft lighting and soft music. Wine was flowing, cocktails were being had and oysters had been ordered.
Pitching woo, they used to call it. To be honest, I’m not quite sure what they call it now. But I am sure they call it something. However said, what it was then is still what it is now — at least for me it is.
“We are asleep until we fall in love,” once wrote Leo Tolstoy, and I might suggest that we don’t feel really awake until we feel loved in return — or in advance.
She stroked the stem of her champagne flute with her two forefingers, slowly moving the falling condensation back up to the top.
Much has been made of the story about the French queen and the coupe glass. It is said over and over again that Marie Antoinette’s breasts were the models for the classic champagne coupe. Funny that nobody has ever asked what the model for the modern champagne flute was.
“Are you happy?” she asked, looking at the tip of her nail, the polish now gleaming with a touch of condensation.
“Reasonably,” I replied.
“That’s not an answer,” she said, leaning forward.
It was, if you take out the black-and-white thinking. Things are not as binary as many people like to make them. Things are always in flux, with variations of both degree and commitment. And I think she was zeroing in on the commitment part.
“Are you being treated right?” she practically cooed.
Is anyone ever being treated right? What did the Stones say, something about not getting all that you want, but rather getting just enough of what you need?
But, I knew what she was driving at. And she knew what she was driving at. We weren’t strangers.
We had spent some time together many years ago, in another place. We had good times, and we had bad times. But the good had far outweighed the bad. Sure, it was an emotional experience, all fresh and new with possibilities, until the possibilities became probabilities, and then the probabilities became mundane before becoming stagnant. It became duty, and duty is the death of love.
The restaurant business might be the only business that I know of where people have easy access to you. And bars might have the easiest access ever. People just have to stop by.
I have seen managers’ ex-wives “just swing by.” Ex-boyfriends, ex-girlfriends, estranged family, creditors, process servers, you name it, they can all just walk right on in.
Imagine any other job. If your ex-whatever just “came by,” the police would be called and HR would get involved. It would be a big deal — just not in the restaurant business.
She wasn’t like any of that. Our parting hadn’t been strained. It had been cordial, even professional. I think there was even a party involved. But here we were, years later, with that soft lighting and soft music.
She swirled her red-nailed finger in circles over the top of her champagne flute, making it sing ever so slightly. She knew what she was doing.
“Have you ever considered making a change?” she asked when the moment, both in music and in lighting, seemed just right.
Bartenders get hit on. It definitely happens. And it happens more often than you might think. A lot of it has to do with the environment. Some of it has to do with the hospitality. And sure, a small part of it has to do with the person.
I have worked next to many female bartenders, and I have always marveled at how they do it, because it may only happen once in a while to most male bartenders, but for female bartenders, it happens all the time — and I mean all the time.
One big difference between the sexes that I’ve noticed in my many years in just such environments is that if an overt woman gets rejected, you will often never see her again. Ever. Men, on the other hand, keep at it, day after day, week after week.
“Just remember,” she said, getting up to leave, “There’s always a place for you.”
She slid her business card across the dimly lit bar, right past that champagne flute.
I picked up the card. It had her name and then her title: “wine and beverage director.”
In my business, it is always important to know when there is wooing going on whether that wooing is for business or for pleasure.
Leaving me with these thoughts:
• No matter the kind of pitching, three strikes and you’re still usually out.
• Queen Marie did have a serving vessel modeled on her bosom. Apparently, it was a “dairy bowl,” and it was much larger than a coupe.
• Do they have a health plan? Paid vacation? Just asking.
• Thank you to the readers of the Pacific Sun for voting me “Best Media Personality: TV, Radio, Print.” I appreciate it!
• Sometimes a champagne flute is just a champagne flute.
Jeff Burkhart is the author of “Twenty Years Behind Bars: The Spirited Adventures of a Real Bartender, Vol. I and II,” the host of the Barfly Podcast on iTunes (as seen in the NY Times) and an award-winning bartender at a local restaurant. Follow him at jeffburkhart.net and contact him at jeffbarflyIJ@outlook.com