The last three days at work I’ve had a redeye and been really talkative for the first part of the evening. Being talkative is important at a bar. Normally I don’t like to talk at all. But you have to engage people at the bar or they feel like you’re snubbing them. And if you’re not snubbing them, they’ll think you’re just a bad bartender. And if you don’t like to talk you probably are.

So the caffeine was working out when I was working doubles, because I would get off at 8 or 9 and be good, starting to come down. Though I would still be up and frenetic for a little while afterwards. Last night I couldn’t hardly get to sleep because I was too excited thinking about what I was going to blog about today.

I’m supposed to take a shower before work. I didn’t take one last night, got home too late and said fuck it.

And last night I had a redeye but then I had to stay until 12 or so cleaning. That was one of the reasons I got it, figured it would be good energy for that. But in the beginning I felt like I was working against the caffeine, like in the beginning of the shifts I was wiping the shelves down and the mirrors behind the bottles and all of that shit, and it felt like it was becoming more and more difficult to work the more I was drinking the coffee. Which is pretty counterintuitive. But there it was.

Plus, I have to spend four dollars on that shit. Tonight I’m going to try it out just drinking the regular restaurant coffee again. It’s shit, and I’ve had some bad experiences with it. It’s strange to think that different kinds of coffee can give you different kinds of buzzes, but I find it’s true. I also find that mixing stuff in changes the effect of caffeine. I don’t know if this is placebo or what.

But yeah the four dollars is some real bullshit. Last night I made a lot of money in cash though. Shit tons of cash. Everyone was tipping cash and on guy tipped 80 dollars cash on like a fifty dollar tab. But none of this has anything to do with the caffeine.

I was talkative like a motherfucker and it was working out, but at some point in the night my eyes started watering and shit and I was like what the fuck is going on. Well, it wasn’t something I wasn’t used to because that kind of shit often happens to me. But I would prefer that it didn’t. Just stay clear headed to the end.

And the damndest thing about my job is I’m the slowest cleaner around, I guess, and I can’t seem to close the bar down fast, which is a desirable trait for a bartender. I mean I don’t give a good shit as long as I’m out of there before 1:20 so I can catch my bus and all, but the managers like to be out of there. Plus the owner doesn’t want to be paying overtime because I can’t clean faster. So last night I was going to work on that and I think I did a pretty good job, but I don’t think the redeye helped anything.

So I think I’m going to retire that redeye shit. Fuck it.

How else can I improve at bartending? I don’t know, it’s a weird thing, I was trying to figure out how to improve and reading and shit and memorizing cocktails and such, but none of that is really helping in the face to face interactions and the real nuts and bolts of bartending. I’m still pretty bad at it. I can make good drinks and I’m a hard worker, but I dont’ have the real finesse. If only I could get drunk at work. Or at least just steady drink the whole time. Fuck it, I’ll just pretend I’m drunk. I pretty much did that last night and it seemed to work out.

Shit. What the fuck is going on with today? What have I done. And it’s 1:21 PM now so it’s almost time to get on that bus and start figuring that shit out. Have I improved from yesterday? I don’t know.

Tomorrow my girlfriend and I are going to prep the room for the first AirBnB guest. And she has some reading to do so hopefully I will get more chances to write. Ah but what the fuck is the point of writing all this shit? I don’t know I really don’t. Ah Christ these motherfuckers are still trying to bring the whole house down, those bastards downstairs.