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my bartender just fucked up


wacky1980

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state liquor control decided to run an underage sting tonight. bartender checked the id's but did her math wrong, served the two kids, and as she was going to ring up the sale, her brain apparently decided to start working. she went back to check the id's again, and this time figured out the kids were minors. so she took the beers back and told them she'd go get their money back. but by then it was too late. 

so now the bartender is on the hook for a fine anywhere from $500-2,500 and so is the bar. i'm gonna walk across the street to the state's attorney office in the morning, and put my dick sucking skills to work in the hopes i can get the charge dropped since the bartender fixed her mistake before the bust even took place. i'm not confident, but it's our only violation in the 12 years i've been there, so maybe we'll get a little lenience. 

but probably not.

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5 minutes ago, Admin_Raptorpat said:

does your place normally have youngish crowds where under-21s sneaking in would normally be a problem outside of a sting operation?

yep, and we're pretty good about carding and watching for hand-offs, etc. this was just an example of a good bartender making a mistake.

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2 minutes ago, enad said:

You going to fire her?  

probably not. if my fine is $500, that's still cheaper than sending all my bartenders through a training course. this achieves that goal without the extra hassle. chalk it up to a learning experience, throw a ticket fund party, and move on with life.

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Just now, wacky1980 said:

probably not. if my fine is $500, that's still cheaper than sending all my bartenders through a training course. this achieves that goal without the extra hassle. chalk it up to a learning experience, throw a ticket fund party, and move on with life.

You should still make it seem like you might fire her.  Or even better, make it seem like you might fire someone else completely unrelated to the incident just so it weighs on her conscience.

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2 minutes ago, enad said:

You should still make it seem like you might fire her.  Or even better, make it seem like you might fire someone else completely unrelated to the incident just so it weighs on her conscience.

i don't like to manage thru fear. it loses its effectiveness in a cash business, where an unhappy employee can literally rob you blind.

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Just now, scoobdog said:

Doesn't your state have those special underage licenses?

indeed we do scoob. the minor's id showed a date of 10/24/98. so it's within the grace period of 3 months post-21st bday, when your math is off by a year. we have lots of people come in with their vertical id's who are 21 because they just recently turned and haven't updated their id. 

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Gotcha.  It's been a long time, but my first license had a big red bar that said "Age 21 in 1996" on it, so bartenders didn't have to do math in their heads.   It's fundamentally unfair to make bartenders try to do that when they are under pressure to serve like ten customers at the same time.

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Just now, scoobdog said:

Oh ok.  Well, that's quite the fuck up, then.

Yeah, just got caught in a bad moment. Shitty thing is, she figured it out and corrected it before the bust ever happened. But the sale was already complete so it was too late.

I might be able to get the bartender's ticket tossed because I'm in pretty good with the state's attorney, but our fine will come directly from liquor control. Probably no chance of getting that one dropped.

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15 hours ago, wacky1980 said:

probably not. if my fine is $500, that's still cheaper than sending all my bartenders through a training course. this achieves that goal without the extra hassle. chalk it up to a learning experience, throw a ticket fund party, and move on with life.

bartenders are required to go through enough shit in this state already..

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31 minutes ago, PhilosipherStoned said:

bartenders are required to go through enough shit in this state already..

our bartenders have to be BASSET certified (alcohol server training), as well as food sanitation certified, even though we don't serve food. for a job that, in many cases, they will work maybe 2 days per week for a couple hundred bucks. it's pretty fucked.

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1 minute ago, discolemonade said:

yeah, i loathed trying to 'math' quick during the weekend rush. i mean, you got 10-15 orders PLUS the restaurant side orders, 

and your mind goes fart. 

i would make a 'cheat sheet' every month. sounds stupid but, hey, saved my arse a few times. 

dang...and now i miss tending bar. 

they try to make it easy on a person by putting the dates in brightly-colored boxes and changing the orientation of the ID, but it's still easily fucked up, especially since a lot of people don't handle that kind of stress very well. here's an example of an illinois minor id card, provided by our good friend thor:

ilu21.jpg

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32 minutes ago, discolemonade said:

 it was a nice change when the age color strip, or flip id came out.

i never really had much trouble when carding people. the most difficult part was when you'd get some far off state or a military id that you've never seen before. i've personally beat two stings that i know of, and denied a boatload of minors over the years. these kids think they're clever with fakes or whatever, but they forget we were kids once too and we already know their tricks.

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On 12/18/2018 at 12:41 PM, wacky1980 said:

they try to make it easy on a person by putting the dates in brightly-colored boxes and changing the orientation of the ID, but it's still easily fucked up, especially since a lot of people don't handle that kind of stress very well. here's an example of an illinois minor id card, provided by our good friend thor:

ilu21.jpg

Aside from the fact that it's obviously wrong so as not to be used, I think it might be a problem putting in the abbreviated date as opposed to just putting the year.  With my license, the benefit is that you start with the year, but you still have to look up the date elsewhere on the license.  The chance of your eyes playing tricks and misreading the ID are much lower when you have to check two places to come up with the correct date for two reasons:  the date itself will stop you, and if it doesn't, the extra time spent looking through the license slows you down long enough to process what you're seeing properly.

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15 hours ago, scoobdog said:

Aside from the fact that it's obviously wrong so as not to be used, I think it might be a problem putting in the abbreviated date as opposed to just putting the year.  With my license, the benefit is that you start with the year, but you still have to look up the date elsewhere on the license.  The chance of your eyes playing tricks and misreading the ID are much lower when you have to check two places to come up with the correct date for two reasons:  the date itself will stop you, and if it doesn't, the extra time spent looking through the license slows you down long enough to process what you're seeing properly.

i mean, it's really not confusing at all to put five different dates on the license, three of which are tied to date of birth and two of which may not be. also, a vertical license denotes "under 21" but the vertical license doesn't expire until 3 months after the 21st birthday, so you have just-turned-21 folks running around with vertical licenses, getting all indignant and causing a scene when they're denied for having a vertical license. so even for a seasoned bartender, getting a vertical license creates at least a little bit of acute stress, which can increase the chance of a misread or calculation error.

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