My First Booze Cruise

At first, I was scared. Last night was my first booze cruise as a bartender. Usually they would put the best bartenders on because they would be able to handle a boat full of drunken, angry punks. Granted last night's cruise was only at half the capacity, I was still scared. At least I was put on the lower deck bar, which is the least busy of the 2 bars on the boat.

Once people started arriving, I realized that these were young clubbers. Apparently, last year they were pretty uppity. Truthfully, they weren't that bad. I put my game face on as soon as I got my first customers to show that they can't push me around, and I guess it worked.

I traded with another bartender to be on the outside bar on the top deck 'cause she was cold. It was supposed to be for a half hour. It ended up being for an hour and a half. I froze myself out there. That's ok though. I had a good time. The speaker blasting in my left ear, the drunken dancing, barely hearing their orders. Awesome. Some guy handed me some sunglasses they found and a second later, this guy says it's his so I gave it to him. A few minutes later, a different guy comes up, shows me the sunglasses, and says "Do you recognize these?" I said yeah. He started saying something about wanting to buy my shots of tequila. If I could drink on the job, I would but I can't.

When I finally went down again, a bunch of guys tried to get more drinks after we closed the bar. They tried to say, "I'll buy you some shots if you get us some more drinks." Uhhh, no buddy. It was also sad to see these kids scrape their change together to afford a last drink.

Overall, it was a pretty good night. The organizers didn't get the numbers they wanted, but the people drank a lot, had a good time, and we made a lot of tips. Win-win situation. There were 11 staff and we each got $103 in tips. Unlike when I'm serving on the floor for these cruises, I felt I really worked for the money. It was a good first booze cruise for me.