DrinkWire is Liquor.com's showcase for the best articles, recipe and reviews from the web's top writers and bloggers. In this series, The Booze Baron offers thoughts on troubling issues facing many who work in the bar and spirits world.

Hospitality industry folks, we have a problem

My last post about the hospitality industry’s reliance on alcohol and drugs spurred lots of discussion about how addiction happens as well as how difficult it is to get support. As pointed out in the comments on that post, working with the public is more stressful than being a neurosurgeon, by some accounts.

So let's try to scratch the surface of why it happens.

First, a warning: What you are about to read is disturbing. It will make you angry. And it only addresses one tiny part of a massive issue that affects not just our industry but our whole society.

I also want to be very clear that I understand female members of our industry deal with harassment on a far more widespread basis — practically every moment of every shift. However, I'm addressing this from the male perspective because, honestly, it's what I know. For an upcoming post, I’ll interview leading female bartenders and hospitality professionals for a deeper look into this issue from their point of view. In this post, I’m trying to talk about how bartenders, waitstaff, and other hospitality industry workers as a whole are treated differently from our peers in other professions.

Setting the Scene

A large group of customers shows up unannounced late at night. Most of them are your friends, so it’s no big deal; they’ve just brought along people from a networking event. You’re severely understaffed but start smashing out cocktails, charming as many guests at a time as you can handle.

Your friend—a businessperson you trust and admire—signals to you during a quiet period. As you slide down to his end of the bar, he orders a glass of wine. “Are you alright, mate?” he asks.

“Yeah, great!” you answer. "Why?”

“Some of the women were complaining about your service.”

This is a bit shocking, as you've been offering up plenty of smiles and speedy service, especially given the situation. “Sorry, I’m a bit under the gun with the unexpected crowd. Were the drinks bad?”

“No, they just said you don’t flirt with them enough. You’d make more tips if you were a little more welcoming.” He gestures to a group of women all roughly twice your age.

“But I have a partner.”

“Mate, would she really care? This is just business and good service.

If you were watching on a hidden camera, you'd see this young barman doing a solid impersonation of a goldfish trying to wrap his head around the concept.

Is the customer right?

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Fast-forward a month later. The interlocking couple parked at the bar clearly needs to go back home and get it on in private. You head to the walk-in cooler to grab some more limes for the eight customers who decided they really need a round of margaritas at closing.

The walk-in door closes. You spin around, half expecting the chef is locking you in again, his idea of a hilarious joke. But it’s not the chef. It's the female half of the amorous couple.

She walks over to you and, without warning, shoves her hands down your pants. “Kiss me.”

“Whoa, wait a minute. What the hell are you doing?”

She leans in and grips your crotch again, making an unmistakably lewd demand.

“I’m very flattered but please don’t.” You push her away and she looks incredibly confused, a little bit hurt. But she leaves.

By the time you get back to the bar, the couple has skipped their tab. Assholes.

The Reality of the Service Industry

For me, the very definition of hospitality is making a customer’s life better and more enjoyable for the short period they are with you. You charm them, you joke with them, you convince them to spoil themselves with one luxurious drink just this one time, you make them feel important.

The bar tab is merely for the drinks and food you provide; tips reflect your entertainment and charm. If you make the guest feel fantastic and rich, or relaxed and cool, they will spend as if that's who they actually are, every damned time.

But at what point are they supposed to feel desired? Where, and why, do some customers feel the need to cross that line?

Clearly there is a belief that this is meant to be a part of it, however small, in every transaction. After all, why do you want the attractive bar person to flirt with you? Why do you want the female bartender to show skin, or the male bartender to act as if he has no life outside of that bar?

“Oh, but Nick, it’s just the alcohol. We all get like that after a few drinks.”

Bullshit.

When is alcohol ever an excuse for bad behavior? If you believe this, you are literally stating that it’s fine to treat people like objects so long as you're drunk.

“But if you flirt a bit, it’s all in good fun and you get better tips. Everyone knows this.”

Bugger your tips.

What industry other than the sex/stripping/porn industry makes arousal a prerequisite to getting paid? Who talked to you on your first (probably unpaid) trial shift and said: “Oh and part of the job is convincing every customer you want to fuck them…”?

“You’re a guy though! You have no right to complain about this stuff.”

Right. Here’s a point that needs some serious unpacking.

Slowly but surely, women in our industry are starting to get the respect they bloody well deserve as hard workers and creative pros. We all have a long way to go, but things are starting to change. People are beginning to understand that harassment is wrong, even while it remains prevalent.

Ironically, if you’re a guy in the hospitality industry, harassment is still a murky issue. Try complaining to the manager about a customer propositioning you or even outright groping you, and you'll probably get the same sort of response: “Mate, you’re lucky! It’s the best part of being a bartender. Just keep working it. Keep them happy and you’ll get great tips.”

I bet the majority of you reading this post agree with the manager’s reaction. Here’s the thing, though: You’ve just validated the idea that some level of harassment is fine for any worker, regardless of their gender.

So, Who's Responsible?

You’re kidding yourself if you think we can fix this issue overnight, or that one single person is responsible. Even the seedy bar consultant who got way too fucked up, or the manager who thinks ass-smacking is acceptable, or the customer who won’t tip if you don’t have sex in the stockroom. They aren’t solely responsible.

We, as an industry, are failing to address this. We are failing to make our workplaces safe from the kind of responses that make people feel like they should just put up with harassment. It doesn’t matter if it’s customers, or managers, or other staff members, or a self-important industry celebrity who thinks his status gives him the right to have his pick of your staff.

What matters is it happens because we, due to history, due to mountains of stress and shitty pay and the need to get tips and the need to get more shifts just to make rent—we allow it. Not just the victims. Every bloody one of us.

“But if we come down hard on customers, we’ll scare them off.”

Yeah, you will. You’ll scare them in the direction of whoever is so weak they care more about money than their employees. You’ll scare off every petty customer who needs to feel desired in order to part with their money.

But if you keep offering up your staff as objects to be sexualized by every customer in exchange for minimum wage plus tips, you’d better make sure they know what they’re in for. If you train that barman to think everyone in the industry is hypersexual, how much do you shoulder the blame when he's accused of raping and abusing a string of women who were trying to break into the industry? Combine our current attitude towards harassment with the industry-wise substance abuse issues I wrote about previously and now we’re in a very, very dangerous spot.

You deserve so much better than that. We all do. We all deserve to work in an industry where serious assault—things like what the insanely brave women who’ve posted on https://therealityofsexualassaultinthecocktailcommunity.com/ had to put up with—do not happen. Ever. At all.

Maybe it’s time for bar owners to stop blowing money on parties to keep employees happy. Maybe it's time for spirits companies to stop hiring flirtatious ambassadors to keep us buying their products. Instead, how about setting up systems to help keep all of us safer and healthier? That’s probably dreaming, though. For now, it’s up to us.

Want to talk more about this subject? I go into more detail in the expanded post and video on my site. If you’d like to get in touch about this piece or want to be part of the interviews around these topics, drop me a line.