Spills & Mistakes as a Bartender

Video Transcript

"Now I'm going to talk to you a little bit about how to handle spills and mistakes in general. The first thing, is you should really try to avoid, as much as you can, mistakes and spills. Inevitably, they're going to happen eventually and possibly once a night, if you're working at a bar and you're pretty busy. Generally, what you want to do, just to be really careful, is you always want to make your drink on a mat. If you make it in the air or pouring it walking and another bartender bumps into you, that's going to go all over you or him and it's going to waste the alcohol, so try to put it down on the mat, when you can. Another thing is cocktail glasses. These are really fragile glasses. I think every bartender, I've ever mat, has broken at least one, if not multiple. It's a thin glass ware so be careful when you're carrying them and it's a unique shape, so just be very careful around them, in general. On the same note, when you chill glasses, you're going to put it in the freezer. If you've just washed it in a hot dishwasher and the temperature is still really hot, most likely, you're going to crack the glass. This tends to happen more often in pint glasses, I've noticed, so just make sure that once you take it out of the dishwasher or you take it out of your hot sink, you put it aside to cool off for a little bit. If you do make a spill, the first thing you want to do is clean it up as fast as you can. It's not a big deal, don't make it into a big deal. Your customer won't think it is unless you make it into one. As soon as you're finished cleaning it up, just make a new drink for your customer. If you make a mistake, it's good to apologize real quick and make them another one. Most bars will let you know the policy on that, whether you should just throw the drink out or if you have to pay for it yourself, or whatever it is. Generally, again, it's not a big deal, eventually, you're going to make a mistake. This is our recommendations on spills and mistakes."