A Fountain Of Laziness

I work as a bartender in a busy bar and restaurant. The bar is set up two-sided; one side has all the beer and lager taps with the liquors as well as fountain drinks. The other is strictly fountain drinks as it is meant as a quick station for servers to get refills for people.

I get an order from the restaurant for about ten people, all fountain drinks but different because two of the party are diabetic. I start on the drinks, getting glasses and filling them with ice, generally doing them two at a time and placing them on a tray.

I am the only one working on the bar itself.

Every time I get another glass, I notice that my drinks order has gone. One by one, every soda on the tray has vanished.

The man who has ordered has his back turned and is in conversation, but none of his party have their drinks.

I start the process again, and with each new glass, the same thing happens.

Frustrated, I move my tray, collect all the glasses, and do all the drinks at once.

As I am moving across the bar to deliver what seems to be the most difficult order I have ever filled, one of the new servers stops me and tries to pluck a soda from my tray.

I give her a “WTF” face and she brazenly states that it is my job to pour her drinks and that her table needs the sodas.

It turns out that she has been stealing my drinks orders whilst my back was turned, with no regard for preference — diet, zero-calorie, etc. — and giving them to her tables.

I finish serving my now angry customer, apologise, and then have to explain to the waitress that she actually has to tell me what her tables are drinking so I can pour them, not just steal drinks from other customers.

I show her the fountain station on the other side of the bar, even though I personally watched her being trained on this.

She is soon let go when she is found doing the same thing on other shifts, too lazy to get her own drinks for customers or to write orders down.

That evening, I filled 25 glasses for an original order of ten. The definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.