Jeanette the Bartender

So tonight I did something that I have never done before. I bartended. woo! It was quite a lot more work than I thought it would be. There was one customer though who really stuck out at me. All he was having was glasses of Rickard's Red, and he was one of my first "customers". It was from him that i learned a major lesson about bartending tasks. I think that to him, the most important task was to interact with the people. I was content to just buzz around washing dishes and making drinks that i didnt take the time to talk to any of the people in front of me. He'd call me over from the dishwasher and said... " where's you're smile??...oh! wait, there it is, i can see it coming out now..."and he would watch every single move i made. if i did something that looked clumsy and i hoped that no one saw, i could count on the fact that the guy had seen it. we got to talking about what a "brilliant looking girl" like me was doing next year. when i told him that i would be going to australia in a month, he got excited. i think he started telling stories about dead koala bears and kangaroos at this point, but i don't really remember because i was intent on making drinks. he asked me how much a day in Australia would cost, and i told him i had no idea, trying to brush the question off, but he was insistent with this one question. i told him that i woul dbe hostelling it, so thats about 20 bucks a night, and then food and entertainment, so i estimated 60 bucks. basically a number pulled out of thin air just to get him to stop asking me. when he gave me back his credit card slip, he told me, "when you're in australia think "who the f**k was that guy?"" i laughed and slipped the paper in my billfold not really looking at it. but when i went to take payment for it, i saw that the tip amount was 60.00 and in the margin was a little note which read, "I day down under" which is probably "a day down under" after a few beers. I can't wait to spend that 60 bucks in australia, and i will think of him as i spend it. The friendly guy who taught me the most important part of bartending.