Balancing The Gendered Drink

When working in hospitality as a young woman, there are a few things you learn very fast. When you smile and take the order of an overly expensive IPA that essentially tastes of bitter Vegemite from a man in his mid-thirties, do not give him your name when he asks. If you do this, he will make sure that every time you serve him or his friends a drink or clear away glasses from his table or bring his food out to him, he will stare at you (a better word for it would be ‘leering’) saying “thanks (insert name here)” acting as though you two have formed a very special connection.

Words by Madeline Jaye Osbourne

He will presume his gratefulness permits either a discount on his next drink, or (obviously) your Snapchat. Then he will bumble out the door, making his way down to Hindley street to get plastered, home in bed with his face in a bucket by 11.30 p.m. (his metabolism is not what it used to be). When this unfortunate moment occurs and you scatter around trying to find an excuse not to give him your socials, he will always be in absolute disbelief that you don’t want to go out with him. I even had a guy assume I was married the other day, when I politely refused not to take up his offer on a drink after work. His face, absolutely gobsmacked by this rejection, turned into a calm recognition, causing him to say ‘ahh, you’re married then?’.

The second thing you must not do is to NEVER put a straw in a man’s drink. Not only does this somehow destroy a man’s dignity, it emasculates him so much he goes down 10 pegs in the manly man’s hierarchy of proper manly etiquette. The other day for example, I had the audacity to pop a short straw into an elderly Irish man’s CC and dry. In utter disbelief, with his jaw wide open, he popped the straw out of his drink, and basically threw it at me, walking away and shaking his head. I learned the hard way, apparently, and smacked my own fingers as punishment.

Now the two main points are done with, let us get on with the rest of this shit show. Here are a collection of things, that I have absolutely no control of, that I have been judged for:

We will begin with a real winner, which is the classic ‘crack a smile love’, something all women have had the unfortunate experience of. I’m currently close to going full Joker mode with a smile from ear to ear if I hear it one more time. Honestly, though, if you were to try to smile through a six-hour shift (without a break), you would not only be getting the police called on you quick-smart, I’m sure it would also cause some sort of brain aneurysm.

it’s a full-on story so settle in folks. Two men walked into the bar, sat at the bar, and asked for my recommendation on what to get to eat. I pointed to the first thing I saw and said that it’s my favourite (ironically, it was the prawn pasta, and not only do I hate prawns, I’m also highly allergic to them). The two men were unfortunately sitting directly in front of the glasses I needed to polish, and so I was forced into conversation. It’s going well, I thought. We had some light banter back and forth as they told me about their ever-exciting management positions in some mining company I’d never heard of. They suddenly asked what I was studying. I responded with (insert arts degree here), to which they said ‘nah you’re too smart for that’. After that comment, I stopped what I was doing, left work, dropped out of my degree, and enrolled in finance. Thank god they told me how silly my little degree was! Out of the blue, they then asked if I was vegan. Was it the cropped hair and Dr Martens, I wonder? We’ll never know. Thankfully, Tweedle Dum answered with ‘nah, she’s not skinny enough to be vegan’. When I had the audacity to be slightly hurt by that statement, I became the arsehole. With this can of worms now opened, polite chit chat quickly became a serious interrogation of whether or not they thought my life was up to their standards. “You have never left Adelaide, have you?” one of them said. I responded with the list of countries I had previously visited, whilst simultaneously becoming annoyed that I seemed to be seeking their validation. I retorted with this great comeback, ‘you two aren’t from Adelaide, are you?’ and Tweedle Dee goes ‘why? ‘Coz we’re educated?’. Tweedle Dum laughed, highly impressed with his best friends’ wit. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that growing up in the suburbs of Sydney and getting barely passable grades in finance was not the distinct standard of ‘well-educated’ and that they now both live in Adelaide, the ‘city of the uneducated’ (their words not mine). To summarise the interaction, they left, and I felt both angry and confused at the fact that every part of my life was questioned by two strange men who kicked up a fuss about a 9-dollar pint. Why did I care what they thought? Patriarchal ideologies are instilled in all of us, I guess.

Here are some other fun things I’ve heard in my time:

‘I have a question about the beer’, said the man I’m serving, he then looked behind me (or through me, is what it really felt like) to ask the male bartender behind me instead.

A man ordered quite a large meal and when the waitress brought it out to him, she copped an image (unfortunately burnt into her mind forever) of his stomach, to which he stated ‘look! I haven’t eaten all day, I deserve it’.

On an extremely loud night, I poured the wrong beer for a male in a dashing suit. He proceeded to laugh and mutter to his friends ‘hard job, aint it?’ (the correct wording is ‘is it not?’).

To summarise all these lovely experiences, I wish I could say that I’d managed to respond with some quick-witted remarks in defense, but honestly the shock of it all managed to overpower my brain at that moment. And to be fully transparent, most of the customers I serve, men and women, are kind and respectful people (although I have had a shocking experience with an old lady once that cracked it when I poured her a pinot gris instead of a pinot noir, and kids can be so mean sometimes). Unfortunately, the kind encounters are often forgotten, and it’s the cruel or weird ones that stick with you. After you’ve spent eight hours studying and six hours working just to slug home, and think about these arseholes while cooking your twominute noodles, it’s rather depressing. If there is any message to end this quick rant written on the Note’s app on my phone late at night, it is that if you encounter someone, female or not, please, please do your best to not be a dick (or assume that a smile means anything more than what it is).