This is my office. Small. Confined. Dim. Dusky. Orderly. No chairs. Grubby rubber mats on the floor, grime in the corners, otherwise shiny and alluring despite the ailing illumination. Stainless steel surfaces with sharp corners and odd smells from old, poorly operating drains. A messy enterprise, this transference of alcohol, syrups, sodas, and citruses. That half moon shaped divet in the tile? That’s from the time Angel dropped a full water bottle and it nosed dived and exploded like a torpedo. Yes, scars and stories abound in this cramped space. No room to swing your arms around in here. During service there’s constant line of people in and out for the recycling bin and the hand sink, the water fridge, the wine fridge, the beer fridge, varieties of wine glasses, conversations, questions, quick jokes muttered on the way somewhere.

Upon the shelves, rows of glistening bottles beckoning, introducing themselves with multicolored labels. All shapes and sizes filled with alcohol, syrups, weird infusions, fruits that may or may not have been forgotten but now sit in the stasis of high proof forever. Bottles are my trade, my vessel. Bad receptacles, fragile but elegant. They arrive armored in cardboard, lugged upstairs into storage, filed away on rickety metal shelves, pulled back downstairs when needed and placed upon another set of racks sagging and groaning with enormous weight. Awaiting the moment when they will be ripped open, poured, spent, useless, discarded into the recycling bin and hauled the back door at the end of the night, their final destination the big blue dumpster in the alleyway.

I’m one of the few people you’ll meet who actually loves their job. Yeah, it took a moment to arrive at that realization but I’ve been under the fluorescent lights of oblivion, man, in the chair in front of the screen, amidst the other nine to fivers and I’d rather be grey and stooped behind my bar, sore shoulders and all.

You’re here for a few things, and one of them is what I put in the glass.

You’ve got your office. The corner space maybe. A nice, comfy chair. A spot on the desk where papers congregate and a computer dominates. The clacking of keys in the background. Glass partitions, carpeted floor, janitors in sagging jeans with jangling keys. I guarantee its more fun over here. First time in? Let’s look around a bit. Oh that secret door you ask? It’s the booze closet and it tells its own tale in sheer pandemonium and a controlled savagery in sheaves of bottles, deli containers, and organized miscellaneous flotsam and jetsam. Yeah, most of the stuff squirreled away in there has some type of job or did. A twisted historical record told in artifacts and tolls like some long forgotten civilization comprised of boozers and reprobates. Some of these relics are easy enough to figure out on your own, others hold a more mysterious purpose. Just that one little plastic cubby in the closet is a can opener, a muddler past its prime, a chipped Chinese cleaver from another life, a dull zester, a couple of ball lockers, a spare wine key, a print out of specs from not one but two other bar managers, the notebook of Lee.

And what is my job exactly and why do I love it so much?

to be continued…