How to Become a Bartender: Shaking Things Up

I always tell people when you when you go into a bar and you see a mirror behind the bar, it's not because you're supposed to be checking yourself out.
It's that your back is turned for a portion of the evening.
That mirror is your eyes.
So that's that's the reason why most places have a giant mirror there.
Hi, I'm Ravel Zeri, and welcome to How Much Can I Make.
I am a curious journalist, fascinated by what people do for a living, what their jobs are really like, and how much they can earn.
Join me as we dive into stories behind careers, uncovering insights and details, which I hope you'll find as intriguing as I do.
So let's get started.
Today we are with Tom.
I can't pronounce his last name, so he's gonna introduce himself and we're gonna hear all about the bartending job.
Okay, hi everyone.
My name is Tom Ostoich, and I'm a bartender.
How long have you been a bartender?
I've been a bartender since 1997.
Whoa! Yeah.
In New York City.
In New York City, in New Orleans, and in uh the Kingston Woodstock area.
How did you get into it?
I came into it completely uh haphazardly.
I hung out at a bar in the East Village.
Drinking.
Yep.
And uh I was in graduate school in a PhD program that was kind of going nowhere for me.
And I was sort of scrapping around with the city.
What area?
What what area was it?
Uh in literature.
Oh wow.
Okay.
The quickest way to uh kill something that you love is to to to study it at a granular level, maybe.
At least for me, that that was too much.
Uh-huh.
For I hung out at a bar that was run by uh Ukrainians in the East Village.
And it was sort of infamous or or famous for being sort of a real kind of old school dive bar.
And they had an older gentleman who worked there who was probably anywhere between 70 and 200 years old, who needed help, and so I was hired as a as a bar back and sort of barbeck?
What does that mean?
And a bar back is basically the person who does all the what you might call grunt work.
So that means you restock all the beer and the liquor, you go get the ice, you tap kegs, you move things around, you basically you're the the person Friday for the uh for the bartender.
You bust tables and you clean up things, you also are the person who probably is if there's no security that handles arguments and fights, which is part of the reason I was there at the time.
And so the the bar back is sort of a good entry point into bartending if you have somebody who's willing to teach you the rudiments of bar back.
That's what I was gonna ask you.
Yeah.
You were learning how to mix drinks while you were doing uh Yeah, so it was almost like a mentorship.
He started teaching me the rudiments, and then he started making me do it on my own.
Did you know anything about mixing drinks?
I knew a little bit.
I had I had taken sort of extramural class in college that basically taught you the basics.
And bartending was sort of in my family.
My grandparents ran a restaurant and bar in Boyceville.
Oh.
And my cousins run a place.
So I grew up a little bit around it, but it wasn't I didn't go to any fancy bartending school or anything like that.
I learned by doing.
Right.
So that's one way to get in.
But do you know if people today have to take some courses or get some certificate or yeah, I would say it can be helpful, but most people that are hiring for a place they they're gonna want some kind of experience and you're going to sort of have to go through the steps of it.
So I know a lot of people do spend money on sort of fancy bartending schools, and I I can't tell you one way or the other if that's very helpful.
It's probably a good introduction.
Uh-huh.
It's probably like most people's experiences with school that you start to learn something, but until you're actually on the job, you don't know it.
And since bartending is sort of rapid fire, it's a lot of multitasking, it's a lot of thinking on your feet and processing, usually in a place that's kind of noisy.
It helps to know something in advance, but it's also probably very beneficial, I I would say, to get your foot in the door.
And if that means starting as a bar back or starting as a bus person in a restaurant and working your way up, that that's the way to do it.
How long were you a barbeck?
Me, a couple of months.
I but I I was in a unique situation.
I was working with somebody that required additional help.
I've worked in other places where sometimes barbacks are there for a long time.
They don't either they don't want to bartend or and that's acceptable.
And you know, it's it's a good, honest labor.
You get tipped out by the bartenders, you get an hourly wage.
So you're usually probably doing okay.
I do want to touch on the money.
The program is called How Much Can I Make?
Yes.
So you mentioned tips.
Uh, most of your pay is from tips or from hourly work?
Uh it's a little bit different now because the service industry employees, so restaurants and bars, are make an hourly wage that's I don't think it's New York State minimum wage, but it's much more than you used to make.
Okay.
So for instance, I think 2025, it goes up to 1040 an hour for bartenders.
But with the tips, your money is going to be radically higher than that.
And so generally, uh, I would say in Kingston, New York, I work in a neighborhood, but it's not a dive bar, but it's not a cocktail bar.
And uh probably in tips, I make about$30 an hour.
And then in addition to the to the hourly wage.
Right.
But what if you have two bartenders?
I've seen places so you have to split the tips.
Then you split the tips.
You split the tips.
And so generally there's it's a it's a system that you work out with the management and you just try to be consistent.
If there's two bartenders, you split the tips evenly.
And the barbeck doesn't get anything.
Incorrect.
Uh oh.
Barbeck generally, and it it changes depending on what place you go, is generally most places in New York I would say was about 20 to 25 percent.
So it just depends.
We do it's probably about that in Kingston.
So you're getting something for your time.
And if you apply yourself and you're observant and you're hardworking, you'll also be able to, if you want to, transition to bartending.
So there is a barbeck, bartending, is there anything above it?
Some places have managers.
It just depends.
And it generally it's a larger place.
If it's a venue or, you know, a club, then there'll be floor managers and managers, I believe, and can't exactly quote me on this, those places the managers would make a salary, so they wouldn't be factored into any kind of tip pool.
But places that are larger are restaurants.
Generally, there's a tip pool, and that means the floor, the wait, the wait staff, and the bartenders all contribute, and you get a they allocate a certain portion depending on your hours and your what you what your job is.
So it's a very fair business.
I would say so.
I mean, I think most places are on the up and up these days.
I think it was a little bit different when it was just cash for everybody, but now most of your money is coming probably on credit cards.
Uh so you'll be getting it in a check.
You're not gonna be walking home with a pile of cash in your pocket.
Probably.
I mean again, every place is different, but that's my experience.
And they also deduct probably the three percent of the processing of the credit card, right?
Uh I think that varies from place to place.
I think some places absorb it.
Okay.
Generally the places I work for absorb that as factors of doing business.
Right.
You worked in a busy place in the city, but let's say and we'll take an average place.
How much can a bartender make on uh either daily or weekly?
Yeah, I my rule of thumb was that an eight-hour shift, if I could make two hundred and fifty bucks in tips, I was generally okay.
You're gonna have nights that are great, you're gonna have nights that are not.
You're gonna find out really quickly in the business that January and February of every year, almost every place on earth are really bad, and you're gonna have to slog through them because everybody's paying off holiday trips and their presents and all that stuff that they've just gone through, and probably the therapy that they need after they've visited their families and all those things.
And so there's just not a lot that's going on, and then sometime in the middle of March, around St.
Patrick's Day and the NCAA tournament and stuff, things will pick up because spring fever will set in and people will go, oh, this is great again.
And what's the summer usually like?
And it's depending on depending on where you are.
So But before Christmas must be the best time, no?
Before Christmas is generally really good.
Any time that there's young people let loose on the streets, so the end of August when schools get back in session, or the end of semester is generally good.
You have to be a little bit zen about the fact that the money's gonna fluctuate.
I've done times where I've worked 40 hours a week, I've done times where I worked I owned a place, I worked 80 hours a week.
As I've gotten older, I do a little bit less.
But you know, for over 20 years in New York City, I lived comfortably.
Generally, if I could pay my rent in one week of work, I was happy.
Right.
So at what point did you realize I want to be a bartender?
Well, I was young, and as I said, I had been scrapping looking for work in different areas, and I wasn't somebody that really wanted a nine to five existence.
So for me, it was sort of hand in glove.
I just um I enjoyed it.
As a young person in New York City, I got to I got a really cool experience because I was just in a community very quickly, and you get to know people, and it's all neighborhoods, it's a lot of connection.
Because you're not inviting people over to your house the way you would in other places, because you probably live in a small apartment, coffee shops and and cafes and bars become your de facto living rooms.
It's a really great way to just meet people and be around sort of an excitement, and and I really felt like I belonged in New York City.
And I'm old enough to have skirted some of the pitfalls of it, so there's a lot of things that you have to pay attention to, especially if you're young.
You need to know yourself, you need to know what kind of person you are.
If you're somebody who thinks bartending is like something out of a movie and you're gonna get to drink for free and just party all the time, it's that's not the game.
No, what's the biggest misconception about Well, I think that's part of it.
I think the biggest misconception is that you're just living a carefree life, or that you're doing this in lieu of doing something else, or you're working on something else.
Pretty much anybody who's worked in the business that considers themselves to be a professional bartender, it's a job.
Right.
And I've had it there's some jobs where I've worked 40 hours a week, you know, between 8 and 5 a.m., you know, pretty much every night.
And uh, you know, and all the things that you find in any job you get.
Yeah, that's what I want to know.
If you can describe for me a day in your life, everybody's experience is gonna be personal to them.
A day in my life would be, for instance, I worked in Brooklyn for many years at a bar that just lost their lease.
I worked two doubles, which were 12-hour shifts, so I worked Wow, what time do they open?
Well, they opened at four in the afternoon, so I would get there about three, three thirty.
That would mean I had to start doing side work, which means counting money, making sure that I have liquor and everything is stocked up, cutting fruit, uh, making sure that the bathrooms work, TVs, all that stuff, just getting the place in shape so that you can open the door and hit the ground running.
And then there is happy hour.
We had a happy hour, so you generally have like a local clientele that's pretty loyal, so you saw a lot of the same faces on a daily basis, and um, you know, you get gossip and you have a little more time to talk generally and sort of socialize, which is when you're trying to be a bartender, is a skill set that you want to have.
You want to give people time you because it just as a personal interest, but also that's sort of the name of the game.
You work to build up a really good loyal clientele and they treat you well in return.
Tips.
I worked at a pretty active place.
Uh so you know, it it builds up as the night goes along, and you know, and many nights at nine o'clock you think, well, I've already worked six hours and I've got to be here for at least six more.
So, you know, you have to get your head around those things.
But, you know, you have to be willing to be tired.
Uh you have to be willing to do the work.
So at the I I would tell people that, you know, sometimes at four o'clock when you're closing up, people say, Well, meet me at an after hours, meet me here.
And it's like, well, actually the hardest part of my day begins now.
Because I have to count the money.
I have to make sure the money's correct.
If you're not great at math, you better be able to learn it.
I was not a somebody that was great at math until I started counting money by hand.
And then I started to be able to add and divide and figure out tip percentages and all sorts of things like that, because that was just the circumstances of the job.
And what do you have to do with all the credit card charges?
You have to adjust all the credit cards, so that means you have to factor in the tip, so you literally have to go through them one by one.
Which, you know, if you're expedient, you can do that as you go along.
Oh, okay.
But you know, some people leave it till the end of the night.
You have to restock, you have to clean.
You know, there's a lot of things that you need to do.
Generally, a good rule of thumb is that you want to leave a place the way that you would want to find it.
And smart places, if when you're looking for work, will have a set of rules of things that you need to do.
Do you love being a bartender?
Uh there's things I love about it.
There's things that What do you love about it?
I love the social aspect of it.
Okay.
Some people get really involved in like being great cocktailans and able to make, you know, a huge range of beautiful drinks.
That's less my thing.
It's I'm much more creating a vibe, uh having interacting with people.
You know, that's another part of it too, is you if you're working in a venue, you're working in a in a club that's doing comedy or DJs or music, you're not gonna have that much social interaction with your customers.
It's gonna be people walking up to you in the dark, asking for a beer and then going back to their seats or going back to the dance floor.
So that might not be as satisfying for some like me, that's that's less satisfying.
You might work in a restaurant that has a service bar where you're making drinks for for customers that you only see as they walk through the restaurant and you have no interaction with them.
That that may be less satisfying to you.
I found that neighborhood bars, dive bars, even sports bars, that was satisfying to me because it combined the social aspect of it.
Does it happen to you that somebody comes and asks for a cocktail or a drink that you do not know how to make?
All the time.
So you just ask them or you get on Google?
No, I mean it dep it really depends.
It depends on how much time you have.
And if you're in a busy bar, the the concept of like a canon of cocktails, from my perspective, is a little more diffuse now because so many places make their own house drinks.
And so people may have gone to a place and learned the name of a drink that is is particular to that place.
Right.
And they would come into another place and say, Oh, I want an ambassador's morning lift.
If it's quiet and you have a little time, you might want to learn how to make it, or you might want to file it away so that you can make it the next time that the person shows up.
But if you're in a busy place, you gotta work with a customer to have a plan B.
Right.
And here's a little trade secret plan B is almost always a vodka soda.
It's it's shocking how many people will want some very particular drink, and then when you say, Well, I can't do that, they say, Oh, I'll just take a vodka soda.
I know that there's a huge trend now for mocktails.
Yes.
Do you do you do that?
I mean, this is the latest thing, correct?
Uh it is.
And you know, things are cyclical and there's there's fads.
And I think in the bar business, you see things and they just become trends.
And can you think of a trend that was before that?
Well, yeah, I mean the c craft beer was like a huge trend.
So at one point, you know, it just was no longer acceptable to have Budweiser and Heineken.
And people became smart about beer and learned a lot about beer and and they wanted you to know about it, then you'll go through there'll just be liquors that get hot for whatever reason because, you know, because George Clooney suddenly develops a tequila line that's, you know, way overpriced, but suddenly everybody wants to drink that.
So, you know, things go in and out of fashion.
And I live through the Sex in the City craze, so what Cosmos suddenly became a thing.
You know, we went from making two a year to making fifty a day.
Wow.
How many drinks a day do you think you serve?
You figure you're making a couple hundred drinks a day.
Wow.
And then, you know, really busy like the place in Brooklyn that I worked in, there were times when when we were slammed where you were making a hundred drinks an hour.
Wow, an hour?
Yeah.
Yo.
I mean, I'm not saying for ten hours straight.
Right.
Like you were doing it for a few, like your peak point, say between nine and eleven on a Saturday night, where droves of people would show up.
There's a certain point where you're just your muscle memory becomes so strong that you can reach behind you and grab a bottle and kind of know that you've picked the right bottle without looking.
Uh-huh.
You mentioned yelling, and I wanted to ask you, how do you deal with a difficult or drunk client?
Uh all sorts of ways.
And again, it sort of depends on what type of establishment that you work.
And certainly I've seen every aspect of it from having to r get people out of the bar.
I've been punched, spit at, wow, threatened with all sorts of delightful things.
Or if you're in a place that's able to afford security, you just don't even get involved.
You just let security know.
Not everybody handles their liquor the same way, or some people are just really demanding, some people are just hostile.
They may not even be aware that they're being that.
So I try to be a little bit diplomatic about it.
Now you're responsible if somebody gets very drunk.
You're responsible.
Not to let them go home and drive, right?
Yeah, if they go out and drive, that's something you have to consider.
That's something that generally doesn't factor into the equation if you're working in an urban area where you have public transportation.
But yeah, the the the bartender and the establishment is liable for overserving somebody and if they get into an accident, you know, you're on the hook for it.
So you have to be aware of it.
You know.
So you have to check the age of a person if you see something and you check, you ask for an ID.
Yeah.
And just for younger people to understand this, uh, it has to be a physical ID.
It can't be on your phone.
We're supposed to ID anybody 40 and under that looks 40 and under.
40 and under?
And when you say to a bartender, hey man, you know, you give a bartender the, well, you know, I promise I'm 21, you're just wasting somebody else's time.
We're doing something that's a requirement of the law and ensures the ability of that place to stay open.
Every bartender generally works for somebody else who expects those things to be done.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Well said, yeah.
Now you said that you socialize, and that's your favorite part in being in the bar.
Do you socialize still outside the work?
Uh well, yeah.
I mean, I'm a I'm a functioning adult.
Uh I would say you're probably not going to be with somebody.
You're probably your partner is probably not going to be somebody who's in the bar business.
They may have a nine to five.
So you have to find some kind of equilibrium that satisfies your ability to work, but also satisfies the personal things you need out of life.
Would you say the hardest part is the hours that you have to?
Yeah, I think the the hardest part is there are many days where you don't get enough sleep and you have to go into work.
And I think it's really important to uh be able to leave your own stuff at the door.
Do you have any kind of a story that really stuck with you?
I I have a lot of them.
I mean, I've met some completely wild characters, especially in New York, who were just like fascinating people that you just didn't know.
I mean, I there was a person that we thought was may have been unhoused, who used to come to our bar.
Everybody knew him, so he just kind of blended in, but he was just a larger-than-life character.
He spoke six languages, he played beautiful classical guitar, and we just became friends over the years.
So he was probably 70 when I was probably thirty.
Wow.
But he would call me up and say, Hey Chief, let me ask you a question.
You ever hear uh you know, Louis Gottschalk?
I want to play this piece of music for you, and he would just talk a mile a minute, and uh we just became dear friends over the years, and he introduced me to a lot of just like yeah, like he knew Cecil Taylor, the jazz pianist, and would bring him in, or he was one of his best friends was Barney Rossett from Grove Press, and he used to bring Barney in, and I'd be shooting pool with Barney Rossett at four o'clock in the morning, and he'd be telling me about well, I used to play ping pong with Samuel Beckett, you know, and uh uh you know, these just these things where you were just like uh you're you're plugged into a world that's just so vast and deep in good places like that.
That's really cool.
And a little darker note, something that's important to me that I forgot to ask you how do you watch out today that no guys will drop a pill in a woman's drink?
You have to be really observant of people's behavior, who's being aggressive, who's being alpha male y.
Um you know, you have to watch those things because there's just a reality that some people are just up to no good.
Right.
And it could be any level of things.
People who are just gonna steal money, they're gonna steal pocketbooks, they're gonna steal phones, all that kind of stuff.
I always tell people when you when you go into a bar and you see a mirror behind the bar, it's not because you're supposed to be checking yourself out.
It's that your back is turned for a portion of the evening to put money into a register or pick a bottle up.
That uh that mirror is your eyes.
You're watching it.
Yeah.
So that's that's the reason why most places have a giant mirror there, because that's just a way to keep track of some things.
And uh, you know, you I would say the whole the roofy phenomenon, which has happened and a couple of times.
We've been able to catch it and we've literally seized the drink.
Wow.
And uh you know, call the cops and let them do a test on it.
Do you still love the job?
I love aspects of it, but I'm also I'm older.
You know, and a certain point, 50-year-old knees.
You're on your feet all day.
Yeah, bag and you're just that kind of stuff, and tinnitus, and I've worked in loud places my whole life.
I don't want to overstate it, but it's there's sort of like a low-grade PTSD that you go through.
So do you see a future where robots will make drinks?
Uh geez, I hope not.
But it's possible, right?
Something tells me that there's a sort of the personal touch in bartending is gonna be the one of the last things that AI is not able to accurately deal with, you know.
But we'll see what happens.
Thank you so much for doing it.
I really, really appreciate it.
Okay, well, I hope it uh is all good.
Can't wait for people to hear it.
Okay, that's a wrap for today.
If you have a comment or question or would like us to cover a certain job, please let us know.
Visit our website at how much can I make that info.
We would love to hear from you.
And on your way out, don't forget to subscribe and share this episode with anyone who is curious about their next job.
See you next time.