Thursday, April 8, 2010

beer

The other day, I had a talk with myself. This is, fortunately or unfortunately, not a rare event. On this particular occasion, I was giving myself a talking to.

Here's the thing: I like to be helpful. I like to have a purpose. I like to aid the project along. And so, when things are jumping at the bistro, I will sidle up to people and offer to get them a drink. Most of the time, this is not a problem. They say, "Sure, I'll have a caesar or a vodka martini extra dry," and I toddle off to create it.

However, sometimes, people say, "Sure, what kind of beer do you have?" Now, at that moment, I panic. Complete despair. 'I don't know' I whine in my head. And then I rattle off a few different beers that I know we carry: Fort Garry Pale, Fort Gary Dark, Stella, and then on into others like Half Pints, Leffe, Heineken. Of course, the person responds with: "Great, I'll have a St. James Half-Pint" And off I go to the beer fridge, muttering a prayer of hope that we actually have the beer that I have suggested we might. More often than not, Murphy's Law kicks in and we don't have the beer they order from me and I have to go back and try again. Including trying really, really hard to memorize what beers we actually DO have.

There are three things: One is I don't drink beer. I really love beer but I cannot drink it as I'm allergic to tyramines which are found in beer. This means that I can't remember the names of the beer beyond a very few specific ones. If I don't drink them, I can't remember their names (a learning style issue, I'm sure.) Second, I don't stock the beer fridge so I have no idea what we have and what we are out of. Third, we are a tiny restaurant and don't have a ton of storage space so if a party of 10 people focus on one beer, they will blow through the two cases we started the night with and I won't necessarily know.

All of this translates into my knowledge of the state of beer at the bistro at any given moment being pretty dismal. And yet, I keep pretending like I know. Hence, the talking to. And the fessing up: I will no longer pretend to know what beer we have even though I feel like a spaced out goof when I say to a customer that I will have to get a server to list them. The price of being honest.