Bartenders reveal the most shocking things drunk customers have done

From cleaning up sick to breaking up fights, bar-tending is about more than just pouring drinks

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“I’ve had to break up fights, clean up piss, vomit and blood, and the tears of the drunken stragglers still sat at the bar after closing,” says Josie, a 25-year-old from Brighton as she recalls her memories as a bartender. “Drunk people are ridiculous.”

She began working in bars at the age of 18, and continued on-and-off for six years. In that time she learned the importance of being kind to the person pouring your drink at the pub, and how to stay professional despite being “more than a touch merry” while trying to serve people after downing shots bought by customers and colleagues.

Josie is among the thousands of people in the UK who have worked in the night-time economy, which rakes in £66billion a year. Every night as they head to work, pub and bar staff know they could be faced with members of the public at our worst: blind drunk, physically sick, violent, or all of the above.

So, what are the most shocking sights that bartenders have seen, and what do they wish their customers would stop doing to make their long shifts with relatively poorly pay a little more pleasant?

“Working in an LGBT bar in Brighton, so many stag dos coming in to lech over lesbians,” says Josie. “One guy threw a glass at a lesbian couple that were in my bar. I had to kick the guy out, he threw a chair at my head in the process. It was Valentine's Day, the bloody bastard.”

Robyn Harris, a 25-year-old from Essex who also lives in Brighton, says the most shocking thing she has experienced since she started working in a bar in 2012 was when a pub crawl of 150 people arrived at her venue. She was designated toilet-checker for the night. As she went into the toilet, she could hear a girl whispering “shhh” over and over again in a locked cubicle. From experience, she thought it two women doing drugs.

“Until I heard a male voice. I immediately said that they had 10 seconds to open the door before I call security.

“When the door opened, a young girl and a young guy stepped out. She was adjusting her trousers and wiping her mouth, he was adjusting his belt. It turns out, she'd been performing oral sex on him in the toilet, and I unfortunately 'shocked' them, because he had ejaculated all over the toilet floor. I had to clean it up.”

The attitudes that some punters have towards bar staff can also grind her down. “The most annoying things customers can to do bartenders are treating you and your job with no respect and like they don't believe it is a 'real job', whilst simultaneously demanding a service; waving money in your face; shouting at you from across the bar when you are clearly quite busy, and showing no manners.”

Beth, a 25-year-old PR Executive who lives in Greenwich, London, chimes with Robyn. “I will never understand why people click their fingers at bartenders to get their attention - what do they think it will achieve?" she says.

“The same goes for sleazy comments and hitting on the bartender. You're not going to get anywhere with that. Would it work on someone working in the post office, the bank or the supermarket? Probably not. So why try it on the poor girl pulling your pint?”

But it’s not all misery. The wide range of cocktails and drinks a bartender can whip up in a matter of seconds makes Beth “very popular at dinner parties”, she says.

“I used to work in a burlesque bar in central London and I loved it,” adds Josie. “I got to wear full pinup hair and makeup and 1930s style shirt and braces to work."

"The image that sticks in my head was going to the cellar to get some more gin and seeing a burlesque performer just off from her performance, wearing very little except a full feathered sequined head dress. She was cuddling her dog who lived back stage while she performed. It was the perfect mixture of high glamour, surrounded by the mundanity of a bar cellar.

Josie also relished the chance to experiment with boozy drinks. "At the same bar, I was encouraged to invent cocktails. I spent an evening experimenting with a customer one night, she decided she wanted a cocktails that tasted like a snickers bar, so I made her one with Frangelico, crème cacao, caramel syrup and baileys. We named it ‘Nats knickers taste like snickers’ which was a lot of fun.

“Making a genuine impact of people’s nights is always rewarding," she adds. "Even if they won’t remember it the next day, I will."