02/05/04
It's 10 p.m. on a Friday, and the crowd starts to thicken. A fog of cigarette smoke hangs in the air, and the volume of voices is turned on high to be heard over the bass.
About 50 people lean over the edge of the bar like bidders at an auction, tossing head nods, waving cash and even flashing a little cleavage. They're all clamoring for the attention of one person: the bartender.
"The worst is when someone figures out your name and then starts calling you by it all night," junior sports management major Trevor Siewnarine said. "It's like nails on a chalkboard."
Siewnarine, a full-time student, has been bartending at BW3's in Kent for about eight months.
"There are a lot of things customers do that are annoying," Siewnarine said. "But if you're going to work while you're going to school, bartending is the way to go."
Siewnarine, who is paid $4 an hour, said he's made as much as $250 in tips and wages in a single night.
Senior education major Eddie DiFiore works with Siewnarine at BW3's and said bartending is the only job that can fit his schedule and pay his bills.
"I used to tutor, but I only made about $5 an hour," DiFiore said. "I don't know where else in Kent I could make the kind of money I do."
DiFiore said he student teaches, coaches hockey and goes to school in addition to his bar shifts.
"Being a bartender definitely requires some level of maturity," DiFiore said. "It would be easy to get swept up and live the party life. You have to have discipline."
Siewnarine said he has seen the effects of bartenders who lack discipline.
"I know guys who have 10 or 11 drinks a shift," Siewnarine said. "It's crazy because they end up with a hangover before they even get off work."
But since BW-3s does not allow their employees to drink on the clock, Siewnarine said the bigger problem is belligerent patrons.
Bartending is one of the top five occupations at risk for violence in the workplace, according to a National Crime Victimization survey taken from 1993 to 1999, which was conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice.
"Of course you're going to have problems with rude people, especially when there's alcohol involved," DiFiore said. "But you just have to have enough social skill to be able to deal with them."
Glory Days in Kent required Becky Greene, senior special education major, to take a course called TIPS through Health Communications Inc. for her bartending job. Its purpose is to teach bartenders how to deal with customers who've had too much to drink.
"You have to watch what you say to them," Greene said. "You just have to keep your cool, and remember that you're the sober one."
Greene said that while she has had to use her TIPS training on occasion, the atmosphere at work is usually pretty light.
"I love it here," Greene said of Glory Days. "We have a great staff, we're all about the same age, and it's just like family. I never dread coming to work."
Greene also works at Sunsations Tanning Spa in Kent and admits there are times she misses her freetime on the weekends.
"I get a little jealous sometimes when my friends come in, and I'm serving them, and I can't really hang out," Greene said. "But my friends leave good tips, and I'd rather be busy than not."
Angela Adolphson said she doesn't mind working weekends. The senior psychology major tends the bar at Longhitanos in Cuyahoga Falls four nights a week.
"It's another way for me to save money," Adolphson said. "If I had weekends off, I would probably just go out and spend it. Plus, I meet a lot of people here, so I'm still being social."
Sleep, or lack of it, is the hardest part, she said.
"I'm so not a morning person," said Adolphson, who usually doesn't get off work until after 3 a.m. "My earliest class is at 9:55 a.m., and it's all a matter of promising myself that afternoon nap."
DiFiore doesn't lose sleep over whether potential post-graduation employers will look down on the party atmosphere of his current job.
"If someone didn't want to hire me just because of that, then that's not the kind of person I want to work for anyway," DiFiore said. "I do a lot of other things besides bartend, and that should be more important."
But for now, DiFiore said he already has a job that he loves.
"I'm exposed to hundreds of people a night, and my social life was greatly improved," DiFiore said. "I'm working at a party every day."
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Rachel Myers
Daily Kent Stater