Closing time’s difficult demands
They piled in. Two in clean white shirts — clearly servers — another, likely a bartender, in a wine-stained shirt and someone in a pantsuit combination that positively screamed “manager.” I didn’t know where they came from. All I knew was that they arrived mere minutes before our posted closing time.
Some remember the actor Ryan Reynolds as the wisecracking Marvel superhero Deadpool, or as the spokesperson for his own Mint Mobile, a budget wireless provider, or as People magazine’s sexiest man alive — well, in 2010 anyway. A few may remember his 2005 tonguein-cheek movie about the restaurant business called “Waiting,” with a great scene of the staff waiting around for the clock hands to tick down to closing, only to be rendered furious by the arrival of a last-minute guest.
Things are different now. First, there are few clock hands, just people checking their cellphones. Second, with kitchen staff at a premium, nobody wants to anger the cooks — they just might leave and never come back.
The same cannot be said of bartenders.
Four Espresso Martinis were ordered as I watched the cooks walk out the door. It’s odd how every generation has its painin-the-you-know-what drink. Thirty years ago, the Old Fashioned was the bane of the bartender’s existence; whiskey, bitters, muddled fruit and sugar, shaken and then topped with soda. Old Fashioneds were originally called Bittered Slings until the Sling became another drink — liquor, lemon and sweet liqueur, according to David Embury’s “The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks” — of which the most famous version became known by yet another name, the Sunrise. Eventually the Old Fashioned returned to its roots and ease of preparation — whiskey, bitters and sugar.
Those most prone to psychological injury often appear meek, unable to voice even the slightest concern, only to turn into raging tigers behind the mask of distance and anonymity.
Twenty years ago, the painin-the-you-know-what drink was muddled concoctions like the Caipirinha, featuring lime wedges, lime juice, sugar cubes and cachaca (a Brazilian sugar distillate) or the Mojito, a combination of muddled mint, sugar, soda water and rum. Both have waned in popularity, but they do get ordered, and usually at the most inopportune of moments. Like, right at closing time.