If a bartender left me a card that said something like that, it might well decrease the tip I was planning on leaving them. If I was a bar owner or manager, they would be fired. If you want to make money doing card tricks or telling jokes, do it on your own time.
Actually there are signs similar to that on the wall in some bars. But they’re just a joke. If a bartender did that, the owner wouldn’t mind if he was getting a cut. The main feature bartenders are hired for is to keep the customers in the bar drinking. If card tricks do it, the owner won’t mind. It’s often easier to just hire young women in skimpy outfits though.
Well, he did have a recipe book. And he and his cohorts ended up inventing a Pangalactic Gargleblaster, in honor of the drink in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It was quite deadly.
Because it’s stupid?
We have a friend who fits this model pretty well. He’s not a bartender anymore, and he doesn’t sing, but he was masterful at managing a crowd. He knew who the regulars were, and which ones he liked, he could recognize an out-of-towner and draw him into a conversation and help him have a good time, and he knew the people who were just there for a quick beer before a movie and wouldn’t be money-makers (either for him or the restaurant), and could get them moving on their way (making more room for regulars) without seeming rude.
When we first met him he was finishing up his MBA, and my wife had her own consulting practice. She needed a warm body for a short-term job, so hired him on. He did a great job, and when she eventually went back into the world of Big 4 Public Accounting, got him a job at her firm. He told me he was actually taking a pay cut to work there as opposed to the bar, although the benefits made it more like a wash. This was a chain restaurant in a Chicago suburb. Based on what I can estimate he was making, I could see someone making just into six figures at a high-end place in the city, working steady hours, but I think they’d be on the far right end of the bell curve.
My wife says it was watching him as a bartender that caused her to hire him. She could teach him the technical aspects of her job, but his innate skills at managing customers was far and away more valuable to her, and harder to find.
Sure it’s possible to make 6 figures – as long as you count the two after the decimal point… 
Brian
This reminds me: My dad’s 30 year old girlfriend (yeah, I know) was a cocktail waitress at a Vegas Hilton. She made enough to have a house, a Lexus, dozens of pairs of designer shoes and bags, and several vacations a year. She had to work her way up - sales clerk, barista, crappy shift bartender, prime shift bartender, but when she met my dad, she made around 80k. She also had a shopping habit, but yeah. Location.
I’ve known bartenders working some of the more popular gay bars in San Francisco who can do it. These bars get ridiculously overcrowded and a bartender with a hot pornstar body willing to haul ass all day slinging drinks half naked can make some serious bucks. As said though, at that point the bartender is also half the bar’s entertainment.
No way is bartending that lucrative for 99.999% of bartenders.
Pretty much – end of the night, some woman is “frustrated,” and they know where the guy works, what his basic personality is like. It’s a “safe” way to get fucked, basically, depending on the type of joint.
Around here the only prerequisite for being bar staff is if you’re male being able to talk about sports all day, every day, and to mumble about the government, and if you’re female, to look pretty.
Or if you work in a Japanese or Icelandic bar…
I was a bartender in college. The dive I worked at had 3 different bars. One large center bar shared with 2 bartenders and two smaller side bars each with one bartender. We shared 3 bar-backs. Our busy nights were Thursday, Friday and Saturday. During Football season, Monday night was always good as well for the game crowd. It was mainly a college bar with a few daytime regulars. We had bands on the weekends.
On a good night, I would easily go home with $200+ for a 9-close shift. The trade-off was that you had to work at least one or two slower shifts to get a good shift and if the manager really liked you, you got the “better” side bar that served nothing but beer and had no bar stools (quick turnover without having to deal with making drinks). A weekend shift for that bar was close to $300 before giving the bar backs their cut. A slow shift wasn’t bad, either, I never went home without making at least $10/hr (which was great for a college student in the 90’s).
I guess if you worked all the good shifts and had a busy enough place, you could average $50/hr, for 40 hrs a week, that would work out to $104,000/yr.
[QUOTE=levdrakon]
No way is bartending that lucrative for 99.999% of bartenders.
[/QUOTE]
Depends on your definition of luctrative, I guess. Not many bartenders earn six figures, but not many of the general population do, either. Overall median personal income in the US is about $30k per year. Any worthwhile bartender in a halfway decent establishment will make considerably more.