http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/2169
What asshole invented this thing?
Bah, I need a…er… drink.
<Looks up at forum title…adjust language accordingly>
This kind of thing really bugs me. It isn’t enough to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of 4-10 dollars for a drink normally made with 1oz of liquor, when the whole bottle costs the bar anywhere from 10-30 dollars…
Now they want to nickel and dime THE WORKERS to death. Despicable.
Well, then. I don’t have to drink in a place that employs these tactics. I can just as well go somewhere else, go to the grocery store, or bmob. My mind is made up. That’s what I’ll do. Give my business that’s more friendly to the worker AND the consumer. Hmph. :mad:
Yeah, well. If I was a bartender, I think I’d avoid working in a place like that. If that weren’t possible, all I gotta do, is put one of those spouts on an liquor bottle filled with water and pour about fifty gallons down the sink every night.
“Damn boss. There must be something wrong with this fuggin’ thing. We ain’t got fifty gallons of booze in the whole house.”
Yeah, I agree with both the idea of refusing to work there, and especially refusing to frequent such a place. I’ve been in places where staff have pagers (because it’s SO difficult to train staff to look in the kitchen every couple of minutes to see if orders are ready), or where they’re required to measure out any spillage or over-pouring. When you’ve serving real beer, there is SUPPOSED to be wastage: if there isn’t, you’re providing sub-standard beer.
And another point about the absolute measurer stuff…if part of the measure got spilt, then instead of just topping it up, a whole extra measure will be needed, wiping out some of the supposed savings very quickly.
Whoops, thanks for pointing that out. My post shouldn’t be seen as a rant, it was intended as an observation, hence putting it in this forum.
I think these things have been around a while. I don’t know a bar owner that’d use 'em consistently, and if I did, well, I probably wouldn’t go to a joint like that anyhow. Plus, ya gotta actually put em on for 'em to work, any bartender/dress worth the salt on a glass rim will find a work around for this dumbass little electric booze nazi.
My SO has worked in several bars, and even owned two.
His biggest headache as an owner was getting ripped off by the bartenders working there. Not the free rounds - my SO never had a problem with that - but with the rounds that were never rung up on the register, but paid for by the customers. Also, some bartenders would sneak in their own bottles of popular liquor, knowing they could sell the contents in one night and the owner would not even know it as the inventory was never touched. Having been both a bartender and an owner, he had seen enough bartenders making more money than the owner of the bar.
So, count me as one who says “good!”
The bartender will still be able to give away freebies (if that is the bar policy) but it will be harder to rip off the bar owner.
I thought bartenders giving out a free drink here and there, or making yours with “a little extra”, would actually keep customers coming back and bring in MORE business, hence, more money.
Works on me, at least.
How would this stop the stealing you mention here? Unless you think the customers are going to turn him in for pouring out of a bottle with an unapproved top, he can still sell drinks out of his own bottle or remove the top to pour illicit drinks and fill the bottle back up with his own supply.
If someone is conducting that much illicit business, this won’t really stop him. It will stop the good, generally honest bartender who gives a little extra to his regulars now and then.
:smack:
WorldEater I’m sorry. I did not AT ALL mean that how it sounded. I wasn’t telling you to adjust your language…It was meant in jest for me, and may have gotten that point across if I had actually proofread the first sentence to read:
<Looks up at forum title…adjusts language accordingly>
Because I wanted to swear. A lot. I really did. I did not mean for you not to.
:smack:
Mark me down in the “I would never patronize any bar that used one of these” even though I’d probably be drinking a decent draft beer anyway. It’s a stupid solution to a minor problem that will have unintended consequences.
Actually, according to the site you cannot remove the spout without that being registered. And yes, if they still bring in a bottle, they could try to pour from it but most bars now have cameras and it wouldn’t be long before the owner would notice the bottle without the spout, or the bartender always turning away from the camera when they pour.
And as mentioned, most owners are not stupid and don’t mind a certain percentage of loss (meaning free shots), but at least they won’t have to worry that half of each bottle or more is not just given away, but also being paid for but pocketed by the bartender.
Don’t mean to be the bar grinch here, but do you have any idea how frustrating it is for a bar owner to see $10,000 (or more) worth of liquor seemingly “disappear” every month? A little here, a little there…he knew of bartenders who would make $200 in tips in a night, yet take home $500 or more in cash. Do the math.
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Heh, heh. All this talk of thieving bartenders puts me inthe mind of the old bar manager at the Ramada. He wanted to rip off the company, but they had secret shoppers coming in to make sure every drink was rung up. Solution: He brought in his own cash register. That’s ingenuity.
It is true that these things won’t penalize a bartender who gives away free drinks to the “good customers” (read: big tippers). It penalizes bartenders who give a good pour as a matter of policy. I’d like to declare that I’d never pastronize such a place because I object to that, but the truth is I’d never find myself in a bar like that in the first place. I’ll follow a good bartender.
DMark: Is it really that hard to find bartenders who aren’t crooks? It would seem that, rather than incurring the ill-will of the patrons and staff, it would be easier and better all around to fire the bad apples and dispense* with the electronic devices.
*(Sorry. ;))
It is becoming cheaper and easier to micromonitor and nickel-and-dime people; time was, the cost of measuring the small stuff was such that it would have been too expensive to charge for it. The controls applied now are disrupting some very delicate balances that have evolved over the span of decades, and will need to be re-established in the face of this new technology.
Oh totally not taken that way, no worries. 
From where do you get these numbers? They seem a bit overstated to me, so let’s go ahead and do that math, shall we. 10K worth of liquor is 400 bottles at $25/per (which seems plenty generous). Using the standard 25.4 (750 ml) oz bottle, we get 10,160 ounces of booze. If the bartenders are pouring the fairly standard 1.5 oz shot, then you’re telling us there are more than 6700 drinks the owner’s losing every month; that’s
225 every day; or more 14/hr if the bar’s open 16 hours a day. One drink every 4.2 minutes. And if booze is only $20/bottle, then that number goes to one lost drink every 3.2 minutes.
Going the other direction, the bartender is stealing $300 that rightfully belongs to the owner. If drinks are $5, then the bartender is pocketing the tab for 60 drinks. If he’s doing this over an 8 hour shift, that’s 7.5 drinks per hour, or one drink every 8 minutes.
Just how big is this place? 'Cuz it’s gonna need several brazen and busy bartenders to swipe this much booze every month.
Both were very big places (discos) in Berlin, and open 18-24 hours a day. Bars don’t have to close in Berlin. On Friday and Saturday nights there would be 6-10 bartenders and 3 barbacks working the place. This was also quite a few years ago, when people drank more liquor and shots were poured fast and often.
I do not mean to imply ALL bartenders are thieves, but talk to most bar owners and you will see why they really cannot be away any length of time - vacations are usually unannounced and short. It is a tough business and you have to really watch the bottom line. There are so many ways for employees to skim money - the tricks were endless. This gizmo will certainly not stop it, but I can see why a bar owner would give it some serious thought.
I think then, perhaps you might wish to eliminate that adjective “most” which repeatedly peppers your claims. “Most” bars are nowhere near that size. “Most” bars don’t have 6-10 bartenders on the whole staff. Also puzzling, is that it seems a bar of that size would have some kind of floor staff; persons serving the patrons at their tables. Bars I’ve been in where this is the case, usually have relatively limited seating at the bar itself; this would seem even more likely in a disco joint where floor space is at an even greater premium. Wouldn’t the floor staff have to be complicit in such a scheme of this magnitude?
Well, the “most” adjective was missing from the specific statements about specific losses. When the “most” is used, it seems appropriate to me.
I’m trying to think of any dance club I’ve been to that have floor staff rather than several bars scattered around the place plus one giant central bar. But I’m not having much luck. I have been in several, though, that easily have 6 to 10 bartenders working a shift. Heck even little ole Texarkana has a country dance club with usually at least 6 bartenders working at the 4 or 5 separate bars.
I know a guy who makes a living as a restaurant & bar “auditor”. His mission is to pose as an unsavvy customer and, knowing essentially all the tricks, determine how many of them are being pulled. He’s been doing this for more than 10 years, is apparently good at it, has no shortage of work, and says that a bar of any size where some angles are not being regularly worked is unusual. A bar owner that isn’t on the ball can expect to be robbed blind.