This mentality makes me FURIOUS.
Ignoring the fact that I have a first class academic degree, I won an award for my thesis (proving that by even the most snobbish and traditional metrics I'm intelligent and hard-working), and I've learned MULTIPLE skills and professions (including teaching and management) that are considered "useful and valuable" but haven't been able to pursue them for reasons that mostly boil down to "I burned myself out to the point of mental and physical health crises trying to train up in a new profession and also earn enough money to live by at the same time"
If you have this mentality, don't even think about setting foot into a fucking cocktail bar. Or a Starbucks. Or a restaurant. Or anywhere staffed by minimum wage workers.
I work in a very popular, very high quality, craft-focused cocktail bar. I have 10 years of experience in hospitality and 7 just purely in bar work. I have hundreds of cocktail recipes memorised and I can craft new ones on the spot based on flavour profiles people have given me and balancing ingredients in complimentary ways. I can remember orders of over 20 drinks that have been spoken out loud to me once in a loud, bright, and rowdy environment and then I can make them all perfectly and simultaneously through pure muscle memory sorting through the hundreds of bottles on the bar, calculating the overall cost in my head as I go. I'm trained in conflict de-escalation, in providing immediate response and advocacy for victims of harassment and assault, in alcohol licensing law (I hold a personal license that requires extra hours of training, examinations, and legal verification), i can perform day to day accounting tasks, manage, train and coordinate large teams, and accurately gauge somebody's intoxication levels in a 30-second interaction.
I make minimum wage. I have never earned more that £1 per hour over minimum wage. Even when I worked in bar management.
I'm a grown ass adult who supports myself and is highly trained and experienced and qualified in my profession, and I can't afford a one bed flat by myself.
If you think that people in minimum wage/hospitality/service roles don't deserve to make enough money to live on?? Do me a favour and never go to a fucking bar. Never have your little office night out at a cocktail joint and order round upon round of elaborate drinks that require in-depth training and skill to make. Never go to a place where the staff are not only responsible for the quality of what you're consuming, the cleanliness of the facilities you are using, but also for your safety, because these staff have a duty of care that is outlined and enshrined in the law and if they allow you to become too intoxicated the whole business could be shut down, that worker or the license holder for the premises could be fined or imprisoned. These people are trained and skilled in all sorts of essential behind-the-scenes things that you'd never even consider that make your night go smoothly, and they do it all on their feet for 12hr shifts with barely a single break in the middle to eat.
I'm highly skilled and highly trained and have devoted my time and energy and money into that training and building those skills. I created the day-to-day administrative infrastructure and trained and managed the staff for one of the busiest and most successful bars in my city while simultaneously making record sales on the bar (record sales in a record-earning bar).
I made 10p more per hour in that role than I do now as a cocktail bartender on minimum wage.
Yeah, I'm a 25-year-old with multiple nose and lip rings. Yeah I'm "just" a hospitality worker. But if you don't think the skills that people learn in hospitality jobs are "useful and valuable" do us all a favour and never go to a hotel, a restaurant, a coffee shop or a bar ever again.
Because I guarantee that you couldn't do what I do without years of training and experience and a resilience that you only learn from dealing with people degrading your profession day in and day out for the best part of a decade and treating you like dog shit while still demanding the product of your skill and dedication to your craft. I'd fucking love to see you try.
janainaart
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izzy806
snowghoul
gummygunk
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