People You Meet in a Pub

Aside from working as a tour guide at The Canterbury Tales tourist attraction, I'm also a server at the Shakespeare Pub. It has one building that is a pub, one building that is a wine bar, and a courtyard that connects the two. Working in a pub is completely different to working in a restaurant in Canada. Since you're not expecting tips, you're not as focused about getting lots of tables, everyone serves everyone so it's much more of a communal effort. You also don't have the pressure of flipping tables. People can come in and stay as long as they want, everyone is much more relaxed, and just having an enjoyable evening. I think a life-time of waiting for trains and buses has just made Brits a rather patient group in general. 

The wine bar itself is a very beautiful setting. Apparently, according to an elderly gentleman who was drinking there one afternoon waiting for his wife to finish her shopping (to quote him, "the more she shops, the more I need to drink"), the building itself was a 15th century brothel. He told me that the window behind the bar was actually where the Madam who owned the place would vet the potential customers coming into the establishment. It does explain why the front door, which faces the cathedral, is not extremely prominent. The bar also has a lovely, albeit out of tune, piano which I'm allowed to play when it's slow. I'll have to bring my sheet music back with me at the end of the month since I can seem to remember the beginnings of most of my songs, but never the endings. It's also a great place for people watching since standing behind the bar you can see the main square infront of the cathedral and all the tourist groups and buskers that tend to populate it. 

Working in a pub, you do get to see an interesting cross-section of the community: tourists, locals, hen-dos, football fans on a pub crawl, first dates, coffee catch ups, and so on. People do tend to assume that I'm American, and while I'm not offended by this, it does lead to a very cyclical conversation. "Actually I'm Canadian... no it's ok... yes I know the accents are very similar... well there are some dialects but it's a big country... yes I'm here to study... medieval history and literature... yeah there's a bit more history here than in Canada... thanks, have a nice day." A few times it will vary or go beyond that. One guy, who was more than a few pints in, was very determined that I should know how well he gets along with Canadians, how Canadians find him hilarious while Americans don't understand his humour. I think the Canadians he's met may have just been too polite to tell him.

One night, I had a couple of ladies come in and we were obviously not the first pub they had visited. They were both from the colonies (Canada and the States) and were on their own personal "Men are Bastards Pub Crawl." One of the ladies had just learned that her husband of 17 years was cheating on her, and warned me against all British men. Needless to say, both their G&T's were doubles, but I think they managed to catch their train home to confront the bastard in question. 

I've had a few friends come to the pub, both the reenactment variety and a group of friends from work who came in after a shift one day. It's not weird serving your friends, although Tim did try to mock-snap his fingers at me and I threatened to cut him off., it's just tricky trying to linger near their table to talk to them while still doing your job. 

Since the football is on now, normal pub culture is set to the extreme. The night after England beat Sweden to get to the quarter finals we had a lot of very enthusiastic people in the pub. They were mainly out in the courtyard, where the echoes of "It's coming home" could be heard throughout the night. Brits can be very contrasting when it comes to courtesy. On one hand, we had a guy pick a fight with out bouncer and ended up getting the cops called on him. On the other hand, I had a guy stop me and thank me for working that night so that other people, like him and his mates, could celebrate. We stayed full until closing. 

Comparing that to the semi-finals game was night and day. The pub was absolutely dead. Our television screen has been broken for ages so we were not showing the football games, as a result, we had a grand total of 5 people the entire shift. Not wanting to miss out, we set up the game on the manager's phone and we watched it behind the bar. Not quite the same atmosphere as the pubs that were showing it, though I did sneak to another pub for during my break for a bit. I did still get into the game, it's basically slower hockey, most of the rules match after all. Alas, the England team did not play well in the second half and so we did not have many celebrating patrons. 

I'm sure I'll collect more stories as the year goes on but it's been a great start to the job.