Tequila Shots

with Bill Murray

For some reason, this week I haven’t been able to stop thinking about a story I heard about Bill Murray.

As the story goes, he was at South by Southwest in 2010 and he stepped behind a bar and began serving drinks. No matter what drink was ordered, the patron was served a shot of tequila.

It sticks with me because a) it’s Bill Murray, and b) sometimes, when you’re in the weeds behind the bar, and drink tickets are pummeling you in the face, and people are flagging you down to get your attention, remembering this story reminds you that as much as we love the industry, we’re not saving lives here.

We’re serving food and drinks. 

The story gives me perspective. It resets me when I’m feeling overwhelmed, and it makes me chuckle. It’s Bill Murray, providing service, making people lighten up. 

I have a tendency to overthink things, which is not uncommon. How To Be In Public may be founded on this very habit – I often read deeply into things that are otherwise just funny stories. 

There are pros and cons to this, as there are with anything. On the negative side, sometimes I’m excavating for nothing. Sometimes the search comes up empty. On the positive, I find treasure.

There’s another story I think of often, and it has nothing to do with Bill Murray or music festivals. It’s perhaps the first example of true hospitality that dawned on me,  told to me (and experienced by) a friend. I don’t think she’ll mind me retelling it.

The story goes: busy weekend night, a man walks into a bar and sits down. He’s gruff. He’s short. He’s exhibiting the type of behavior that might elicit an eye-roll. 

He orders wine. He orders a salad, and my friend describes him as being impossible to please. He is demanding of her attention, needing more ice for his water, annoyed that he cannot have her undivided attention though the bar is full and the restaurant is bustling. 

She tries to lighten his mood, but despite her best efforts, he will not be shaken from the dark cloud that hovers above him. He sips his wine, complaining his salad is taking too long. She patiently, yet with the firmness of a well seasoned server, reassures him it won’t be much longer.

Then, with no salad in sight and a growing crowd siphoning her attention, the worst happens: someone spills his glass of red wine on his shirt. Everything stops for a split second, as things do when the sound of glass breaking rings out in a restaurant. 

Then, several people rush to his aid. The glass is swept. The spill is soaked up. My friend rushes to the back office and reappears with a Tide pen, coming out from behind the bar to work the stain out of the man’s shirt, leaving the bar to the other bartenders and giving him her undivided attention. His wine is replaced. His salad arrives. 

Bewildered, the man seemingly has no choice but to be won over. The clouds part. The connection has been made, and my friend ushers him through the rest of his experience with ease. 

Is it trust? Yes, but not only trust. There is a willingness to participate, the aforementioned concession to ‘get among ‘em.’ Sometimes, these situations end poorly. I think in this particular example, what changed this guest was my friend’s absolute willingness to meet him on his level and do everything in her power to correct an accident and take care of him.

The Tide pen really did it. I think it woke him up to the fact that he was not simply dining alone. He was dining alone among a sea of people, and he was not the one steering the ship. 

Guests who come into restaurants expecting to steer are a little like backseat drivers. 

I believe it goes back to fear. And for good reason – for as many guests expecting perfection or your undivided attention , there are just as many inattentive, poorly trained, unconcerned servers and bartenders. 

Bad experiences create a certain set of expectations. We can’t help it. We develop defenses against bad experiences, and sometimes these defenses make us bad guests or employees.

I think people mostly just have other things on their minds. Not everyone views service as art, and not everyone sees going to a restaurant as an opportunity to be part of something.

Not everyone sees treasure in the general public. 

There I go, excavating again. But here’s the thing. When you forge those connections, magic happens. Entire worlds open up. Days are made. Lives can change, and therefore in a small way, though you aren’t performing surgery or curing a disease, something invaluable is being shared. 

Lives, though perhaps not saved, can be affected. That’s not a small thing. 

At H2BIP, we are telling stories, but we are also gathering treasure. There’s a lot of talk about the service industry lately, whether it’s the debate over the tip percentage or  whether or not tipping should continue at all.  In there somewhere is the conversation surrounding the value of food and how it is being sourced. 

I could list issues that orbit the industry for pages upon pages, but it would be in service of this point: the service industry offers a unique perspective on our culture. How we conduct business, how we transact and what we value are glaringly evident here, tableside or across the bar top. 

Start paying attention. Go get among ‘em. And if you see Bill Murray behind the bar, manage your expectations.