Fashion is nothing if you don't know how to behave yourself. You know the old saying, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. Well, you can put a jackass in Armani, and it's still a jackass. This week, I am writing about how to behave at an office happy hour or after-hours party involving alcohol.
I think it goes without saying that managers, above all employees, should be very careful of their alcohol in take at office functions. You should never put an employee in the position of having to care for, or worry about you. The last thing in the world you need is to have an employee pouring you into a taxi at the end of the night, or worse, bailing you out of jail on your DUI in the morning. God forbid alcohol should cloud your judgment to the point that you end up telling that intern from Marketing just exactly what you'd like to do to her in the privacy of your office. Managers need to follow very specific codes of conduct in the company of their team members, be it 9 a.m. in the office, or 9 p.m. at the bar. Whether you are standing in the office, or outside, you are still The Boss. Don't kid yourself that your employees are evolved enough to compartmentalize your behavior. Everything you do with an employee is on-the-clock. You'll remember that even Phoebe turned on Chandler when she went to work for him.
Obviously, I am fairly old school about most things. When it comes to alcohol, I don't think a manager should ever risk overindulging. That might mean not drinking at all. Your team members need to trust your judgment, and how you manage your liquor says a lot. If you choose to indulge, two drinks should be the max. Two is usually the number of drink tickets HR will hand out at wet events, and at two drinks a lightweight will be feeling all right, but very few people will be slurring and declaring their love.
Your bartime behavior will set the standard for most of your employees. Unless you want to take responsibility for seeing them all home safely, set the example you'd like them to follow. Also remember that your sobriety might be the only thing that keeps a drunken employee from driving. If for no other reason than that good help is hard to find, you don't want to send your team out into the night drunk as a cheerleader at senior prom. (Should you have an employee over-indulge, then take the reins. Call him a cab, or drive him home yourself, but do not let him drive.)
In short, if you want your employees to respect you in the morning, you've got to be respectable when you're with them in the night. I know it's no fun, but that's why you're getting paid the big bucks.
Lane Buckman has been in love with fashion since she realized that her first Easter dress came with matching gloves, shoes, and purse. Growing up in the entertainment industry this former beauty queen, model and actress turned corporate career woman understands that dressing for success is just another form of costuming. And, since she has run the size gamut from 2 to 18, Lane understands dressing a variety of shapes. She has written dress codes and conducted Business Style and How to Dress seminars for Fortune 500 and finance companies, boutique agencies, and an international non-profit organization. She gives her stylish Southern mother credit for teaching her everything she knows.
It is safe to say that THE consummate professional on the bar scene is Rick Blaine. Unfortunately, Rick is so well-guarded (and well-regarded,) his clips can't be embedded on piker blogs such as mine, so his insights will have to be saved.
If you can't have the sublime, then go for the ridiculous. Cocktail, with Tom Cruise and Bryan Brown fits that bill quite nicely. (The flick even features a nod to Rick Blaine: In one of the more overwrought scenes -- which believe me, is saying something -- a movie marquee in the background advertises Casablanca.)
There are a couple life lessons to be picked up from this travesty. Trust your working-class relatives, but do everything you can to alienate the rich ones. Mentors can also be assholes. If you have sex with Tom Cruise under a Jamaican waterfall, you'll get knocked up.
There are also a few slightly more useful lessons, if you squint hard enough. The first, obviously, is to be smart about choosing your mentors. If someone tries to give you advice that involves working hard and using your brain occasionally, you might want to listen. (Watch through 6:47.)
A huge part of Bri-Guy's problem, in fact, is he spends too much time looking for the quick fix and not enough time using his brain. He falls in with Mentor Doug, an aging lothario who wants to be a kept man. There is supposed to be a contrasting scene wherein the college professor's ability to impart knowledge isn't a patch on what Mentor Doug has to offer. (Watch through 3:53.)
What that scene should really tell you, though, is if you don't know what a money multiplier is, go to the professor's friggin' office hours while remembering your part-time job is the means to the end, and that if Mentor Doug really had much to offer, he wouldn't be tending someone else's bar. Or, you know, go ahead and learn you have a knack for the short pour and the long pour. I gotta say, though, if I ordered a drink and I had to sit through a Cirque du Soleil bottle act for a watered-down G&T, I am not sure I'd leave much of a tip.
Anyway, this being a bartender movie and all, there has to come a breaking point with school. It is conveniently provided by a particularly obnoxious and unpleasant teacher, who starts out nasty and flies into an obnoxious and unpleasant snit when Bri-Guy challenges him. So, yes, on first viewing, here is how not to teach a class: (Watch to 1:40.)
Take a moment to think about this, though, and you'll see a different problem with this scene. Foremost among them: If our hero is the Class-A bartender we are supposed to believe (not to mention having spent time in the service and theoretically gone through basic training,) shouldn't he be completely immune to taking crap from jerks like this? Shouldn't he be trained in defusing volatile situations instead of pushing a bunch of buttons to make the guy go off? Are we supposed to believe Bri-Guy has weighed the consequences of his actions, or is he just mouthing off like a stupid teen-ager? A point to ponder.
So our hero runs off and has a series of bartending misadventures with Mentor Doug, who boosts him to a bigtime establishment and promptly steals his girlfriend, mocking all self-improvement efforts every step of the way. Bri-Guy reacts to this by "going to the beach" as his uncle suggested in the first clip. He spends three years there before finding Elisabeth Shue (Jordan Almond -- well, Jordan Someone,) in a highly improbable scenario wherein our hero hurdles a bar and delivers a quip about a drunkass girl on the beach instead of just, you know, handing our heroine a phone to dial 911.
So, boy meets girl, boy bones girl, boy reunites with bad influence Mentor Doug and ditches girl for richer Old Girl, who treats him like the gigolo he is until he ditches her (with the aforementioned Casablanca shoutout,) and goes back to Miz Almond. Only, surprise! She wants nothing to do with him, even though he comes on bended knee to her place of employ. And, surprise again! She too handles difficult situations like a teen-ager. Here, then, is a scene on how not to mix your work and home life if you want to keep your job and/or earn any tips:
Additionally ... where the hell is her boss? She's getting pissy at customers who apparently have been waiting an age for her to take their order, she's dumping perfectly good food that costs good money on other customers, and her boss is nowhere to be seen? Bad management!
Our hero persists ... and it turns out Miz Almond is Miz Moneybags! (Which might explain why she is such a lousy waitress, if not why she is allowed to keep her job as such.) And Daddy Moneybags tries to buy off our hero! Who tears up the check and shows how much he cares! And how little Dad thinks of bartenders! All with really, really painfully bad acting! (Watch to 2:35. No, really, all the way through to the end of the scene. You'll be howling.)
Note to would-be suitors of knocked-up rich girls: Talking to anyone's dad this way is not going to gain you any allies. Seriously, if Bri-Guy had gone in there with an ounce of preparedness or any line worth selling, Pops probably would have been a bit more sympathetic. I mean, how much could he really want his unwed daughter dealing with 3 a.m. feedings at the penthouse? And where's Almond's mom for all this drama?
Fast forward some more. We learn Mentor Doug is a loser! A failure! Bankrupt and dissipated with a slutty wife, who leaves Mentor Doug passed out drunk on his yacht while she comes on to Bri-Guy -- giving rise to Bri summing up his morals in what might be the most eloquent line in the movie (It's the first line, but the scene runs to 0:30.):
"I can't make it with my best friend's old lady." Really? Well, you sure can't make it with her now, Bri-Guy; no woman wants to be called an old lady! Another scene badly acted and another situation badly managed. Every time Bri has a chance to bow out of something gracefully, he prefers to flail around knocking things off the shelves and smashing the dishes. Maybe that makes the scenery easier to chew, what do I know? Anyway, we return our attention to Mentor Doug -- who is now Dead Mentor Doug, having opened a vein with some busted Baccarat crystal.
An interesting dilemma, no? Does leaving your despondent drunk friend alone while you wander off with his slutty wife count as bad management? Or just bad judgment? If your judgment is that off, should you be trusted to do anything right?
Dead Mentor Doug still has one last bon mot in him, though, delivered via USPS, when Slutty Widow forwards Bri the suicide note. Because, no, that's not totally weird and creepy or anything. Not at all. I suppose you could construe it as effective communication -- it's written out longhand, it's pretty concise, and if the recipient doesn't read/understand/follow the thought, well, who cares? You're dead! (Watch to 3:42)
We wrap up with another positively dreadful scene wherein Bri and Miz Almond have a passionate, albeit extremely abbreviated catching-up chat while Daddy Moneybags proceeds to demonstrate every single stereotypically bad thing a parent can do when dealing with an emotionally overwrought offspring in love with the "wrong" person -- and calls in the doorman and the butler for backup. WTF? Note to would-be rich dads of knocked-up daughters: Delivering ultimatums while her version of Benjamin Braddock is howling "Elaine! Elaine!" in her ear is not going to sway her to your side. (Watch to 6:50)
An interesting side note -- watch the facial expressions during the ass-kicking scuffle. Don't the Moneybags both have looks on their face like they're upset about the property damage? Or was that just me going, "Well, good thing you've got some money saved, Bri, cos that weird art thing you just destroyed either cost a bazillion dollars or was some lame-ass creation of your future wife, and either way you're pretty much hosed."
What is the life lesson, here? If you judge by the final scene, wherein Uncle Pat comes through with a loan and Bri gets his bar, the lesson to be derived is "save up some money, find some family member willing to give you a loan even though you blew them off over three years ago back in the first 15 minutes of the movie, get a girl knocked up and you'll get a happy ending. Oh, and you'll get to recite really bad poetry and your bar's entire clientele will love it."
Serious management fail, y'all. I'd love to see the sequel to this -- I envision it where he's mouthing off to beer distributors, she's smashing bottles over the heads of customers who piss her off, and their kids are all, "Yeah, we don't know these people. We're gonna go find some wolves to raise us."
Bartenders do not have an easy time of it. Liquor licenses, entertainment schedules, drunk patrons -- it's a lot to take on. If you can manage a bar, odds are you can manage just about anything. Problem is, ever since Archie Bunker bought his own bar and grill there aren't very many good examples of stellar bar management out there. What do you suppose that is about?
For a bad example, we can always look to The Simpsons. Poor Moe is a pathetic case with the worst judgment on the planet. How many errors do you spot here?
Don't lose your cool. Don't leave your responsibilities unattended. Don't, don't. On the other hand, at least Moe stops short of assault, and he is master of his own domain -- unlike the poor slob working for Tony Soprano, who has an extreme way of rectifying bad hiring decisions.
Valerie Malone (no relation to Sam, as far as I know), in contrast, had the good sense to treat her business on 90210 like a business -- even when she was using it to machiavellian ends, and even if she spent 99 percent of her time messing around in other people's business, to unhappy ends.
But honestly, the award for savviest saloonkeeper of all time has to go to my old favorite Al Swearengen. Deadwood's patriarch is a shrewd businessman, a master showman, he responds quickly to emergencies and he communicates effectively (if violently) with his staff when they drop the ball.
One must bear in mind that there are as many different managerial styles as there are managers -- and people to be managed. Bar management is a completely different animal from the white-collar college grad office environment. You can be a little looser, you can have a little more fun. But you also have to be a lot more careful to keep things in line. Frankly, all I've learned from this week is that I'd be right awful at running such an establishment. A toast to those who do.
What do you do when alcoholism ruins your athletic career? You buy a bar. People of a certain age will recall that once upon a time, there was such a bar in Boston. While it changed hands several times over the course of the series, it was pretty much always Sam Malone's establishment.
Part of the show's appeal was how it focused on class differences, kicking up friction by pairing the educated and polished with the working class stiffs. In the first season things get bad enough between the two waitresses, Carla and Diane, that even as laid-back a manager as Sam has to address the situation.
Of course, leaving the two women to work out their differences alone is not the best approach.
Sam eventually makes the same mistake so many sitcom bosses do; he gets involved with an employee. When Diane finally calls it quits with him (so Shelly Long could leave the show,) Sam sells the bar and decides to sail around the world -- a plan that doesn't last long -- just long enough for the bar to come under new management and be fully staffed upon his return. The new manager, Rebecca Howe, is a pretty transparent interchangeable part for Diane, but with the balance of power shifted.
It was interesting to watch Rebecca's character develop. In this scene, you'll note, she is on the ball. She knows her staff and how much to expect of them. She knows how to hold her own with Sam. She dresses the part, she works hard, she is a model executive on her way up the ladder.
But it doesn't take long for her to devolve into a neurotic, gold-digging mess. Only one season later, she is on her way down, and her judgment is clearly suspect. Nobody would push their boss for career news in the middle of their establishment -- especially after being deflected twice.
Cheers was a much-loved show, and the series finale was comparable to that of Lost. NBC dedicated most of a night's airtime to the final episode, beginning with a "pregame" show hosted by Bob Costas, followed by the final 98-minute episode itself. Local affiliates then aired tributes to the show during their late-night newscasts, and the event concluded with a special Tonight Show broadcast live from the Bull & Finch Pub.
In the final episode, Diane returns, but realizes she doesn't need Sam to sustain her new life as a writer. Rebecca chucks her power suits for a plumber, and Sam remains with his one true love: the bar. The show ends with the promise that the next day at Cheers will be like every other day -- the bar will open, the regulars will arrive, the wisecracks will continue. Perhaps the best lesson the show had to offer, then, is to not mess with a good thing. Follow your bliss, and you will find success.
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