Sunday night. The three 18-25 year-old barmen, hard to tell apart, have been left unsupervised.
There is a constant background hum of their snickering. Every time a young woman enters, they nudge each other in the ribs, leer and mutter. Fingers are held up — marks out of ten.
When there is a gap in the rush at the bar, they gather around the TV and watch the Paralympics. At the sight of limbless athletes, they suffer an infectious fit of giggles: “That’s sick, dude.”
We feel a bit like we’ve accidentally turned up at their shared house demanding pints and that they’re humouring us by letting us stay.
Of course, we know plenty of 18-25 year-old barmen who are very nice and very professional, but there’s something to be said for a bit of diversity behind the bar: the presence of older people and women can prevent the otherwise inevitable Men Behaving Badly effect from kicking in.
Surely it should be Boys behaving badly, these fetuses clearly shouldn’t be allowed to ‘work’ unsupervised. Idiots.
Well if you will drink in Yates’…
Yeah, wot he said
Is “grow the F@#$ Up!” not in polite British pub parlance?
It’s a trend, isn’t it? You feel like you have entered a private party and at the same time are expected to pay.
I think the blur between work and leasure is a challenge for quite a few under-25s. That makes it imperative for any employer, in a pub or elswehere, to be explisit about the role you are expected to fill during working hours. And if you have an uneasy feeling, send a friend along as a mystery shopper to check how things are.