It’s also easy to be a little, let’s say, relaxed, when hanging out at a bar, whether it’s the local nightclub or a new and exciting spot in town.
But one thing’s for sure, according to bartender Joshua: touching the garnishes, no matter how tempting they may seem, is never okay.
‘Bar rule no. 1. Don’t touch the garnishes. For the love of God, don’t touch the garnishes,” the San Francisco bartender declared on TikTok.
Joshua posted the bar-specific PSA in response to another video in which a customer revealed that he helped himself to an orange behind the bar, only to end up charging $12 for the “stolen orange” on his check.
Joshua, a San Francisco bartender, took to TikTok to remind his viewers to never touch bar garnishes.
He felt compelled to share the bar’s specific PSA in response to a separate video of a man being charged $12 for a “stolen orange” he had taken from a plate of oranges sitting on the bar.
Speaking about the prospect of working at the bar, Joshua shared his own anecdote of a previous customer’s unintentional contamination of the garnish, from his days working at a Tiki bar.
“I have a row of 12 garnishes right in front of my bar,” he recalled of the setup.
‘Now, the garnishes are placed close enough to my bar so that the customer, when they come in and sit in front of the bar, understands not to touch it.
—The waiter should touch that. Because the bartender picks up those garnishes, he puts them in the cocktail and then hands them to the customer,’ he described.
“Once the customer has the cocktail in hand, they can do whatever they want with the garnishes.”
Finally, a “lovely group of people” appear.
‘We’re having a good conversation. We’re having good energy,’ he recalled of the initial vibes.
‘The lady sitting in front of me, specifically from this group, feels confident after a conversation, comes over, takes a nutmeg from my mold and says, “Oh, what’s this for?”‘
Joshua didn’t want to embarrass her, “because she was very nice and the rest of her group was nice,” he said.
‘I wanted to be polite, right? And I just said, “Ma’am, that’s actually for me to grate over my cocktails, nothing more. So she says, “Oh, I’m sorry.” And she puts the nutmeg back on the ram.
Of course, Joshua had to throw away the nutmeg to avoid cross-contamination.
“I can’t use it anymore,” he emphasized.
But I was discreet because I didn’t want to embarrass him. But I thought she would have realized: don’t touch the garnishes.
Joshua also delighted his viewers with a story from his days working at a Tiki bar, when a woman scooped a whole nutmeg from a ramiken onto the bar and bit into it, breaking her tooth.
The women returned to their group, looking like they were still “having a good time,” Joshua recalled, adding that she and her group were still joking with him here and there.
About 20 minutes later, he received an order for seven cocktails, which demanded his full attention, so he stopped paying attention to the woman and her group.
‘As I have everything lined up, and I’m measuring my rum and shaking my lemon and my syrups, out of the corner of my eye, I see her come in and take another nutmeg from my ramiken, a whole one.
‘He turns to his group and says, “Have you ever thought what it would be like to eat one of these?” And he pops it in his mouth like an M&M.
‘Now, mind you, this all happened in the span of three seconds, and I didn’t really have time to react.
‘When he puts it in, he bites it, breaks his tooth and lets out a little squeak, like, “Oh!”
‘At that point, I’m still making my cocktails. And I paused… and I had to look at the other waiter and say, “Can you come finish this?”‘ Joshua continued.
‘Because right now I’m going to laugh out loud, And it will be embarrassing for all of us, including me.
‘So I had to go back, I had to laugh. Because the squeal, that took me out,’ he admitted, amused by the woman’s misstep.
‘But the point where the moral of the story is, don’t touch your garnishes, right?
“You’ll save yourself the embarrassment of a bartender telling you ‘No’ and possibly breaking your tooth with a nutmeg, and you’ll have a good time,” he concluded.
A surprising number of people seemed to think that bartenders shouldn’t leave potential garnish ingredients where customers can reach them in the first place.
Still, many other commenters believed that adult bar patrons should know not to assume that any food within reach is free for the taking.
Many viewers took to the comments section, with a surprising number arguing that the sides should be kept off-limits to patrons, rather than expecting the bar’s adult patrons to exercise common sense and self-control.
“You’re wrong, the garrison must be out of reach,” one wrote.
“That’s a crazy idea: don’t put your garnishes where people can reach them,” a second echoed.
‘Usually when there is a plate of fruit on a table where people eat, it is for them. “Put it behind the counter,” a third suggested.
Others agreed that bar patrons – including the man who had been charged $12 for the orange he had helped himself to – should know better than to touch food in a public place without asking.
‘Who just grabs something from the bar and thinks it’s free?’ one pointed out.
A second agreed: “These comments are WILD, don’t touch things that don’t belong to you.”
“After reading the comments, I’m convinced that none of you have ever been to a b4 bar,” a third joked about the shocking number of people who seemed to think that, as patrons, they would have the right to touch or eat anything within reach. its reach. reach.