A Little Bit of This and a Whole Lot of That
by Stewardess Sandra ChanceAs a stewardess on a charter yacht there are certain facets of the job that I loathe performing. Some of these tasks are just so routine that I feel like the Energizer Bunny stuck in one place; sweeping, dusting, blah blah blah. Other jobs just outrightly violated my human rights; no one likes unblocking toilets, especially after holding the hand of a charter guest while giving them explicit instructions on potty training only to wind up with a dangerous environmental hazard and an embarrassed client. But more than anything, I despised using the blender. I’d rather pluck hair out of the shower drain with tweezers.
When I first learned how to bartend, I was working in a ski resort with die hard adrenaline junkies catering to tourists. My co-workers refused to pour anything but beers and shots and basically wound up telling the customer what they should drink rather than what they wanted to drink. Blenders in our bar were absolutely unheard of so when someone ordered a Strawberry Daiquiri we’d send them away laughing with a Bud and a shot of tequila. Who orders a frozen drink during the dead of winter and how had they confused their vacation with the warm waters of the Caribbean where frozen drinks are as ubiquitous as sand on the bottom of the ocean floor? Ironically, years later, I started working in those brochure-like tropical paradises where people demand fruit daiquiris and I absolutely had to learn how to make these silly named girly drinks for the first time ever. But not without a fight.
Numerous aspects contributed to this blender headache. Finding the blender on Club W was a nightmare within itself because of limited storage space on the boat. The base was stored somewhere in the galley and never in the same place. The glass jar was always hidden in crew’s quarters underneath piles of clothes, bottled water, and rolls of paper towels. By the time I had the blender set up in the bar I had broken into a sweat and the guests were already cooing me for their drinks. The booze was stored in one place, the ice was a million miles away, the pineapple mix was in the galley and then I’d forget about the garnish and have to run back to the galley again. The straws were nowhere to be found and then we’d run out of ice. To add icing to the cake I would start stressing about all the other tasks I needed to be doing at that moment. Why couldn’t they just order a shot and a beer instead???
And then came the daunting task of actually making the frozen libation with their eighteen thousand ingredients. Now, I’m not sure if there is any bartender who knows how to make these drinks by heart but it sure as hell isn’t me. Christmas Jones, Blue Bayou, Frog in a Blender — these were all drinks that required spending precious time in the bartenders guide book at which point the guests complained of being so parched that you’d think they had been meandering the Mojave Desert for days. And there was always that one guest, you know the one, the one that changed their mind only after you had cleaned up Hiroshima.
After a couple charters of this fiasco I did what any right minded stew would do. I lied.
“Sorry guys, out of Coco Lopez, a key component of Carbonated Cow. How about a nice glass of red wine?”
“Oh, bummer guys, Chef Vanessa just used the last of the fresh squeezed lime juice for your divine dinner this evening. Fancy a glass of champagne?”
“Hmm, looks like we don’t have enough ice, guys, but I’ll be more than happy to pop you a beer.”
But sometimes I fell victim to what I thought were really cool guests and I’d bust out the blender to give them a little treat. On the charter with the eight college boys this was a detrimental mistake as after their discovery of the blender on board they began to order every different frozen drink known to man morning, noon, and night like I was bartending at a fraternity party in South Beach. After a while I couldn’t be bothered to look in the bartender’s guide and soon began making up my own concoctions. My tactic was pure and simple; I’d guess the appropriate color of the drink according to the name and add ingredients to give it the suitable hue. Christmas Jones/red, Blue Bayou/ (dead give away), and Frog in a Blender/green. For example, Frog in the Blender might get some milk, some orange juice, and a whole lot of Midori to give it that special color. If a drink sucked it was blamed on a poor recipe and not the bartender.
I didn’t stop there. The guests had no idea of the nuisance they were inflicting on me so I would retaliate. Sometimes, I’d leave out the booze just to see if the placebo effect really worked. It does.
Who’s having a good time in the Caribbean now?