So what do you really want to do? Like, honestly?

On one hand, I kinda get these kinds of questions. You're in a position where you're serving other people, regardless of their station, and you generally make your living through the (albeit expected) good will of others tipping you. While there's a lot of knowledge and skills and work ethics to develop, most of what we do is fairly monotonous. Most of our sense of achievement comes just from getting through the day, but there's no real sense of progression from one day to the next.

What throws me off though is that these kinds of questions usually come from office jockeys who generally have more meaningless and pointless jobs than we do. I think certain jobs foster a worldview that see everyone as having a social standing, where your worth comes from your position, job title, and political acuity to be able to earn and maintain these kinds of positions.

Kinda makes me wonder if most bartenders are nihilists, they tend to have pretty similar worldviews; the best you can do is have fun, work hard, and get through the day as smoothly as possible. We deal with a lot of drama, damage control, difficult people, and situations that require sometimes sophisticated levels of social engineering, so there's kind of an overlap with the corporate world, but I think the difference is that we do it out of necessity, not to get some political edge.

That said... I don't find bartending all that fulfilling, either. I do it because it's fun, challenging, and make good money, but at the end of the day I'm really just a drug-slinger. I think I'd be happier if I was doing something that I felt was making the world a better place. Truth is, in our society, the grand majority of jobs are designed around making other people money. Most feelings of autonomy are illusory. There's something inherently fundamental about capitalism that is poisonous to the idea of finding fulfillment by participating in society.

In the end, bartending is a means to an end like any other job, and such criticisms are just a different form of hypocrisy. Maybe people find disenfranchisement in their own lives and wonder why other people aren't chasing the same dragon they are.

/r/bartenders Thread