What Kind of Person Takes a Bartending Course Anyway?

The question I ask myself is who decides to take a bartending course anyway? Now that I teach bartending I think I can come up with that answer.

If you are like I was you might be jumping from job to job with the only thing to show for it is a small amount of money earned each year and waiting till the end of February to get all your income statements so you can file your tax return.

A limited education made that bartending course interesting and something I could do since the only jobs I did have up to then were janitor jobs , shipping receiver jobs, fork lift and truck driver jobs. Oh yes and cleaning jobs. Loved cleaning toilets out and office cleaning. Not that there was anything wrong with that but it is not something I could see myself doing for 40 years.

If you are like me you are probably terrible at building things so that rules out any trades that you would be good at doing. I tried to get into the police force but flunked the psychology test and I even tried to get into the Armed Forces as a pilot but flunked that test as well. Then because I just wanted to be a pilot I turned down a chance to go through training to become an Officer in the Navy. I was also very stubborn.

Then another reason for taking a bartending course is you just want to have some fun. Your siblings are all getting married before they are 18 and your stepfather and mother are going through a nasty break up. All I wanted to do is find my own way.

Another reason you may want to take up Bartending is you like to drink. I was one of those who would go out drinking at the bar and wake up in the morning to throw up before heading off to work. I would throw up while at work but finish the day and come home and have 3-4 beers before dinner. Yes come to think of it that happened on more than one occasion.

Finishing high school and graduating at 17 years old then heading off to Europe for a month and a half was a blast too. I saved up the money to get there and came back in a different location from where I left. My folks had moved from Quebec to Ontario as so many others had during the 1970’s and here I was knowing no one and returning to school trying to get through Grade 13 in Ontario. I spent a month at school then dropped out.

Between the time I had dropped out of school and the time I took the bartending course was just over two years. During that time I had over 25 jobs with the shortest being a couple of hours and the longest 13 months. My folks moved back to Montreal and I stayed back in Ontario. Then afterwards I moved back to live with them then they split up. I moved out.
So in a nutshell who takes a bartending course? If you are like me you will drop out of school , travel to Europe , drink a lot , parents split up , move all over the place , have over 25 jobs with many of them dead end and fail to get entry to the police force and firefighters. All this in as little time as possible like a couple of years.

But one thing I was always doing was looking for something that may interest me. I didn’t know quite what that something could be but I figured if I didn’t look nothing would change. During those many jobs I had acquired some sales experience through which I learned of positive motivational books and tapes. I devoured those and I dare say it helped me quite a lot in understanding myself and the opportunities that were abound out there.

Basically through my adolescent years I was a bit of a loner , hung around very few people , and just played sports. What I wanted to be since a very young age was to be a football player. In High School I was quite the pass receiver and was even invited to a junior camp run by the professional team in Montreal. It was the end though as I was too slow and skinny to compete with the bigger size athletes.

So when I was glancing through the Montreal Star one day I saw an ad about a bartending course at of all places McGill University. Hey McGill is offering a bartending course. How cool was that!

It was November of 1979 and I was cool looking dude of 20 years old and I was off to University. Well okay it was a bartending course but at least I can say I went to University.