Im a new restaurant bartender and I need advice.
I recently started a new job as a bartender in a restaurant. I have never served alcohol before but I’ve wanted to become a bartender for a while. I was very transparent about this throughout the hiring process, and the job summary said that they train all of their bartenders.
In this role, I very rarely directly serve drinks to customers. I do a lot of different things with certain kinds of orders, desserts, etc., but my main role regarding drinks is giving the servers the drinks they ring in.
I only got about 4 hours of training before I was alone on the busiest day at the busiest time and I didn’t do great. A lot of drinks I didn’t know how to make, and some that I did know how to make I put in the wrong size glass (ex. I put a vodka cran soda on too small of a glass). A few of the servers ended up making half of their own drinks which was obviously frustrating for them and I felt bad. Later discussions with some of the servers showed that they also felt bad for me because they knew how much experience/training I had. They said it wasn’t a problem, but if I was still not doing well a month or so from now they might be upset.
I want to be a good bartender and I’m looking for some advice on what to do. Both in how to get better/faster at making drinks and other areas of being a bartender. Please lmk your thoughts and bonus points if you’ve worked in a restaurant with a similar set up to what I’m describing.