The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future As

A Bartender
"School of Mixology"--that's rich kid. Yeah, and podiatrists are "doctors"--oh sorry, didn't mean to poke you in the eye with my air quotes. Well, your bartending career will go pretty much like this:

You'll go to the bartending institute and learn the difference between shaken and stirred, a bunch of different drinks, how to do the flaming ones without burning yourself, and then you're off to find your $12 per hour job--if you're lucky. You start as the bartender at a chain restaurant, where the manager--same age as you but with a pissy attitude--rides your ass day in and day out that you're putting too much actual booze in the drinks--truth is, you're "comping" your buddies on staff and some of the cuter waitresses.

Eventually, you decide to leave before you say something to lose your reference, and you go to work at a nightclub. It's way more fun--energetic and social--problem is, the few cute women who chat you up at the bar end up leaving with other guys because you don't get off work until 2 a.m.--plus, everything begins to look sad as you see the same people getting hammered, week in and week out. Soon you're an invaluable resource to the players of the club--you warn them which prospects have herpes, crazy ex's or three kids. They take care of you with good tips, but you don't get enough of those, and the waitresses don't share theirs like they should.

You begin drinking after work more and more, and eventually get an impaired charge. In the court-mandated alcohol counselling you meet a girl and the two of you get serious quickly and decide to get married. Problem is--she IS an alcoholic, and your only marketable skill is pouring booze. You're out late nights, and you worry that home alone, or out with her friends, she'll start drinking again.

She does, and when she does, she starts accusing you of messing around with the girls you work with--soon you're volunteering for extra shifts and doing weddings on the side just to stay away. She eventually leaves, but then dries out and comes back and you agree to work on things. This cycle continues for the next seven years of your marriage, during which time you add two kids to the mess.

The club you work at decides to go for the "coyote ugly" girls thing, and you're unemployed. At this point, you're not really young enough to get hired on at any more dance clubs, so you go to work for a low-key, lower paying neighborhood pub. The staff is fine, there's decent food at your breaks, and you get home earlier. Of course, you see the same sad old drunks night in and night out, and the three karaoke nights per week are your own small embodiment of hell. You finally pull the pin on bartending at age 45, and work in one of those horrible moneymart places until a holdup man kills you when you're 52.

What's the matter kid? Are you okay? Come back...