Bartending's a great part time gig, and depending on where you live it may or
may not be difficult to find a bartending job that works with your current
schedule.
The money part is definitely dependent on where you work, but all in all
bartending is a relatively high paying occupation, especially if you look at
it on an hourly scale. I've worked in bars where I made as little as $10 in
tips per shift, and others where I've made $250+ per night, though I'd say it
shouldn't be overly difficult to find a job making around $80 a night or so in
tips, especially if you're a people person.
As for declaring all of your tips, I never did, but once again, that varies
from place to place. Some of the independent joints, you can nearly get away
with not claiming a dime, whereas the chain restaurants will make sure you're
claiming at the very least the bare minimum of 8% of your sales (at least in
Oregon the restaurant was in the clear if the average claimed tip percenatge
as a whole was over 8% - that would keep the IRS from delving into the books a
bit deeper), however I've worked at a bar where come tax time I had a nice
"allocated tips" surprise which ended up making me owe taxes, so you need to
be careful. In many bars, an added bonus is you can make a large percentage of
your tips from tip outs from the servers, and in most cases can get away
without claiming any of this.
As for what to expect - expect to have a tough time dealing with ass holes and
drunks and young punks thinking you've offended them by wanting to see their
ID. Those were three things that bothered me the most at first. Also, make
sure you have a thick skin, that'll definitely come in helpful. However, all
in all, bartending is a fun, generally fast paced, high paying job.
--
Cheers! - Josh @ BarSim
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http://www.barsim.com
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BarSim (tm) - The Ultimate Bartending Simulation
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All About Bartending - The Blog http://allaboutbartending.blogspot.com/