‘Now, I’m just a bartender…”
So goes the song. When James Taylor wrote it in 1977, he sought to centre a perspective often excluded from the country ballads largely concerned with the consumption of whiskey: the bartender serving it. We find a similar exclusion in our present discourse of campus culture, which often seems to privilege one side of the counter over the other.
Despite how much students agonisingly and tirelessly bang on about campus culture and pub culture — which seem to have become synonymous — the labour which actually upholds such a culture’s existence seems to become a mere afterthought.
Such an oversight is not unique to our University campus. In broader Australian discourses, we hear much about pub culture — a culture overtly seized upon in Anthony Albanese’s 2022 campaign — yet little is said or done about the poor conditions and abusive work environments many hospitality workers endure, in one of the least unionised Australian industries. Only this week, new allegations of sexual assault and workplace discrimination have surfaced against one of Sydney’s biggest hospitality companies, Swillhouse.
As it occurs in many cases, the ostensible progressivism of academia has not made us immune to such an exclusion: one even finds quite a few examples of it in this very paper. Whether we are talking about the pub as a political institution or a cultural powerhouse, the perspective of the worker is at best neglected, and at worst actively derided.
It would be naive to ask why such a schism in our culture exists: one might as well ask why many student politicians hail from private schools. What still remains to be heard, however, is the voice of the bartender in this culture. I set out to ask a couple questions, buy a couple rounds, and find out how your bartender really feels about you.
Speaking to bar staff across a range of establishments in and around the university campus, a set of usual suspects immediately became clear. When asked who they especially loathed to see walk up the bar, the most common answer was unsurprising: college students. One worker alleged an entire college had been barred from the Marlborough for an incident involving a jug of urine. An anonymous source from Manning Bar claims a group of St John’s College students had to be removed from the venue after they made their way backstage, stole items from DJ’s bags and made racist comments to musicians and staff. Beyond these more extreme examples, nearly all interviewees showed a more general contempt for college students. “They would come very occasionally, but every time they would come, you would just have to brace yourself,” Sam*, a former Forest Lodge bartender, told me. “It was always a fucked up night. Always fucking yucky.”
The Drama society and Engineering Society were also among the most disliked student groups for differing reasons. Tony*, a former employee of Courtyard Bar, stated that SUDS drank too little and EngSoc drank too much. A long-time employee of the Nag’s Head Hotel also corroborated this.
Despite what might seem an obvious indicator for a bad patron, extravagance and intemperance were not always qualities that were disliked. Greek Society, contrastingly, was one bartender’s favourite group to serve due to their “crazy parties”. Veterinarian students were also well liked by a Nag’s Head employee, who told me that despite their often heavy drinking, the vets managed to keep themselves in order. “Who doesn’t get messy?” one bartender stated. “I can’t hold that against most people.”
When asked about what distinguishes a good patron from a bad one, the answer was simple: self-awareness. “The worst thing that a society or a group of people can have in the pub is a lack of self-awareness” Sam stated, specifically speaking to “a lot of political societies, unfortunately”. Another bartender shared a similar sentiment, stating that “I think a lot of people at USyd haven’t worked in the service industry”. I was told that one group who did exercise self-awareness, to my suprise, was the Society for Creative Anachronism (often referred to as the Medieval Society). It seems amidst jousting, mead brewing, and tunics, proper pub etiquette is not something that is forgotten.
Many of the staff I interviewed commented on the divide between students who need to work to support themselves, and those who do not.
“I think there’s a time poverty” Tony said, “people that work … don’t have the time to afford to do a full credit load … they don’t always have that time to just start drinking on a random Thursday afternoon with a society, because they have to get to work. It’s exclusionary.” Joan*, a bartender from Vic on the Park expressed that they felt “campus culture in general has locked a lot of people out”
Among the people I interviewed who worked while studying, there appeared to be a general loathing for campus culture. Where some felt ostracised by it, others almost rolled their eyes when the phrase was spoken. Speaking of a former coworker, now working at The Rose, Joan told of how he “began to hate the campus culture because it was just really fucking annoying.”
Not all responses were as cynical, of course. Ella, a Forest Lodge bartender, spoke of her experience as a student who emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic. “It’s cool to witness people come together every week and chat, often until closing time,” she told me. “It has made me more motivated to get involved in uni groups, and also taught me a lot about different subjects.”
It seems until the end of capitalism or the heat death of the universe (whichever of those things comes first) barriers will be constructed to inhibit the full and genuine participation of working class people in what we call ‘culture’. In the culture unique to the University campus, such a disparity is only intensified. Though the task of designating who exactly belongs to which class is one that is absurd and fruitless — specifically in an industry as large and diverse as hospitality — it only takes a cursory glance at the university culture we participate in to notice it is largely exclusionary of those who have to work to live.
*Names have been anonymised.
