Jeff Burkhart: It costs nothing to be kind

We were done for the evening. The last tables in the dining room were now standing in the foyer saying their goodbyes. Pictures were being taken and backs were being slapped; there was even a hug or two.

I took a moment and popped in the back kitchen to wipe down the last remnants of the last espresso. One thing you can always count on is that the last drink order is highly likely to be the most difficult, or the dirtiest, of the evening — as evidenced by someone asking for “just one more espresso martini.” But it was the last drink.

And then it wasn’t.

I turned the corner back into the bar, only to see a lone new woman sitting at the bar. Instinctively, I looked at the clock: five minutes to closing. But five minutes to closing is not actually being closed.

One of the hardest things in the restaurant business is rallying for the last-minute customer. This is not the same as the after-closing customer, which is entirely different. Closed means closed, and open means open. Hours of operation mean exactly that. And in this case, we were definitely still open.

We have all been on the receiving end of this arrangement. There’s nothing more annoying than traveling all the way to an establishment and having the doors be locked five, 10 or even 20 minutes earlier than the posted hours.

If this sort of thing happens once, a customer might come back, but if it happens twice, you’ve likely lost that customer forever. And in the current economic climate, that is an irredeemable loss.

So, I steeled my resolve, pulled back my slumped shoulders and managed the best smile that I could, because the last customer deserves the same level of professionalism as the first, as well as everyone in between.

“We are getting ready to close,” I said. “But we certainly have time for one more.”

I tried with every fiber of my being to sound sincere.

“What wines do you have?” she asked.

Thank goodness, I thought, no espresso martini. I placed down a list and stood back, just as the manager came to collect the cash drawer. Noticing the woman, he immediately turned back to the abandoned host podium and waited.

They call it “waiting,” because a good portion of what we do is wait for you. We wait for you to look at the menu. We wait for you to decide on what to drink. Then we wait for you to decide on what to eat — or even whether to eat. Then we wait for you to finish. And then to pay. And then to leave. Whoever came up with the term certainly knew what they were talking about.

So, we waited.

“What’s the difference between these two cabernets?” she asked.

“One’s $16, and the other is $24,” I said, venturing a joke I use all the time.

People usually laugh, and then, with the ice broken, I launch into a descriptive spiel. Only she didn’t laugh. In fact, it looked as if she was going to cry.

I immediately changed course. Not everybody is going to get your jokes, or even you. And the point is that in the service business they don’t have to. It’s really up to the server to adjust.

“Just kidding,” I said.

“This one is richer,” I added, pointing. “It has more tannins, and an almost blackberry fruit character.”

And then I described the other in about the same level of detail.

The woman still looked like she was going to cry.

“Here, try a taste of each,” I said.

She selected one and then sat there looking at it. We processed the transaction, and she signed the card. Meanwhile, the glass of wine sat there virtually untouched. The minutes ticked by as the manager and I fidgeted around.

Suddenly her phone buzzed. She picked it up.

“Uh-huh. Uh-huh. OK,” she said softly.

Then, she put her phone down and began to sob, softly at first, and then up to the point where she thought it best to leave.

“Is everything all right?” I asked.

“That was the hospital. My mother just died. I have to go.”

I picked up the credit card slip after she left and looked at the manager. He voided out the payment.

Leaving me with these thoughts:

• Not everyone in a bar is there for the same reason.

• Professionalism always starts at the beginning and always finishes at the end.

• Author Henry James once wrote, “Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.”

• There are plenty of reasons for someone to be a last-minute customer, and not all of them have to do with being an entitled jerk.

Jeff Burkhart is the author of “Twenty Years Behind Bars: The Spirited Adventures of a Real Bartender, Vol. I and II,” the host of the Barfly Podcast on iTunes (as seen in the NY Times) and an award-winning bartender at a local restaurant. Follow him at jeffburkhart.net and contact him at jeffbarflyIJ@outlook.com