Bored with your office job? Steve Spooner shows how you can be a ‘flair’
barman.
Steve works for Juliana’s, an international leisure services company
based in the UK. Aside from barmen, Juliana’s provides cabaret acts,
DJ’s and sound and lighting equipment to locations worldwide. Steve is
in Dubai to train staff for the recently opened luxury Metropolitan Palace Hotel on
Maktoum Street.
Name: Steve Spooner.
Occupation: International Bar Consultant and Flair Barman.
Date of Birth: 23/11/76.
Place of Birth: Harrogate, Yorkshire, UK.
Hours: Weekends and nights. A barman has to work when everyone is out
enjoying themselves. It is my job to make sure you have a good time when
you visit the bar I’m working in.
Place of Work: The Office Bar, Metropolitan Palace Hotel, Maktoum
Street, Dubai. Telephone 04-270000
What made you become a barman?
When I was twelve-years-old most of my friends had a paper-round, but I
got a job stocking the shelves at my local village pub. This was my
first experience of bar work, and I wanted to know more. When I was
seventeen I got a job in a flair bar and started learning the tricks of
the trade.
What skills do you need to be good at your job?
Self-discipline is very important. I am sent on jobs all over the world
free of supervision. There is no-one to check you are doing your job
properly. You also need a strong personality and the ability to get on
with a wide mix of people. I must be able to adapt to new cultures in a
short time, so an open mind is helpful. You also need an encyclopaedic
knowledge of your product and how a bar runs. When a customer asks for a
cocktail, no matter how obscure, I have to know how to make it.
What are your qualifications?
I did a vocational course at college, taking a BTEC National Diploma in
Hotel Catering at Harrogate College, Yorkshire, UK.
What are your benefits?
Payment is on a contract-by-contract basis. Depending on where in the
world you are sent, pay differs greatly. Whatever I earn, it is always
plus flights, food and accomodation.
Where has your job taken you?
I’ve been to Japan, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and now Dubai.
Any strange experiences?
When I was working in Sri Lanka I often got distracted while juggling
bottles as I’d look up and see an elephant strolling past the window.
They can’t prepare you for that at college. The bars aren’t always as
luxurious and well stocked as the Metropolitan Palace. You can arrive in
some far-flung places and find the bar is nothing but a plank of wood!
Any embarassing moments?
I was working in a bar in the UK and showing off with a rather large
bottle. I let the bottle slip threw my fingers as I swung my arm round.
The bottle shot through the middle of a couple, missing them by inches.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
I would like to see more of the world, and this is the ideal way to do
it. My ambition is to learn the trade and hopefully save the money to
set up my own flair bar in Tokyo.
Steve went home for Christmas and the New Year, but will be back in
Dubai soon. He would like us to point out that he looks nothing like Tom
Cruise and that his life is in no way like the movie Cocktail.
At this interim stage in the Shimal Tell excavation, the dedicated team
is still digging, collecting, sorting, classifying, so they restrain
themselves from arriving at any conclusive analysis.
The excitement of touching the lives of ages past is detectable though,
even as they methodically pick and brush the sediments and painstakingly
document their work. There remains much work and analysis, but the team
has already made dramatic progress on its way to putting together the
pieces of the puzzle at Shimal Tell.
