Bartender shares the ‘number one’ rule customers should never break

Hospitality staff have to be resilient, strong-willed and possess the ability to push back at the general public - especially when alcohol is involved.

Many servers and mixologists will say that preventing punters from nicking glasses, walking out on bills or smuggling memorabilia away is their biggest worry.

However, one TikTok user has gone as far as to claim he has a golden rule in place when it comes to customers ordering at his bar.

Taking to social media, the San Francisco bartender explained that when he works, he likes to have a line of 12 garnishes ready and waiting.

“Now, the garnishes are placed close enough to my bar that the customer, when they come in and sit in front of the bar, should understand that that's not for them to touch.

“That's for the bartender to touch. Because the bartender picks up those garnishes, places them in the cocktail, and then hands them to the customer,’ he said.

“Once the customer has the cocktail in their hand, they can do whatever they want with the garnishes.”

However, he said that when one lady started fingering his garnishes, he had to step in.

“The lady that’s sitting in front of me, specifically from this group, gets confident after some conversation,” he explained.

“And she reaches in, grabs a nutmeg out of my ramekin, and says, ‘Oh, what’s this for now?’

“Because she was so kind, and the rest of her group was kind, I wanted to be polite, right? And I just said, ‘Ma’am, that’s actually for me to grate over my cocktails.’”

Thankfully, the woman apologised immediately for her error; instead of throwing the garnish away, she placed it back in the pot.

Due to concerns over cross-contamination, Joshua was forced to throw the spice away.

“I can’t use it anymore, but I was discreet about it, cause I didn't wanna embarrass her.

“But I figured she would have gotten the picture: Don't touch the garnishes.”

Despite making it clear to the unnamed woman that she wasn’t to touch the nutmeg, she allegedly went back in, picked up another one and popped it into her mouth.

“Now, mind you, this all happened in the span of three seconds, and I didn't really have time to react,” he recounted.

“At that time, I'm building my cocktails. And I had a pause … and I had to look at the other bartender, say: ‘Can you come finish this? Because I'm going to bust out laughing right now, and it's gonna be embarrassing for all of us, including myself’.”

He closed the clip by saying: “But the point where the moral of the story is, don't touch your garnishes, right?”

Following the clip, which has amassed over 150,600 likes, bartenders and viewers alike have come out to debate Joshua’s ‘one rule’.

One TikTok user typed: “ur wrong, garnish needs to be out of reach.”

A second said: “Who just grabs something off the bar and thinks its free though?”

Another joked: “I’m definitely gonna touch the garnish after watching this.”

“Put it behind the bar, it would be so easy to put a substance in the ball,” advised a fourth.

Another TikTok user said: “Bars are so uptight now it’s garnish put them next to the alcohol that customers also can’t touch.”