The Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective Bar Owners: Habit 3

Habit 3: Put First Things Last

Confuse the issue in your own mind and then don't tell employees what you're thinking and then evaluate their performance and compensation on ground rules you haven't even discussed with them. Avoid planning like the plague or avoid it like you avoid that customer who shows up like clockwork wearing their team gear and wants to see their team play on one of the many lo-def televisions that Summers. Use this opportunity to disappear into your dungeon for three hours and encourage the server to disappear to the light side because that's where the paying customers are. Execute the bar's tasks based on their least importance rather than urgency. Never evaluate your efforts but evaluate the efforts of others and criticize them for it even though you haven't explained the ground rules.  Refuse to exemplify your desired character values and then betray them. Propel yourself towards the all-mighty dollar and don't worry about your goals or your employees goals. Remember that enriching roles and relationships with customers, staff and even your own family is for  total losers.

The Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective Bar Owners: Habit 2

Habit 2: Procrastinate and Never Have a Goal In Mind

First, never ever create a mission statement. I can't emphasize this point enough. Never. Ever. Mission means work and statement means putting stuff in writing. Putting stuff in writing is bad because writing means more work and writing means committing to something which means employees or patrons could bring it up later under oath in litigation. Lord knows we all have enough commitment issues in our personal lives that we don't need to deal with them in our professional lives. Never commit to anything. Besides, how is one supposed to build on highly ineffective habit number one of taking everyone one knows completely by surprise to gauge their honest reaction if one commits to something ahead of time?  

Since you will never ever craft a mission statement, don't even bother envisioning your ideal bar or the ideal characteristics for you or your employees. It is a complete waste of time. Employees will always let you down.

Plus, envisioning the ideal work environment only means more work and you need to have the flexibility to completely dismantle your highly-abstract concept of the ideal work environment when that one customer comes in one time right off the street after a long-day of trying to figure out the baffling Washington Metropoitan Area Transit Authority metro system in which more than one train runs on one track and that train is always completely full and the train doesn't even drop them off by the museum they wanted to see and they're happy because they're on vacation and everyone else is not and maybe that's why does everyone looks so sad and these tourists are coming back after a long day of wandering around the National Mall in the hot hot sun where a bottle of water costs more than this family vacation they planned and they're hot and they're sweaty and they're mad and they're in the right frame of mind to offer solid business advice to the owner of the first restaurant they pass between the metro station and their hotel and no bar owner wants to be mired in an untenable position in which they cannot use the recently collected pearls of wisdom to the utmost strategic advantage because they're hamstrung by the completely useless business plan that the completely incompetent accountant made them draw up for the completely imaginary county regulators.

The Obvious Sonny

Why deny the obvious Sonny?

We had a lot of fun, we had a lot of money.
We had a little son, we thought we'd call him Sonny.
Sonny gets married and moves to Arlington to work at Summers.
Sonny has a bucket and bills to pay which is a total bummer.
Sonny gets sunnier day by day by day by day.

The Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective Bar Owners: Habit 1

Habit 1: Be Reactive

React, react, react, and then overreact.

If you want to be a completely useless and ineffective bar owner or manager, you need to react to past trends and overreact to customer and staff feedback. Javelin Joe at Summers is a shining exemplar of reaction and overreaction. He reacted well when he signed a non-exclusive contract to show the Olympics at Summers and he overreacted when he ordered ordered a million metres of blue electrical tape.

To make the most of your ineffectiveness, and completely bamboozle patrons and workers and confuse them beyond reasonable doubt, you must not only react, but overreact. Take what one customer says one time about one thing the one time they come in the establishment and make that a policy. Then change the policy when another customer comes in one other time and says something different. Remember not to tell regular customers or employees, because you want them to react too. It doesn't matter if the change in policy is four hours or twenty-four hours, you can't gauge people's reactions unless it a complete surprise.