Going out to the bar for a few hours usually is a relaxing and enjoyable experience – unless you’re a bartender.

Junior finance major Brent Warren has worked at Fatty’s Pub and Grille, 1312 W. Lincoln Highway, for a year and a half. The difficulty for Warren doesn’t lie in dealing with demanding customers, but remembering all the shots.

“After a while it just sinks in,” he said. “Practice makes perfect.”

For NIU grad Jonathan Koepke, a bartender for 10 months at Starbusters Bar and Grill, 930 Pappas Drive, the physical strain of the job wears on him more than the mental strain.

“It’s physically demanding because you’re on your feet seven or eight hours at a time,” Koepke said.

“Quit your bitchin’!” said Starbusters waitress Gail Scheffel, a senior criminology major, as she walked by the bar while Koepke talked. “They only have 10 feet, and we have to walk all around the bar.”

Since hundreds of people can fill a bar on any given night, a few bar fights have been known to occur. But bar patrons let loose in peaceful, if not humorous ways, too.

In his two years as a bartender at Molly’s Eatery and Drinkery, 1022 W. Lincoln Highway, DeKalb’s Jeff Eichhorn experienced such an event when one of the local customers had a little too much to drink. The man then quickly stood up and dropped his pants.

“We don’t know why he did it,” Eichhorn said. “He just did.”

Warren also recalled an evening when inebriated customers began to dance on the bar’s counter during Fatty’s Fat Tuesday celebration.

And customers aren’t the only ones who get a little loony. Koepke recalled an evening at work with a former bartender.

By the end of the night, water from leaking faucets and about a half-inch of spilt beer covered the floor behind the Starbusters counter. To get out of cleaning, this former bartender created a type of “Slip and Slide” and slid through the puddle of beer and water a few times.

“He wanted to go home early and we said if he did it he could go home early,” Koepke said.

Though they can get a little rowdy, Warren said it’s the customers that make his job worthwhile.

“I basically talk to everyone that comes in,” he said. “That’s my job.”

Koepke would agree that, during his 10 months as a bartender, a benefit has been gathering a lot of wisdom and different perspectives on life from customers.

“It’s a good learning experience as far as people skills,” he said. “You get to know people and what they do.”

Eichhorn said other draws of bartending are developing close ties with co-workers and having fun.

He added that customers sense the camaraderie among Molly’s co-workers, which helps create a comfortable and friendly atmosphere.

“We’re pretty much all friends here,” he said. “People have fun watching us.”