The Bartender

"It's what I'm good at."

I talk to a lot of people for work. Not co-workers; I don’t have co-workers. The people I talk to are the people I see when I’m shooting photos or videos. Sometimes they are forthcoming. Sometimes they are guarded. Sometimes people just want to talk and so they tell me more than I need to know. They get something off their chest, they tell someone they will never see again something about themselves, and it’s good.

Often I think the stories people tell us are better than any stories we might make up. Maybe it’s because it’s hard for us to come up with stories that are truly believable, or maybe it’s because there is something to the fact that a story, no matter how small or big, is real.

I was at a bar taking photos and the bartender started talking to me.

She has been working there for four years. Before, she worked at another bar across the lake. She liked it there alright, but she wanted to get sober, so she quit. Soon after she started working at a rehab facility to help other people get clean. People want to help others who are going through the same thing they went through, they see themselves in those people and they want them to be better too, or I think that’s what she wanted to do; that’s what good people do.

But everyone isn’t good. A lot of the people who work in rehab aren’t nice people, or maybe they want to be nice but they are damaged and just can’t be. They don’t always want what’s best for you depending on who you are. When she was struggling and going through a divorce, they saw a way to get ahead and so they took it and she left.