Views from the sick: What it’s like to work behind the bar at POP

It takes courage to face a massive, loud, brutish and intoxicated hoard in order to pay your way through uni. You’ll be tired, painfully sober and extremely busy, but it can also be one of the most fun things you do with your Wednesday evenings.

Here is an honest account of what it is really like to man the bar at Warwick’s favourite club night.

Glo-up.

You’ll get rushed by people who you’ve never actually spoken to while you’re trying to work 

People will regularly scream “oh my god you’re in my seminar!” while you will swear that you’ve never seen this person before in your life. Despite this, they will cling to you all evening, only to not remember you or your name in your 11am the next day. At best they will go a bit pink with mild humiliation and you’ll avoid talking to each other for the rest of the year.

Like Cole from The Sixth Sense, you’ll see drunk people, and they can be awful

They click, shout, throw up, spill drinks all over your freshly cleaned bar, attempt theft, and awkwardly try and flirt with you for preferential treatment, but I can assure you that the slurring is a lot more off-putting than it is endearing. Once you see people behave like that, you swear that you’re never going to drink again…only to see your colleague on their night off asleep in a puddle of Carlsberg. This is when you realise that you’re lying to yourself. 

You’ll feel like Moses crossing a (purple) sea.

POP-goers can also be the loveliest people

Maybe they take comfort in talking to the only sober people in the building, but you’ll get compliments, hugs and thanks all night, which makes up for the nasty ones.

Your hands will be purple, with Purple

When you pour enough of it over yourself you’ll discover it has properties similar to henna. It can take days for your skin to return to normal colour, no matter how hard you scrub.

You’ll pour more Jungbombs in one night than you could drink in a year

Jungbombs aren’t Jaegerbombs. They’re made with Jungfrau (which translates as ‘virgin’, which is deliciously ironic) and Relentless. You’ll very quickly learn to not give a toss about this when you are told it by a smashed social sec in Daisy Duke shorts. He’ll then neck five and leave you in peace. You will go back to pre-pouring them and wonder how many hundreds you’ve whipped up in the space of an hour.

By the end of the night you will be covered in substances hitherto unknown to science

What is that stain on my jeans? Why is it slightly pearlescent? What’s that smell emanating from your right shoulder? I once had my chemistry-studying flatmate test my work clothes and she was mystified.

You’ll see a hell of a lot of bad romance, but you won’t feel like Lady GaGa.

Is that Mike from the third team tonguing that PhD student as if he’s dropped his phone down her mouth? It is. It is indeed. This will leave you needing to take a minute to compose yourself. When you get home you’ll sit in the corner of your room and drink a lot of whiskey.

We play laser tag when you are all gone

You’ll seen Hades and a whole lot more with the people you work with, but they’ll be like family because of it.

From spew on your shoes to all of the Carlsberg/Somersby taps malfunctioning three minutes before circling starts, you’ve been through some tough times with your colleagues. But by the end, you’ll be like siblings.