Bartender reveals the 'number one' rule customers should NEVER break when going out for drinks: 'Save yourself the embarrassment'

It's easy to get a little too, shall we say, relaxed, when hanging out at a bar, be it your local drinking joint or an exciting new spot on the town.

But one thing's for sure, according to bartender Joshua: fingering the garnishes, however tantalizing they may appear, is never okay.

'Bar rule no. 1. Don't touch the garnishes. For the love of god, please do not touch the garnishes,' the San Francisco-based bartender declared on TikTok.

Joshua posted the bar-specific PSA in response to another video in which a customer revealed he helped himself to an orange behind the bar, only to end up being charged $12 for the 'stolen orange' on his check.

Joshua, a San Francisco-based bartender, took to TikTok to remind his viewers to never touch garnishes on the bar

He felt compelled to share the bar-specific PSA  in response to a separate video of a man getting charged $12 for a 'stolen orange' he'd taken from a bowl of oranges sitting on the bar

Speaking to the perspective of working the bar, Joshua shared his own anecdote of a past customer's inadvertent garnish-contamination, from his days working at a Tiki bar.

'I got a line of 12 garnishes right in front of my bar,' he recalled of the set up.

'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 described.

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

Eventually, a 'lovely group of people' show up.

'We're having a good conversation. We're having good energy going,' he recalled of the initial vibes. 

'The lady that's sitting in front of me, specifically from this group, gets confident after some conversation, and she reaches in, grabs a nutmeg out of my ramekin, and says, "Oh, what's this for?"'

Joshua didn't want to embarrass her - 'because she was so kind, and the rest of her group was kind,' he said.

'I wanted to be polite, right? And I just said, "Ma'am, that's actually for me to grate over my cocktails, nothing more. So she says, "Oh, I'm sorry." And puts back the nutmeg in the ram again.

Of course, Joshua had to throw the nutmeg out, to avoid cross-contamination.

'I can't use it anymore,' he emphasized.

'But I was discreet about it, cause I didn't wanna embarrass he. But I figured she would have gotten the picture: Don't touch the garnishes.'

Joshua also regaled his viewers with a tale from his days working at a Tiki bar, when a woman helped herself to a whole nutmeg from a ramiken on the bartop and bit into it, chipping a tooth

The women went back to her group, looking like she was still 'having a good time,' Joshua recalled, adding that she and her group were still bantering with him here and there.

About 20 minutes later, he got an order in for seven cocktails, which demanded his full attention, so he stopped paying attention to the woman and her group.

'As I have everything lined up, and I'm measuring my rum and jiggering my lemon and my syrups, out of the corner of my eye, I see her go in and grab another nutmeg out of my ramiken, a full one.

'Turns around to her group and she says, "Have you ever thought what it would be like to eat one of these?" And pops it in her mouth like an M&M.

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

'When she pops it in, she bites down on it and cracks her tooth and lets out a little squeal, like, "Oh!"

'At that time, I'm still building my cocktails. And I had a pause … and I had to look at the other bartender, say, "Can you come finish this?"' Joshua went on.

'Because I'm going to bust out laughing right now, and it's gonna be embarrassing for all of us, including myself.

'So I had to go in the back, I had to laugh it out. Because the squeal, that took me out,' he admitted of his amusement at the woman's misstep.

'But the point where the moral of the story is, don't touch your garnishes, right?

'You'll save yourself the embarrassment of having a bartender tell you, "No," and possibly the embarrassment of cracking your tooth on a nutmeg, and we'll have a good time,' he concluded.

A shocking number of people seemed to think that bartenders shouldn't leave would-be garnish ingredients where customers can reach for them in the first place

Still, many other commenters believed that adult bar patrons should know better than to assume any foodstuffs within their arm's reach is free for the taking

Many viewers took to the comments section, with a surprising number arguing that the garnishes needed to be out of reach of customers, rather than expecting adult bar patrons to exercise common sense and self-control. 

'Ur wrong, garnish needs to be out of reach,' wrote one.

'Here’s a wild idea don’t put your garnishes where people can reach them,' a second echoed. 

'Usually when theres a plate of fruit sitting on a table where people eat, its for them. put it behind the counter,' a third suggested. 

Still others agreed that bar customers - including the man who'd been charged $12 for the orange he'd helped himself to - should have better judgement than to touch foodstuffs at a public venue without asking.

'Who just grabs something off the bar and thinks it’s free though?' one pointed out. 

A second agreed: 'These comments are WILD don’t touch things that don’t belong to you.'

'After reading the comments I’m convinced none y’all been to a bar b4,' a third jested of the shocking number of people who seemed to think that as customers they'd be entitled to touch or eat whatever is within their arm's reach.