Most people walk up to a bar thinking their drink order is perfectly reasonable. Totally normal. No big deal. The truth? Some orders make a skilled bartender’s eye twitch just a little behind that practiced smile. It’s not that they won’t make it – it’s that certain drinks carry a whole baggage of problems that most customers never even consider.
From labor-intensive builds that eat up precious service time to drinks that quietly signal you just want to get wrecked, the list of bartender pet peeves is longer than you’d expect. So before you belly up to the bar this weekend and request your go-to, read this first. You might be surprised.
1. The Mojito – The Mint Monster That Never Ends
Let’s be honest: mojitos are delicious. But here’s the thing – muddling the mint is a laborious process that takes up precious time, and some bartenders say they can serve around twice as many mixed drinks in the time it takes to create a couple of mojitos. That’s not a small tradeoff on a packed Friday night.
Cleanup is also a hassle, as picking up soaked mint leaves and squeezing limes can be a messy affair. Plus, when one person orders a mojito, it’s so pretty that it often makes others want one as well, starting a sort of mojito effect chain reaction – creating a compounding problem as bartenders spend more and more time muddling mint.
Since the mojito is so time-consuming to make, bartenders might find polite ways to refuse mojito orders – sometimes simply declining and offering to make something else, and in other instances apologetically informing you that they’re out of mint, even if that may not actually be the case. So if your bartender claims the mint is mysteriously gone, well… now you know.
2. The Long Island Iced Tea – Five Spirits of Pure Chaos
Bartenders mainly hate making this drink because of how labor-intensive it is to prepare. With an ingredient list featuring five different alcohols and cola, a Long Island iced tea isn’t exactly akin to filling a glass with whatever beer is on tap. That’s a lot of reaching, measuring, and pouring for one single drink order.
Easily one of the most reviled cocktails out there, a Long Island doesn’t actually include any iced tea and is widely considered a poor choice. The drink contains a puzzling number of ingredients – the official recipe from the International Bartenders Association calls for gin, vodka, white rum, tequila, and triple sec, with lemon juice, simple syrup, and a splash of cola.
As is the case with the Long Island Iced Tea, some mixologists claim it tends to be ordered by less-than-gracious guests. Honestly, the reputation of this drink precedes it in a way that very few cocktails can match. It’s the drink equivalent of wearing sunglasses inside.
3. The Ramos Gin Fizz – The 12-Minute Nightmare
Perhaps the most-loathed cocktail by bartenders, a Ramos Gin Fizz not only requires a lot of ingredients – gin, lemon, lime, cream, egg white, orange blossom water, sugar, and soda – but it takes a lot of time and elbow grease to make. Think of it like asking someone to bake a soufflé mid-dinner rush.
A Ramos Gin Fizz has an original recipe that calls for it to be shaken for anywhere from 12 to 15 minutes, which is simply not doable for most bartenders. As Eric Trueheart of Black Yeti Beverage notes, “In fact, the probably adequate 45 seconds is pushing it – at a busy bar, that is going to drive everybody crazy.”
A well-made Ramos is a real treat, but it basically requires a whole chemistry experiment to bring its many ingredients together. It’s described as a labor-intensive cocktail that needs a lot of shaking so the cream and egg ingredients can emulsify and basically turn into a meringue. Order it at a quiet craft cocktail bar, not at 11 PM on a Saturday.
4. The Espresso Martini – The TikTok Drink That Won’t Quit
Espresso Martini consumption increased from roughly two percent to fifteen percent in 2024, and that explosive growth is precisely why bartenders are exhausted by it. It went from niche to everywhere almost overnight.
While this drink is not inherently complicated – it’s normally a mix of espresso, vodka, and coffee liqueur – the hot component makes it inconvenient. Bartenders must first pull espresso, then let it cool before adding it to a cocktail, and with the drink’s rise in popularity in recent years, it can be challenging to make this caffeinated cocktail on a busy night.
According to Drinks International’s annual roundup of the world’s 50 most popular cocktails, the Espresso Martini has only gained ground – it ranked sixth in 2021, slipped to number seven in 2022, and has since held the number four spot for three years straight. The industry’s disdain, however, hasn’t subsided. Popularity and bartender appreciation, it seems, do not always go hand in hand.
5. The Bloody Mary – A Full Meal in a Glass
The biggest gripe bartenders have with a Bloody Mary is all the ingredients it takes to make one – vodka, tomato juice, Worcestershire sauce, black pepper, celery salt, Tabasco, and lemon juice. That’s not a drink order. That’s practically a grocery list.
Bloody Marys have like seven ingredients, so they’re a huge pain to make per order. Most bars that do them well prepare the mix in advance. If you’re at brunch, by all means have as many Bloody Marys as you’d like. But if it’s past lunchtime or you’re frequenting an establishment that doesn’t serve breakfast, you might want to find a different drink – chances are, PM bartenders simply don’t have the ingredients on hand.
6. The Appletini – The One That Gets You Judged
I know it sounds harsh, but here’s the thing: the appletini has a reputation problem. According to an anonymous survey of 260 bar staff, the drink most likely to negatively affect a bartender’s opinion of a customer is the appletini. Nearly half of all surveyed bartenders held a negative view of customers who ordered one.
Some drinks are simply embarrassing to order, and no cocktail may be more likely to draw a raised eyebrow or two than the appletini. Even if you’re not ordering one that’s easy on the ‘tini, the odds are high your bartender will be displeased – facing that tooth-rottingly sweet, unnaturally colored so-called martini.
As beverage director Patrick Williams told Thrillist, the biggest bone many bartenders have to pick with the appletini is the fact that it’s “not a real martini.” Since the apple flavor overwhelms the liquor, bartenders may prefer a customer who orders a martini where you can “taste the spirits.” Fair point, honestly.
7. The Frozen Piña Colada – Blender Blues
There’s something magical about a frozen piña colada on a hot day. The problem is that the blender those things require is basically a bartender’s nemesis. Honestly, most frozen drinks are annoying to make. It’s not just the blending – it’s everything that comes with it.
Frozen drinks create blender maintenance issues, inconsistent texture, sticky splashes, and require precise balancing of sweet and sour for each batch. Blenders break, frozen batches take space and time, and customers judge dull batches harshly. There’s a reason most cocktail bars don’t even own a blender.
I get it: it’s summer, and it’s hot, and yeah, frozen drinks are incredible. But when the bar is overflowing with people, it’s definitely nice when customers take note and order something quick and easy. Save the frozen masterpiece for a beach bar that’s built around it.
8. The Dirty Martini – A Minefield of Opinions
The dirty martini sounds simple enough. Vodka or gin, vermouth, olive brine. Done. Except it’s never that simple. Some bartenders have had enough, especially when the drinks are ordered dirty – with Redditors bemoaning a lack of brine and olive specifications, while others cite the annoyance of some guests’ very particular specs.
Martini orders – especially dirty ones or those ordered “up” with precise specs – cause problems because tiny differences matter: dilution, chill level, olive and brine amount. Patrons argue about the correct technique, and high-expectation, low-tolerance orders where a single mis-pour prompts complaints make this a stressful build.
It’s the kind of drink where the customer almost always has a strong opinion, and the bartender is just one bad pour away from hearing about it. Loudly. Think of ordering a dirty martini like asking someone to parallel park your car – technically they can do it, but there’s a lot of pressure and very little room for error.
9. The Jägerbomb – A Statement Drink
Once described as a “precision-engineered tool of debauchery-acceleration,” the Jägerbomb is quite a performative drink – you don’t drink it because it tastes good; it’s more of a test of endurance or a way to get loaded fast. As such, it’s got a reputation for being a young person’s drink.
Some bartenders dislike making any “bomb” drinks – those made by dropping a shot glass of liquor into a larger glass filled with a chaser. Jägerbombs, a shot of Jägermeister dropped into a glass of Red Bull energy drink, is probably the most common. As one bartender put it, they aren’t difficult to make per se, but you use up twice the glassware and they seem to always be ordered for large groups.
Roughly forty percent of bartenders think none too fondly on those who order Jägerbombs. That’s a significant chunk of the people serving you, silently sighing on your behalf. It’s not a dealbreaker to order one, but walk in knowing what you’re broadcasting.
10. The “Surprise Me” Order – The Ultimate Time Thief
“Surprise me” sounds fun and spontaneous. To a bartender buried in a Saturday night rush, it’s about as welcome as a car alarm. Asking for a busy member of staff to “surprise you” is not cute, funny, or flirty. It is, to someone who has about 100 other customers to see in the next 10 minutes, unbelievably annoying.
As a number of bartenders noted on Reddit, if there’s time to discuss a customer’s specific preferences and the customer is willing to engage and assist the bartender, asking for a creative craft cocktail may not make them hate you. But whether someone is annoyed by such a drink order depends on how busy they are – and if a bar is slammed, they’re unlikely to afford the mental bandwidth required to concoct a special and surprising beverage.
Asking for a free drink, whistling to get the bartender’s attention, and telling the bartender to “surprise you” when ordering ranked as the most annoying behaviors in surveyed bar staff. It’s not hard to see why. A bartender’s job is a performance of speed, precision, and people management. Asking them to also be your personal cocktail psychic is just a lot.
The bottom line is simple: the key, as one bar general manager put it, is to “read the room.” A great order at a fancy cocktail lounge can be a terrible choice at a dive bar, and vice versa. The drinks on this list aren’t forbidden – they’re just contextual. Order them thoughtfully, tip generously when you do, and your bartender might even crack a genuine smile.
What do you think – have you ordered any of these? Tell us in the comments below.
