"Do you want to improve your style?"

"Hey, bring a tray over here when you have a minute," my colleague said to me. This Quebecois co-worker wanted to teach me a trick. He wanted me to add some flair to my style - beer-pouring style that is. We only sell bottled beer, and an extremely high price. I cringed to ring in Coor's Light at $7 a pop. That being the case, I guess I should at least be providing some entertainment while pouring his ridiculously overpriced beverage.

The trick goes like this: You hold the beer glass against the tray with your thumb (only works for glasses with a slight stem and base), and pour the beer on that angle. The same angle that you'd pour a beer right into the glass to minimize the head. But at the table, and on a tray. Insert 'oohs and ahhs.' Truthfully, it looks kind of cool, sort of like a magic trick. Here's the catch.

"Now, make sure you didn't just stick your thumb in some butter by accident. Or that the base of the glass isn't wet at all." In essence, this is not a trick for people with hyperhydrosis. A sweaty handed server is not going to pull this off at someone's table. I have little desire to mention this to my co-worker. But now he's taught me the trick and probably wants to see it in action. Maybe on a good, dry day it'll happen. Even so, now I have to be the show-off who pours beer that way. If it will get me five extra dollars I'll probably do it. But if someone poured my beer that way, I'd likely be thinking, "Who does that jerk think he is?" I guess I'll just have to decide what kind of style I want to have, and how much I want to improve it.