You’re sitting at a bar trying to unwind, and then you hear it — the kind of conversation that crawls up your neck like a cold, awkward spider. Rote questions. Forced laughter.
Congratulations! You’ve wandered into a first-date zone.
New York can feel like a factory farm of first dates — half the city’s population is single, after all — and bartenders have to witness this ad nauseam, like a first-date “Groundhog Day.”
We asked them for their pet peeves, and talked to experts about how first daters can avoid such pitfalls:
The nonstop chatterbox
Frank Sansone, a bartender at the Crooked Knife restaurant in the West Village, always wants to intervene when he hears one person monopolizing the conversation.
“I could totally help this guy out right now, but that would be awkward,” he laments. “Hey! She wants you to ask her a question!”
The fix: Practice self-monitoring, says Sean Horan, author of the “Adventures in Dating” column in Psychology Today. Find a common interest so the date can become a conversation, not a monologue.
“Ask for the person’s opinion,” he says. “What do you think about that? Have you experienced this?”
The self-promoter
“Being your own ‘hype man’ is never a good look,” says Alex Stebbins, who has seen this behavior too often from behind the bar at Planet Rose, an East Village karaoke joint.
The fix: Instead of being a publicist, try a savvy move New York couples therapist Sari Eckler Cooper calls a “connector statement,” to show your humility while giving your date a chance to respond.
“Say, ‘I think I’m good, but I need your feedback,’ ” she says. “It’s fun, it’s playful, it’s flirty.”
The résumé reader
No move puts bartenders to sleep more than when daters recite their curricula vitae in get-to-know-you conversations.
“It’s like interview questions,” says Scotty Schukies, a bartender at Galway Hooker in the West Village.
The fix: Ditch the yes-or-no questions and ask things that are open-ended; share colorful stories instead of rattling off your résumé.
For example? “Tell a story [you] think is kind of funny about the last time [your] family got together for Memorial Day,” Cooper says. “It says more about who you are.”
The “who pays?” stumble
When Maya Murphy drops the check to daters at Bowlmor in Union Square, she often sees the guy freeze.
“You asked a girl out, and you can’t buy her a beer?” she asks. Other bartenders hate the “song and dance” girls do when shuffling for their purse, pretending they want to pay.
The fix: If the date’s going well, either party should discreetly grab the bill, without breaking conversation, and put a card down.
“That’s a great way to set up a second date,” Horan says. “Say, ‘We’ll have to go out again, so I can get you back.’ ”