Being a bartender in a college town comes with more responsibility than making a simple drink. Without them, night life in Ames wouldn’t be the same.

According to Ames bartenders, the bars on Welch Avenue have specials on certain nights of the week such as: Mug Night, Country Night and Dollar Night. These nights are some of the busiest nights of the week for bartenders as they stay on top of drink orders, keep everything in stock and make conversation with the customers.

“Dollars Night is dollar drinks and it used to be Mickey’s was the only one who did Dollars Night so the line would be out the door at like 8:00 all night,” Kaitlin Cortez, a bartender at Mickey’s Irish Pub, said.

Groups of people make their way to the dance floor in the basement of Mickey’s around 10:30 pm and from then on waves of people come and go. By the end of the night the floor could be mistaken for a pool from the spilled drinks, Cortez said.

Cleaning up and restocking after an eventful night lets Halie Behr, manager and bartender at the Blue Owl Bar, leave around 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. It’s hard getting up in the morning for class, but if she gets good tips it’s worth it, Behr said.

“Not tipping can stink because, you know, that’s what we live off of because that’s what we buy our groceries with or pay our textbooks off with or pay our rent. We need that,” Behr said.

Country Night is on Tuesday’s at the Blue Owl Bar, which consists of five-dollar steins. One night the bar ran out of soda, popular liquor, domestic bottled beer and the kegs all ran dry, but it was one of her most successful nights, Behr said. People were nice about it and she made drinks using what she had left.

Some bars, like Café Beaudelaire, are for social drinking and pre-gaming rather than dancing and getting drunk, Sean Hoelscher, bartender at Café Beaudelaire, said. He often overhears interesting conversations while working from various people.

“One of our cooks is a huge history buff. Him and some of the guys that work there [Café Beaudelaire] were just talking about Roman history for six hours,” Hoelscher said. “They just sat at the bar my entire shift and talked about Roman history, it was really fascinating.”

Different bartenders have different experiences because each bar has their own unique twist.

At Mickey’s a man was so drunk that when a woman walked down the stairs he kept asking, “What is that? What is that? Is that a human?” said Cortez. She was unable to serve him any alcohol and he later was asked to leave.

“Just being a bartender there’s always something where you’re like ‘what the heck’ and you’re surprised about,” Behr said.