Last call for longtime bartender

After 34 years at Christian’s Pub on George Street, Krista Koerner is ready for a nap

It all began on a Saturday night in 1987, at what some considered the smokiest bar on George Street — Christian’s Pub.

Krista Koerner was 17 and her first shift busing tables started at 9:30 p.m.

On weekends, the lineup would wrap around Osmond’s Furniture — where Kelly’s Pub is now — and with two bartenders on ground level and one on the second floor, Koerner would run up the front stairs and down the back, collecting empty glasses, she said.

“I wore black Jordache jeans, a staple of mine in 1987,” Koerner told Salt Wire Network. “I had very dark hair back then and people thought I looked ‘exotic.’”

Since then, she has worked every job in the building, travelled the world and gone back to school while raising her daughter, Keara, as a single mother.

But she always returned to the pub she considers to be the home of her second family and to the street where, she says, every person working has your back.

BITTERSWEET MOMENT

As she sat on the second floor, mere days before her last shift on July 30, she thought back on her 34 years. From time to time, her eyes began to reflect the light a little more.

“It is (bittersweet). That’s why I’m tearing up,” she said.

It was where many milestones happened in her life, she said. It was where she met her late husband, her two best friends, the person she bought her house from, as well as the father of her child.

“All those things, if you weren’t in that place, it wouldn’t have happened. Well, this is the place where everything happened. It is true.

“Brian (Day) and Sabrina (Del Rizzo-day), they got married on Sept. 10 and my daughter was born Sept. 13. I was an extremely pregnant bridesmaid. At their wedding, every doctor in the place was like, ‘You OK?’ I could hiccup and everybody was (concerned),” she said. “Their wedding was a Friday night (and) my labour started three in the morning Saturday.

Day, the owner/operator of Christian’s Pub, said there are too many fond memories to pick just one.

“She’s been there all throughout our entire lives. She’s going to be greatly missed,” Day said.

“She’ll always be a part of the bar. Even if she’s not here, she always can be counted on in helping us out of a jam.”

LIFE IS NOT ALWAYS ABOUT CHOICES

For years, Koerner has worked two other jobs, one as a certified accountant and another with the Single Parents’ Association of Newfoundland (SPAN), an organization that helped her and encouraged her to go back to school when her daughter was young.

Working at the bar helped her get through school, provided extra money so she could say yes if her daughter was interested in dance or drum lessons and, now that her daughter is 21, helped her with post-secondary as well.

“Somebody (asked) me a while ago … ‘Why do you choose to do (this)?’ And you know what, life is not always about choices, it just is … you get up and do it,” she said. “Why do you work and then go to a volleyball tournament? Well, who else is going? So, the no sleep, I never gave my body a choice, it had to adjust and that was it.”

But at 52, the toll of all that work becomes more evident.

“My body hates me,” she said, laughing.

In 2016, Koerner went through breast cancer. The operation went fine, but her shoulder has never been the same.

“The constant wear and tear, basically, my massage therapist and my doctor said to me in the last little while, ‘We’re going to run out of glue to put you back together again,’” she said.

There are skills she’s learned throughout the years that are more important and relevant to life than anything she did in accounting, she said.

“The people I have met, the problem-solving skills, all those things, you don’t learn that in school,” she said.

And though she’ll miss her coworkers, she responded succinctly when someone at the bar asked her what she was looking forward to now that she is retiring.

“Oh my God, a nap. I’m really looking forward to a nap.”