From a story on lithub.com by Wesley Straton headlined “How Bartending Helped Me Write My Novel”:

I started bartending when I was 22, broke, and desperate. I had just graduated from college and moved to New Zealand, where, as a 22-year-old blond woman with a good work ethic and, crucially, an American accent, finding bar work was easy. (Americans, I learned, were broadly assumed to be good service industry workers.) I took a job making minimum wage and no tips at a glorified pub on the Wellington waterfront—and I’ve spent the decade since working my way through half a dozen bars and restaurants in three different countries, turning my last-resort job into the career that has allowed me to lead a creative life.