This industry does not hire the way job boards imply
A large share of bar hiring happens through people who are already known to the venue, and through someone walking in at the right moment. The online application exists, it is sometimes required, and it is rarely the thing that moves.
That is not a complaint about fairness. It is a description of how a manager with a hole in Friday's schedule solves the problem: they ask the staff, and if that fails, they take whoever is standing in front of them and seems capable.
Being the person standing in front of them is a strategy, and it is the one this lesson is mostly about.
Walking in: timing is most of it
Go between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m., Tuesday to Thursday.
That window is chosen carefully. The lunch rush is over, prep for dinner is underway, a manager is on site and doing paperwork, and nobody is in the weeds. It is the only reliable slot in the week when a bar manager has five minutes and is not being pulled at.