Called to the bar

Jessica Werb | Image: Darrell LeCorre | Published: February 01, 2008 Sweet gig

Rupi Gill, a 38-year-old mother of two young children, can regularly be found hanging out in pubs, bars or nightclubs in the Surrey area. If a place serves booze, she’s there.

But don’t get the wrong idea; it’s all in a day’s (or night’s) work for Gill, one of 35 liquor inspectors working for the B.C. Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General’s Liquor Control and Licensing Branch.

“Sometimes I’m a little hesitant to explain to people what I do,” says Gill, a petite and personable woman with a ready smile and a gentle air. “Their mind goes to all sorts of places. The common joke I get is, ‘Does that mean you get to sample the alcohol?’”

In case you’re wondering, the answer to that question is no. Gill’s job is to ensure that the licensed establishments in the City of Surrey are operating in compliance with the Liquor Control and Licensing Act and within the limits of their licence.

Sitting in the Guildford Station Pub in Surrey, sipping a cup of coffee, Gill outlines the scope of her job.

“Most of what we call routine inspections are unannounced,” she says. “When we’re doing field work, we’ll go out and visit a variety of establishments. Some are more appropriately visited during daytime hours, meaning smaller restaurants that might not even be open later. Others we would visit later in the evening. A lot of nightclubs don’t open till seven or eight at night.”

Gill looks for three main things: whether minors are being served or allowed into nightclubs, whether intoxicated patrons are being served more drinks and whether serving staff are properly certified. In addition, she might take samples from the bar in response to complaints of
“watered-down drinks” or do a head count of a club to check for overcrowding.

Generally, Gill, who’s been doing the job for seven years, will make her presence known to the licensees, most of whom recognize her by now. Sometimes she’ll partner with RCMP to do a thorough investigation of a place, and on occasion she’s gone undercover in another inspector’s area to suss things out.

“It gives you a different perspective on what’s really happening in an establishment,” she notes.
Gill admits that, growing up in Squamish, “I did not have a lot of exposure to nightclubs or that type of environment.” But today she and her probation-officer husband joke that when their two kids, aged seven and five,

hit their teens, “there’s not too much they’ll be able to get away with.”