As a bartender at Station 211, Johnny Lee doesn’t act much like Tom Cruise in “Cocktail,” and he doesn’t work with the easy-going decadence of the women of “Coyote Ugly.”

Lee, senior in ACES, is soft-spoken and methodical, moving briskly from one customer to the next without much animation. He is friendly, but he doesn’t smile more than he has to. He said bartending is “a perfect college job,” but it is far from a carefree one. Like most of the other bartenders and doormen on campus, Lee learned about the legal responsibility of his job from the Training for Intervention Procedures (TIPS) program, a six-hour course full of information that he said sticks with him every night he works.

“I’m always worrying about getting in trouble and over-serving people and asking for stamps,” Lee said. “If something happens after they leave, I’ll be responsible.”

It’s a message that the Champaign police have promoted to bar employees with greater intensity in the last few years, and the TIPS and the Bar Employee Security Training (BEST) Program are changing what it means to work in a bar on campus.

A few years ago, “Working was just like going out except you were sitting on the other side of the bar,” said Mike Lorenzen, the general manager of campustown bars Station 211, located at 211 E. Green St., and Gully’s, located at 306 E. Green St. “Now it’s not like that. There’s a lot more responsibility that comes with it.”

The majority of campus bars require their bartenders to attend TIPS training and doormen to attend TIPS and BEST training, but Lorenzen says some employees don’t get the training until they’ve been on the job for as much as six months to a year. Through role-playing, instructional videos and a certification test, both programs are designed to educate bar employees about the legal responsibility inherent in the job. TIPS has certified more than 1,400 local bar employees, and the students working at bars say it does give them a new appreciation for the duties of the job.

Bar employees in Champaign can be held liable for granting entrance to anyone under 19, serving alcohol to anyone under 21, or over-serving a customer to the point of dangerous intoxication, said Sgt. Scott Friedlein, the Liquor Enforcement Officer for the Champaign Police. They can also be held responsible for actions that customers engage in after they leave the bar. Friedlein cited a recent case in North Carolina in which a bartender was given a 20-year prison sentence for reckless homicide after a patron that she served drove drunk and killed a person. He also mentioned multiple incidents in Colorado in which college students died of alcohol poisoning in the last few months.

Yet the Achilles heel of the programs is that some employees still don’t take it seriously, even after the educational programs.

“You can tell the ones that are there just because they have to be there,” Friedlein said. “It comes back to how strongly they accept their role and responsibility.”

Lorenzen said he has reprimanded the staff for breaking rules on many occasions.

“Happens all the time,” he said. “More than you would think.”

That’s because many bar employees see little incentive behind the programs outside of general threats of prosecution, said Shai Lushi, the manager of technical assistance for the Marin Institute in California.

“There’s no motivation to actually follow the law,” she said. “People don’t think about what could come back and bite them if there’s a problem.”

Bartenders in Champaign are fined $280 and immediately fired if the police catch them serving a covert-an underage person sent by the police to test bartenders. If this happens, the bartender can never again work at a campus bar.

Lorenzen added that it is actually increased enforcement by the local police and fire departments, not education, that has altered the bar’s operations. “Until the beginning of this past semester, we were pretty lenient but then we started getting in trouble so we started taking (every I.D.) we believe is fake,” he said. “It’s not that we’ve increased security. We’ve just started following the rules.”

Lorenzen added that while he loves his job, the stress of ensuring his employees are responsible does get to him and the need to live up to the expectations of the police and the bar are always on his mind.

“If I go gray before I’m 30, that’s why.”

One of the major requirements bartenders are responsible for is checking hand stamps to ensure that the people buying alcohol are of age.

Stevie Korey, a bartender at Station 211, said he makes a strong effort to scan the bar for people who may need rides home, even paying for cabs out of his own pocket. But not all bartenders are this responsible, he said.

Because doormen have been harder on fake I.D.’s, business at Station 211 and Gully’s has gone down.

Friedlein estimated that about 350 fake I.D.’s have been confiscated since the beginning of the semester. Friedlin also said bars now pass compliance checks 90 percent of the time, and last year arrests for minors ages 19 to 20 in possession of alcohol and alcohol sales to minors ages 19 to 20 were at an all-time low.

Stricter enforcement is also hurting the bars financially. Lorenzen said that September was financially the worst September that Station 211 and Gully’s have ever had, and neither bar is crowded five nights a week like they once were. He estimated that Station 211 draws a large crowd at most four nights a week, and the number of nights Gully’s is crowded is three.

Lee has noticed a change, too. He said Tuesday nights were very crowded nights last year but have noticeably died down this semester.

“Last year, this bar was slammin’,” he said.

The bars used to also have issues with overcrowding. Lorenzen said that although Station 211’s capacity is 583, the employees counting the number of people to enter the bar would simply stop counting and there were as many as 1,000 people in the bar at once.

That doesn’t happen anymore now that the Champaign Fire Department has cracked down on capacity laws and Station 211 and Gully’s have received a number of tickets for capacity violations. If Station 211 receives another ticket, it will be shut down for a week or two, Lorenzen said.

The bars now subject their employees to random Breathalyzer tests to ensure that they are not drinking on the job. Lorenzen said the rules are just like those of any other occupation. “It’s not like you can show up to be a stockbroker and be drunk,” he said.

Despite the success of the TIPS and BEST programs, Friedlein said that better programs are possible but increasing effectiveness is extremely difficult. “If I could create a system to get bar employees to care about their jobs, I could probably make millions of dollars.”

Lee said he lets the rules take precedence over making money or doing favors for friends.

“That extra five dollars isn’t worth getting fired over,” he said. “There’s less money coming in, but it’s less for me to worry about.”