I saw somebody mention it on simsvip, but only noticed it in my game today (I haven't been frequenting bars a lot in game), but it appears there's something wrong with the bartenders. Not sure which patch broke them, but I think somewhere around the Nov - Dec patch. A few symptoms I noticed:
- They go to work in everyday clothes (this could be mod related since this doesn't happen when I took my mod folder out)
- They won't make drinks, resulting in a desperate mob of townies standing in front of the bar repeating their orders 1000 times.
When my active sim orders drinks, a Wait for Drink interaction forms in the main queue, then is automatically cancelled a few seconds later, for no reason???

Anyone else encountered this?

My bartenders also wear normal clothes too, they make their drinks just fine though.
Hmm... wonder which mod it would be.

I don't know what mod changed the clothes of the bartenders, mine still wear the black outfit/apron when they work the bar. They change when the replacement comes in to work. I do have the broken bartenders with the same actions messed up, as the OP described. To combat it, I have the debug enabler mod so I Shift+Click the bar and choose reset. That makes the sims jump back from the bar and start up over again. My sims were able to order drinks/food the whole time they are at the bar.

Sometimes the bartender thing works, but it will fail three out of four times. My forever question is how can it do that? *very confused*

My bartenders are all messed up too. Forget getting a drink. They tend bar in everything day clothes until 3:00 am then the new bartender comes in the bartender outfit( that is the time all sims change their clothes.)There is also a bug that when they travel they will arrive in outfit1, even though they are dressed in another outfit, even though the outfit that was planned for them to wear is grayed out and they still arrive in outfit 1. I took all mods out and still had the problems( didn't check if the bartenders are dress right). I notice the outfit problem after the Pool Patch, I noticed the Bartender problem after the patch that change the Lounge, allowing all to go, not just elders. Sims now do not switch outfits like before. If you notice they all will be wearing casual outfit 1all the time (the sims that you are not playing at that time). Unless it's a planned event or the gym. If you go into build mode in a bar/nightclub/lounge and save, then take your sim to the bar, etc it will work like it is suppose too, bartender dress right and serve drinks, sims that come into a nightclub on their own will be dressed in Partywear, etc. but once you leave it go back to being buggy.

*slowly bangs head against wall*
So... you have to go to the bar, save the bar, return to your sim's house, take him to the bar - and then it works?

Well, that may be a solution too. I had to go to all the community lots and set them as the appropriate venues, they were all generic when I replaced the buildings in a new save.

ETA: Sort of feels like some voodoo dance to make things work now. If we have to do a chant, I am SOL.

hahahahahaha. Dang. I was looking forward to hearing your voice.

My bartenders sometime work and sometimes don't. Sometimes they just disappear and I find them someplace chatting. One disappeared and I found him outside the bar doing push ups. Another was so slow that at one time a crowd of sims were standing around the bar with those little circles above their heads, I don't know what they're called in English, with a picture of the bartenders head in it, which I thought was funny. They seem to dress OK though, even when they're completely useless.

Yep, every time. lol. The only way I found out was I did a makeover on the Lounge. Then I tested it. This resets the lot but doesn't last. lol

Mine dress fine, but they don't complete drinks. Very annoying.

The bartenders were broken with the December 16th patch, this is very well known; it was widely reported already on the 16th-17th of December. Dozens and dozens and hundreds of players have reported this.

The uniform issue not only affects bartenders, but Librarians also. The librarian is supposed to wear the rose blouse and black skirt as her uniform, but sometimes now after that patch she will show up in her everyday outfit instead. So the work outfit problem is caused by some larger problem.

Lately my bartenders have not been working at all. Yesterday oddly one bartender at the lounge was working just fine and I had hope it was fixed in the latest patch. I was wrong. -.-'
At least now it is like applefeather2 said, it works, it fails, fails again, works.
Dtw is right, my sims are only wearing casual outfit 1 when I'm not playing them. In my game bartenders at public lots wear casual outfit. If I hire them for my parties they wear a uniform. And I just noticed that instead of a random NPCs the game now is placing some sims from my families to tend the bars for hours 'til they tired w/that pillow thought bubble. I don't like this, my sims don't need to make extra money(and actually in TS4 our sims don't earn a dime, it's not like TS3, is it?) in a random bar, they should be at home w/their families or improving their skill or being served at the bar. :P

I have had a great deal of success fixing the glitched bar staff by moving any contacting objects away from the bar. Any object, whose green placement footprint is making contact with the bar and/or its counter extensions, will glitch the bar staff. It's something of a route fail issue, I believe it's somehow connected with the introduction of the bb.moveobjects cheat. Bars are now overly sensitive to green footprint contact and the bar staff have route fails because of it. For instance, in one case it was curtains and a window's footprints touching the bar. Once removed the bar staff was back to working normally. In another case it was clutter on the bar, a bowl of fruit and an oak casks on the counter extensions. Once removed, bar staff back to normal. Another case it was the footprint of the overhead ceiling lamp. More than a coincidence that identifying and removing the contacting objects got the bar staff back to work.

It's true I tried to offer this workaround method over at the EA Help forums, and those few simmers who tried it said it did not work for them. But then I realized, they play strictly vanilla game as a means to eliminate true Maxis glitches, and they don't take too kindly if you go there advocating and advertising the saving use of mods on an EA Help forum. So, as my game is modded and it may well be why this workaround is doing the job for me, I backed out and left them to it. I only have mods from this site, so some modder here may already have half a fix to the bar staff problem and they don't even know it.

Edit: Further to this conundrum I have seen other reports it is simply down to the fact some bar staff are accidently generated with zero mixology skills so they cannot even serve drinks. I've certainly seen that happen in Sims 3. Build a bar in China and you know what I'm talking about. No bugger will work until you finally realize they have no mixology skills. Use a cheat to give them skills, then they get busy behind the bar as if they were born to it. I haven't been in game to try this in Sims 4, but I will be later today. Need the debug cheat to force mixology skills on them. Then again, I've got all my bars working again due to the first workaround I described, so I'll leave the second method for someone else to attempt and report.

This has been a feature since the beginning though, as I remember seeing Bob Pancake tending bar in my game when I first play it (before I eradicate his entire family to make space for my own sims, that is), and later a sim I'm playing with 6+ mixology skills. I'm fine with this since it's nice to see some familiar faces in community lot.

This might not be the case, imo. As I said before sometimes the game drags premade families into the bartender role, they all have some mixology points.

Sims I have played and worked on mixology levels do end up being the bartender in my worlds too.
ETA: I might use the debug enabler mod to check stats on those other sims I don't know about. If the levels are low I will give them more and see if they can work.

Yeah I think the bartenders are broken. When I sent my sim to order a drink today, he just stood there. They can give chips out, but not drinks?

oooh, this explains a lot.
I wrote a post over in the Receptacle about my experience with trialling the Sims 4. Apparently I was victim to this bug, and the bars weren't working properly.

Mind you, that doesn't change my decision not to spend money on it. If they can't get most of the really obvious and annoying bugs out of the way before giving out trials they deserve to have people think the game is poor.

Oh no....it's another Sims 3 repeat where EA "fixes" one part of the game but ends up breaking another. It's like they're trying to fix a cracked water pipe with a band aid and some chewing gum.
EA- "Fixed this one part!" *places band aid.*
Employee- "Uh, but the gum fell out over this part, boss."
EA- "Ah, it's fine! We'll just wait until the next patch."
Me- "Fix mah s*** right!"