What jobs/roles/positions where there in a medival alehouse? What was it like to be a patron/customer at one?

by demonofsarila

I'm most interested in England around 1300-1500, but I totally welcome any comments about any place or time close-ish to that. My understanding from the sources I have is that taverns were wine-serving establishments for the better to do, while alehouses were for the lower classes, served ale, sometimes served cheap food, and were rowdier. If I'm wrong about that, I'm sorry.

I've worked multiple jobs in modern restaurants, and I know how they work. I'm trying to do creative writing about a fictitious character working in an alehouse, but I don't know how things worked in alehouses.

I'd like to know what sort of dirty/difficult tasks would be given to the lowest person on the totem pole (the "lowly cabin boy" if you will, someone who's no better off than a serf), and what title would be given to that person. But also what sort of other people would work there that they would need to interact with.

For example, in a modern restaurant, you are greeted by a host/hostess. They seat you at a table with menus and silverware. A server (waiter/waitress) comes to your table, gets you drinks, and takes your order. If the restaurant is busy a food-runner brings the food to the table on plates using a tray (food-runners are servers but they don't have a section of tables that night). You eat, you pay at the table, and here in the US you (generally speaking) leave a tip. Bussers and servers take away the dirty dishes, and they are washed by the dish room staff.

I know they didn't really have forks back then and often used hard pieces of bread as plates, but that's about it. Some specific things I'm interested in: (if any of these fall under "well it varied a lot" do you have any ideas why it did? Totally ok if you don't.)

Did they have servers? I'm guessing maybe no. Even if they did, I've read that tipping isn't old enough and didn't work the same when it started out (modern servers live on their tips, so they want more shifts and more tables all the time to earn enough money to pay bills).
Would the only dishes be the ones from cooking? So would they wait until the end of the night to wash them?
Was there a dedicated cook? I mean, was enough food ordered for there to be at least one person who spends the who evening/shift just preparing food? What about prep cooks?
Did the concept of hourly pay even exist back then? What about weekly pay?
Did alehouses have a bar counter? I mean a modern one is designed to help the bartender mix up various drinks, and I've never come across anything to do with mixed drinks in medieval alehouses. Did the term bartender even appear back then? Is there an equivalent? I mean yes "alehouses served ale", but how did customers go about ordering/getting said ale?
Some secondary/tertiary sources say alewife was any woman who made ale (even just for herself/her family), and others say an alewife was the owner of an alehouse. Is there anyone with primary source knowledge about how the term was used?
Did people bring their own mugs/tankards, or is that just a myth? What about spoons and knives?

If they were just like modern bars, can you please elaborate? While one restaurant I've worked at had a bar section, I've only been to about 1 modern bar, and it was all loud music, sticky floors, and light effects. Ok sticky floors I could see being a thing in medieval times, but there weren't DJ booths.

Going one question at a time:

They had "servers" in the sense that they had people who worked many jobs, one of which included bringing food and drinks to people at tables. These people (often someone like the proprietor's wife or daughter) would also cook, clean, and handle other general upkeep tasks.
Not all taverns served food. When cooking was done in this time period, it was typically a pot/cauldron of stew or roasting on a spit. While you did have the stale bread trencher, there were also wooden ones that could be cleaned and reused. You could expect whatever food you got (if the tavern even had any) to be served on a wooden trencher or bowl; if it was just bread or cheese, not even that.
Tavern staffs were very small compared to a modern restaurant, just the bare minimum. It was often a family business, maybe with one or two people hired for help. Everyone would help with cooking, cleaning, and serving whenever necessary.
Pay for any job was generally calculated per day or per job completed. This doesn't necessarily mean that you got handed coins right as you left, especially if you were working somewhere that was spending too much money to pay you reliably. But since taverns were often a family business, the money would just go right into the coffers.
In medieval periods, there would be benches and tables. When you sat down and asked for a drink, they would draw it from a cask into a tankard (often made from stiff leather, sometimes from wood) and walk it over. Distilled liquor as a recreational item was still in its infancy and rather expensive, so you were unlikely to find it in an average citizen's watering hole, and mixed drinks were a very primitive form usually involving watering them down and adding botanicals and other flavorings. Again, this is all for either medicinal purposes (think bitters) or the wealthy.
Alewives were women who made ale. The confusion likely stems from tavern and inn-owning families where they brewed their own beer, as the alewife would be the wife of the tavern owner.
I've never heard about anyone bringing their own mugs, but in many societies it was common to carry a small knife on you. In the rare case where you were served food that actually needed cutting you would likely be doing it yourself, but this was the pre-fork era so food was usually eaten with the hands or a spoon.