Wells Adams has become a Bachelor Nation fan favorite over the years. After appearing as a contestant on The Bachelorette and Bachelor in Paradise, he took his talents behind the bar and continues to serve drinks to the thirsty beachgoers on the dating franchise’s tropical spinoff. Adams recently got candid about his opinion on the drink limit Bachelor in Paradise sets for its cast members, and while I can understand why he might think the rules are “a little silly,” I’m not buying his reasons for allowing contestants to get around them.
The Bachelor shows implemented a limit on cast members’ alcohol after controversy arose during filming of Bachelor in Paradise Season 4. Production was temporarily shut down in 2017 to investigate possible misconduct, after it was thought one cast member might have been too drunk to give consent. No wrongdoing was found to have taken place, but safeguards were established in hopes of preventing similar situations in the future. Wells Adams started his stint as BiP bartender that season, and he explained on the When Reality Hits With Jax and Taylor podcast why he thinks the rule does a “disservice” to the mingling singles. He said:
Well, it’s a little silly, and I totally understand it, that insurance-wise and just protecting Mickey Mouse, I understand it. But we’re in the business of trying to get these people engaged and eventually married, and I think it’s a huge disservice to not allow people to see everything about someone before we… encourage them to get engaged. One very, very big part of learning who someone is, is how they act when they’re fucked up.
Most reality shows of this sort — to my knowledge, at least — don’t have drink limits, and this is an interesting argument against them, to be sure.
Wells Adams said the guidelines have “changed a little bit” since initially enforced, but that the cast members are effectively limited to two drinks an hour. He also explained that they can’t order two drinks at the same time, and they can’t order a drink for someone else. However, that hasn’t stopped them from finding a way to bend the rules, Adams divulged:
But you can totally get around it. I do it by the hour, right? … What they’ll end up doing is they’ll be like, ‘What time is it?’ OK, it’s 4:56. ‘OK, let me get a shot.’ OK, doom. ‘OK, let me get a drink.’ Boom, OK. And then it’s 5:03. ‘Hey, let me get a shot,’ and you’re like, ‘Ah, you figured it out, buddy.’ You can get around it.
Wells Adams is in charge of denoting in a notebook how many drinks contestants have had in an hour, and it could be debated about how much the rules are being broken in the first place (because if you drink both your drinks at the beginning of the hour, then you just have to wait longer to get more).
However, it’s the bartender’s reasoning for being so blasé that seems ridiculous to me, as he told Jax Taylor and Brittany Cartwright:
It’s also so much pressure to put on me. Like, they’re not paying me enough to be the guy who decides who gets to have the drinks.
Wait, what? As the bartender, it seems like deciding who gets drinks is exactly what he’s being paid for. And with him joining the show the same season that the alcohol limit was implemented, I’m assuming he agreed to the guidelines when he signed the contract for whatever salary they offered him.
As for not getting paid enough, there are definitely times when that phrase applies, but I just can’t imagine this is one of them. It’s unknown how much Wells Adams makes as Bachelor in Paradise bartender, but a 2022 Cosmo article guessed it could be as high as $500,000 to $1 million a season. Even if that report is way off and he’s making a fraction of that, I'm sure he’s still doing better than possibly every other bartender out there.
This isn’t the first time Wells Adams has opened up about the struggles of his job. He talked about getting “so mad” at the Bachelor in Paradise contestants for leaving glasses around the beach, and said he encounters some who are “entitled” and “rude.” We’ll have to see if that continues to be an issue for him, as no announcement has been made regarding the future of Bachelor in Paradise after a decidedly unsuccessful ninth season and the announcement of a new spinoff, The Golden Bachelorette. Keep an eye on our 2024 TV schedule for the latest.
