Yeah, you're right about that, I have now found the bar. I didn't realize it just doesn't show up in the list at all unless you're there when it's open. Hadn't been many places at different times because I was still under the impression I was supposed to be working every day, since, you know, Boss tells you that, except... literally nothing changes if you miss a day (which the game forces you to do because of progress quest timing). Still can't work anywhere else yet, as far as I can tell.
I'm thinking part of the reason everything is so incredibly unintuitive to me is that at least half the things the NPCs tell you are lies. I think I'd understand better if they were lying 100% of the time rather than me having to try to figure out with almost no context whether they're lying or not.