The Amateur Drinker

I like pubs. I make no bones about it, I like them a lot. I like country pubs with exposed beams and roaring fires, I like City pubs with their pin-striped clientele,  I like "the local" with its cast of characters, I even like the slightly disreputable back street boozers you find in the East End. There are a few pubs I'd go out of my way to avoid, or at least not visit a second time, but generally there are more I like than I don't like. As far as I am concerned, I'd much rather go to a pub for a swift half than drink at home. Except at this time of year.

From the middle of December until New Year's Day the pub becomes something of a no-go area for me and there are two reasons for this. One is down to the pubs and publicans and the other is to do with the customers, or a particular subset of customers. My gripe with pubs and the publicans is (or was, I've not been to a pub on Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve for over a decade so things may well have changed) the way in which the entry policy suddenly changes because it is the festive season. There you are, popping out for a drink with friends on one of these occasions and suddenly the pub has bouncers who won't admit you unless you have a ticket. As I say, I may well be completely out of touch on this, but it was a common policy years ago that for Christmas Eve (lunchtime and evening) and for New Year's Eve you may be required to purchase a ticket in advance to gain entry. This ticket would sometimes include a "free" drink and perhaps a charitable donation as part of the price, but while it probably helped publicans manage the number of people in their establishment, it played havoc with the arrangements of their customers.

One Christmas, it must be about twenty-five years ago I was a regular Friday night patron, along with a few friends,  of The Ship in Gidea Park. As the holiday season approached we asked the publican if he was issuing tickets for Christmas Eve and he said that he wasn't. When I arrived on that evening I found my entrance barred, "Ticket only," said the guy on the door. Apparently the publican had done a U-turn a couple of days before Christmas and decided to issue tickets. This being before the widespread use of mobile phones, I had no idea where any of my friends were. I hung around for a while, saw no one I knew and ended up back at home in front of the television. Not a happy experience. But more annoying yet is the sort of pub goer that appears largely at Christmas (although they can be spotted at other times of the year), the blasted nuisance that is The Amateur Drinker.

The Ship, Gidea Park

The Amateur Drinker is totally ignorant of pub etiquette and completely oblivious to the annoyance that they cause to other drinkers and bar staff. These are the people who cause the regular pub goer to have to wait, seething quietly, an extra ten minutes to get served, these are the people who cannot understand that although there is no visible queue, there is an order in which people expect to be served. The best bar staff in the best pubs know exactly what order customers got to the bar in, if they err sometimes the etiquette among regular pub goers is to defer to the person who was actually first. A pub I frequented when I worked at Midland Bank in Threadneedle Street was The Cock and Woolpack, a tiny but extremely popular place where the bar staff were renowned for serving more than one person at a time and, would verbally, or sometimes merely with a nod of the head, indicate the order in which they would serve their waiting and thirsty patrons. No anxious waiting to see whose eye one could catch behind the bar there. The Amateur Drinker has no concept of this.

The Cock and Woolpack. The entrance to what was Midland Bank is immediately to the left (very convenient!)

Like birds of a feather, Amateur Drinkers flock together, although occasionally they may have a seasoned drinker in tow, who unless they have been able to take charge of the group, will be cowering in embarrassment as far from the bar as is possible while still remaining on the premises. Having attracted the attention of a member of the bar staff, the lead Amateur Drinker will, having first finished whatever hilarious anecdote they were relating, turn to the group and ask, "Right, what is everyone having?" Several minutes of negotiation now take place while the group decide on what they are all drinking and the barman or barmaid smiles and inwardly sighs and the waiting drinkers wonder whether they might be better off going down the road. It amazes me that this happens, after all the lead Amateur at least knows what they want (or one hopes they do), so why not order that while everyone else decides what they want? Better yet, why not spend the time they were waiting to be served to determine their order? The Amateur Drinker also has a tendency to attempt to order drinks that are not normally served in many pubs. Tea and coffee are popular choices for the Amateur (although in fairness, many pubs do serve these beverages nowadays), along with more obscure drinks like Cranberry juice or Diet Ginger Beer. It is perhaps inevitable that after the Diet Cokes, half of lager shandies and J2O's have been ordered that the last drink to be requested will be a pint of Guinness. Anyone doing this deserves all of the opprobrium that can be heaped upon them.

Order it last and you WILL get the pint on the left.

Having completed their order, the Amateur Drinker must now pay for the round. Buying in rounds is an alien concept to the Amateur Drinker, so when the barman says, "That's £24.78 please," the Amateur turns to his (or her) friends and says, "Shall we have a whip then?" Cue much scrabbling for purses and wallets.  £10 or £20 notes are proffered, except by Geoff from Accounts who has come out without any cash ("Can I pay by card?") and Donna from Reception, who is only drinking Coke and wants to pay for her own. The transaction, which ought to have taken just a few moments, now appears to be entering its second hour. Alternatives to the terror of the whip are the resolve of everyone in the group to pay for the whole round, "No, no, I insist. You can get the next one," they all parrot, thus extending the time it takes to complete their drinks order still further.  Most terrible of all is the insistence of some, or all, of the party to pay for their drinks individually, "How much was the Goji Berry Juice? And the Coke?" To make matters worse, the Amateur Drinker actually believes that by paying with a £20 note and assorted change to the value of £4.78 (which takes ages to count and sort) they are in some way speeding up the transaction by saving the barman from giving them 22p change from a twenty and a fiver.

 

"I've got the odd £4.78 if that helps?"

Because the round is such a difficult concept for the Amateur Drinker to grasp, another tactic is for the group to not only pay individually, but order individually too. Thus the lead Amateur Drinker will order their drink, pay and then defer to Amateur Drinker Number Two, who orders, pays and then passes the by now suicidal barman on to Amateur Drinker Number Three. At this point the regular customers begin to lose the will to live and wonder if it's worth trying that dodgy pub on the High Street, the one that has just re-opened after the drugs bust.

About now, with luck, the Amateur Drinkers  will go into hibernation. Once that happens it is safe to go back to the pub. Cheers!