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Years ago, when imposing a minimum credit card purchase was not allowed, I had the following exchange:
Me: I’d like to order a second beer.
Bartender: Sorry, we’ve already called last call.
Me: Okay, I’ll just close out my tab then. Here’s my credit card.
Bartender: You’ve only have the one beer, and we have a ten dollar minimum for credit card purchases.
Me: Cool, I’ll have that second beer then.
Bartender: But we’ve called last call.
Me: …. Me: Listen, you can pour me a second beer and I’ll meet your minimum. Or you can ring me up for the one I had. Your choice. The alternative is I just leave.They rang me up for one.
I think that can put them in an off spot legally, depending on their local liquor board. I understand the bartenders reluctance.
Not really. I’ve bartended (and managed bartenders) in this state for twenty years. The only binding thing is the 2am cutoff, and that means no one is allowed to have ANY alcohol at 2am. For that reason, most places call last call 15–30 minutes before 2. Nothing out of the norm there, but he absolutely could have sold me one more beer at 1:40 saying that it has to be finished by 1:59.
I would have rang you up with a tip.
Sure, if you cleared it with the customer first. Otherwise your just a thief and an asshole.
If you ask me it OP that was the asshole. The bartender was just doing his job and wanted to go home.
What exactly was I supposed to do? Both options were as a result of their self imposed limitations: the credit card minimum is allowed now, but back then it was explicitly prohibited. And while they called last call, it was still twenty minutes away from the 2am when the law prohibits more sales. (Calling last call 20-30 minutes prior to 2am is common, and I have no issue with that).
It seems very unlikely that the bartender had any input on that policy.
No doubt, at least on the minimum cc purchase thing. They were, however, choosing to not serve me a second beer 20 minutes before 2am. That was definitely a choice the bartender made.
I’m any case, I wasn’t rude about it.
This was years ago when things were cheaper and a beer was like five dollars. Obviously (because I’m in the US, I’m going to throw down a couple of bucks for a tip, but it still wouldn’t have met their minimum.
Aw fuck, I can’t believe you’ve done this.
Am I too European to understand this? This minimum shit is stupid and should be illegal
Credit card and Debit Card charge the merchant per transaction, so most places will have a minimum spend. but usually it is like $3 or something. Same with food bank donations, it has a low minimum because their transaction provider charges fees for handling the donations online
Nothing to do with being European. I see this occasionally at small businesses here in Austria, such as tobacco stores.
It was 15€ minimum for a long time in France, but now they’ve finally caught up.
? I encounter this in Europe regularly.
There are european countries that have made the practice illegal.
There are countries that said you should always, without extra costs, allow digital payment.
Funny enough, they bypassed cards then and went for things like payconiq, wero, apple pay, google wallet, … to bypass the costs of card readers hahaI’ve definitely encountered this in Germany recently.
Local companies in Germany also have a min.limit on card payments like EC?
They arent everywhere but they exist.… make it illegal and nothing in a store will be under $10 (or so).
You’re too illogical to understand it, apparently.
I think it is here too but people still do it.
They generally have to pay a fee per digital transaction, and I once saw it was 0.55€ for a transaction I did, so I can definitely understand that they don’t want to lose money on small purchases.
The alternative would be to require extra payment for digital transactions, or to increase prices for everyone (even more).
Shot glasses are usually pretty small and peanut m&ms are relatively large, $1 for what probably amounts to ~6 m&ms sounds like a rip off.
bars are a ripoff. $4 a drink during happy hour, for the cost of one good evening I can just buy a bottle and drink for a week.
$4? What year is this? 2005?
only during happy hour. The rest of the time the price is 2x or 3x, depending on which bar and what drink.
And they still expect you to tip on top of that.
You’re not paying for the booze, you’re paying for space and time in that spot. It’s so expensive to keep the doors open. All the licencing and insurance. Wages, rent. It all adds up so quickly. I worked at a modest sized place for a few years and got to know the business side of it. It was at least 7k a week through the till to break even.
Edit: to all the bar haters out there; find a spot without TVs or blaring music. You may be surprised by how nice it can be just chilling and having some drinks. So many bars are just sensory overload. A nice quiet drinking hole is worth its weight in gold.
Which is why young people aren’t drinking anymore. The space etc is simply not worth the prices.
No. It’s a deeper change than that. Young people also aren’t just grabbing some alcohol and hanging out at each other’s apartments/houses drinking, at least not as much as prior generations.
I mean, I don’t know if I’m part of the trend or not as someone in his mid 20s who rarely ever drinks, but many of my mates don’t drink at all, and when we hang out there’s little alcohol, we also tend to play online games etc a lot. Going to a bar sounds quite bothersome and unnecessary tbh. But I don’t know if I’m too old to be part of this trend.
In any case, I see little conceptual value in bars, at least to me. I can buy alcohol for stuff we do at home if I even want to drink (not often).
understanding why it sucks doesn’t make it suck any less.
I wish a bottle lasted me a whole week
fellow alcoholic, it’s an aspiration not a benchmark.
Buy olive oil.
Just a heads up, you should probably fix your title before someone makes a shota joke.
it’s almost been an hour… they shota fixed it by now
Shota, cota, wota
Ya drink the shota you futa bill.
Bars in general I just don’t get, like you want to be outside/in public, with people you don’t know, to buy food that’s double+ what it costs anywhere else, to have like 2oz shots and pretend to be ‘wasted’, the bathroom looks like a highway rest stop, they play bad music, you can watch people who can’t play pool get mad at other people who also can’t play pool…
Oh and places that claim to be ‘clubs’ and just give the illusion of being upscale and exclusive but it’s the same thing behind the veil. A ‘cover charge’ to receive nothing at all? You gotta be out of your mind. Running iTunes on a laptop does not make your music ‘curated’ by ‘DJ Drippin’. And if there’s a ‘dance floor’ it’s all horny stumbling people who think they can dance.
And then you get the bros that are like ‘getting blackout drunk and finding out you plowed 3 chicks is my definition of a great weekend’ like dude you blew $800 last night and there was a pool cue sticking out of your ass when you woke up. Explain how this is so great. ‘it just is bro, you just need to try it, experience it, bro’. Whatever you say, bro.
Everyone I know that wants to drink just hits up Walmart or Costco first, grabs food after, and goes home to chill with said food and liquor. Even when we were the target demographic, just… why.
I go to a bar whenever I’m in another city, easiest way to make quick acquaintances and get the vibe for the place. Heck, I’m drinking less now, so I’d get a non-alcoholic or a mocktail and still have a decent time. It’s not about drinking.
From this I feel like you are afraid to be in oublic because youightdrink too much and sodomise yourself with a pool cue.
You have said a lot about some very specific things that are not that indictative of real life.
This is just from my limited experience, + some friends stories. But lmao, I guess desperate times can call for desperate measures with the pool cue.
