[Drinking] What is your preferred way of ordering drinks in a pub/bar?

[Herr Tubthumper]

Love Spoons app for table ordering, especially at an airport when travelling alone. No need to lose your table or leave your luggage, and in my experience the order always arrives in double quick time.

I guess they’re under extreme pressure to get it to you very quickly due to the imminent sell-buy-date?

 

[Albion my Albion]

we're talking about 10-15 years ago here

Talk about Dark Ages (2009), you might as well as wrote letters to your relatives.

 

[Sid and the Sharknados]

I thought the table service offered by pubs in the post-lockdown period of the pandemic worked particularly well. None of the usual johnny foreigner table service nonsense of trying to catch the waiting staff's eye, both to order and to pay. They were on it, like they'd been doing it all their working lives.

Love Spoons app for table ordering, especially at an airport when travelling alone. No need to lose your table or leave your luggage, and in my experience the order always arrives in double quick time.

Hate Spoons when day-trippers unilaterally decide to form a queue. Invariably the queue breaks down into shambolic queueing at both ends of the queue and an ill-tempered fracas ensues

A friend of mine always uses the pub app wherever it's an option. This drives me up the wall because apart from Spoons they almost never work, and when they do it invariably turns out that whatever she's ordered isn't available and she needs to spend another ten minutes faffing about trying to work out what she wants instead.

I get it in an airport pub or something like that where you want to grab a table and keep it. Early Saturday afternoon when there's about 3 other people in the pub, no.

 

[el punal]

How would you choose to do it?

Get someone else to pay!

 

[HeaviestTed]

I’m in the scrum camp but I really let myself down the other day - it seems I was in the “scrum” first time in ages and I was on my phone and some guy pushed past and jumped in - I was equal parts, annoyed/impressed/frustrated.

A bit of a wake up call tbh, I won’t be doing that again!

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

I think that anyone who orders a drink by saying “Can I get a …….” should be sent, un-served, straight to the back of the scrum. But I’m old.

The answer to that particular question is 'no, you are not allowed this side of the bar'.

And if you're feeling a little bit 'Ange', you can shoe-horn a 'mate' in there somewhere.

 

[Bozza]

Single file queue is becoming more common I've read. I haven't seen it myself but the way the UK is heading it wouldn't surprise me

Yeah, that's what prompted me to post this thread/poll.

On yesterday morning's 5Live breakfast show, Chris Warburton mentioned he's been in a theatre in the Manchester area, went to the bar during the interval, and was surprised to find people in a single-file queue.

 

[Bozza]

Is this a snide Wetherspoons 2 thread, getting people to reveal where they really drink?

I guessing if it doesn’t work the next poll with be, “Walking to the Toilet, how far is too far”?

Not at all, no. As above it was prompted by a discussion on 5Live.

Spoons isn't a place I seem to spend a lot of time - not for any particular reason (and certainly not snobbery). I'm not sure I knew about their ordering system. My last visit was probably for one of our Europa League adventures and I was too excited to know how we ordered!

 

[Paulie Gualtieri]

Not at all, no. As above it was prompted by a discussion on 5Live.

Spoons isn't a place I seem to spend a lot of time - not for any particular reason (and certainly not snobbery). I'm not sure I knew about their ordering system. My last visit was probably for one of our Europa League adventures and I was too excited to know how we ordered!

I may have not been entirely serious in my reply, apologies!

 

[BBassic]

Yeah, that's what prompted me to post this thread/poll.

On yesterday morning's 5Live breakfast show, Chris Warburton mentioned he's been in a theatre in the Manchester area, went to the bar during the interval, and was surprised to find people in a single-file queue.

Theatres do tend to be single file queue affairs in my experience. Usually because the bar is tiny and there's one person serving so a scrum would be chaos.

 

[Oh_aye]

How would you choose to do it?

If I'm waiting at a bar for longer than a minute and a half then I'm finding another pub.

 

[BN9 BHA]

 

[SkirlieWirlie]

Scrum at the bar. It's still a queue, good bar staff will mentally note the order of the queue. Us customers will also mentally note the order of the queue & if the staff get it wrong,, will point out the person that was before us should be served first. Especially if someone further back of the imaginary queue has tried to push in front. That's when we do the eye contact with the staff & gently nod towards the people that were actually next in he queue.
QR code & table for Spoons.

Yep, used to be be a skill / part of the job for the bar staff to keep tabs on who's next. Dislike pubs where the staff take no responsibility, in reality know and either serve who's nearest them or push it onto the customers to sort out and generally good manners and courtesy are less prevalent than they used to be.

 

[Auckland seagull]

As an old git nowadays I am generally in favour of the slow stroll to the kitchen to fetch a tin of Hazy. On the rare occasions I return to real pub action it is generally very polite and no sharpened elbows here in New Zealand. We colonists taught them the art of queuing well. My pet hate is using a card to buy my beer - cash is virtually extinct here.

 

[Gazwag]

I think a lot of time at the Amex concourses could be saved if they adopted the same principal as in the shop and it would also make it far easier to walk through the concourses without the 40 deep queues spanning the entire width

 

[BN9 BHA]

Pubs ask: Can someone tell Gen Z how to order a pint?

Pubs across the UK are putting up signs instructing customers not to queue, with some saying young people are main culprits

www.telegraph.co.uk

 

[el punal]

I’m in the scrum camp but I really let myself down the other day - it seems I was in the “scrum” first time in ages and I was on my phone and some guy pushed past and jumped in - I was equal parts, annoyed/impressed/frustrated.

A bit of a wake up call tbh, I won’t be doing that again!

Snooze, you lose!

 

[ROSM]

Yep, used to be be a skill / part of the job for the bar staff to keep tabs on who's next. Dislike pubs where the staff take no responsibility, in reality know and either serve who's nearest them or push it onto the customers to sort out and generally good manners and courtesy are less prevalent than they used to be.

In my bar stints, this was what set apart the best from the rest. And on the rare occasions you weren't sure you would look at 2 people and say 'who's next' and see who answered less uncomfortably.

Waving 20 pound notes didn't get you any further up the list than you deserved. Serving the beautiful lady ahead of her turn, whilst understandable, was still not de rigeur

 

[jackanada]

The he scrum at the bar can be infuriating when some barsteward has decided you don't fit and ignores you.
Though once I felt I recognized the barmans face and he studiously kept away from coming close to serving me and it was only on my final stagger home I placed him as the little shit I had removed from a night club after catching him stealing my drink some months earlier.
That said the scrum does enable you to witness some superhuman feats.
I still marvel at bumping into family friend the late MaeMae at an event. The scrum at the bar was a dozen rows deep. I'll get these she said and her short and very stout figure disappeared into the throng and returned with drinks in seemingly less time than could be accomplished in an empty room with a very attentive barman.

 

[clapham_gull]

Table service in pubs should be against the law.

I was recently in a pub in Formby and was told you couldn't order from the bar.

25 minute wait for a pint.