Ok, it's my time to buy the drinks this Thursday and given how many people are going to come, I need to allocate £400. My only concern is how you go about making sure the bar staff don't add a few extra pints on every time someone goes up to the bar with the tab?
I am sure this must go on, as if you have 20 people and the tab is being used by people to buy 2-4 pints at a time, there is no way you can keep track of how many pints have actually been ordered.
Trust. It's a wonderful thing.
I used to work in bars and it never happened. Change bars.
Trust.
What's the worst that can happen?
Maybe you should stand at the bar all night with a check list....
Or have a few beers and relax!
That's 100 drinks!!! Damn.
Your leaving drinks and you're expected to stump up £400 or so for others?
Stuff 'em! Go and buy some new wheels or something nice instead.
[b]Your[/b] leaving drinks and you're expected to stump up £400 or so for others?
😯
Did I read it wrong?
I'll have a double XO and a bag of tyrrells please. Best of luck with new job 'n' all that. 🙂
Don't get me wrong. I have done lots of thinking about what I could buy with the money. Thing is, the city is quite small and those who attend leaving drinks and then bail out where their time comes to buy certainly gets noticed by everyone.
Given how many free beers I have had over the last 10 years it's only right to stump up. Maybe, like others have posted, I just need to be a little more trusting.
Big leaving bar tabs where I work, I still don't get why the leavers buy the drinks.
No, you read it correctly, CFH.
Could be construed as 'you are leaving drinks' but I don't think that's what the op meant.
Print out some beer tokens.
Get a daft picture of you on one side with a big £4 on it and maybe an amusing quote attributed to you in the workplace printed in a fancy script along the note.
Print 100 and dish them out to the guests when they arrive
Ferociously sit at the bar and count every drink that comes over and tick it off on your spreadsheet. Examine pre/post wine bottle levels, draw marker pen marks on every spirit bottle "on the back shelf" and count the number of glasses used.
I would expect graphs/statistics and some decent KPI's accumulated into a presentation at the end of the night, to all that either stayed around or are slumped on the Pub floor, or toilet.
Then put a claim in on expenses.
Don't thank me 😆
Or..
Just have a word with the Barman and shuv £30 in his pocket before the night gets underway with a little word on keeping an eye on "the Fat one from Accounts" who tends to drink too much..
😉
The beer tokens idea is a great one! I am surprised no pub has done that.
Given the circumstances, I am going to go with this one.
"Just have a word with the Barman and shuv £30 in his pocket before the night gets underway with a little word on keeping an eye on "the Fat one from Accounts" who tends to drink too much.."
I still keep thinking that I could nearly buy that Stages power crank with the cash 🙁
Have a word with the bar manager the day before tell him you would like to set up a tab with a limit of £400 or whatever, if they know who you are they are less likely to try and cheat you ( although I think you are being a bit paranoid ) get him to send you a recite for the tab with the drinks on it a few days later ( if you want one ) at the least it will it will cap your expenditure. After the £400 i doubt very much anyone will mind paying if they want more drinks.
This must be a southern thing ? the bar staff stealing drinks would not even enter my head ( well until now )
EDIT Bike Boy's idea is better
What's rather amusing is that there are a couple of long timers at the firm who suffer with aroundaphobia. In all my years at the firm they have never once bought a round. Cringing to watch them sink 4 pints and then when it's their turn they make up a lame excuse and head for the door.
I've done similar with work do's, turn up during the week, stick X amount behind the bar and when it's gone, it's gone, leave the managing of the tab to the bar staff after that.
Sounds like a crap system. What's wrong with a kitty?
Did I read it wrong?
Ah bollocks! 😳
Best bet is to put a cap on the tab and let the bar and everyone know.
Then accept that you will spend £400 and enjoy yourself, if the bar staff add a few pints then so what.
I'm still stuck at why are you buying them all drinks??? You're leaving, right?
Rachel
just because city folk are ruthlessly out for themselves, doesn't mean everyone else is.
Phone in sick.
Invite everyone out, and then sit outside the pub with a couple of big bottles of White Lightning and some paper cups.
Or do what someone at my wife's work did. Invite lots of folk on a drinks and curry night to celebrate her leaving. Then ask those who were coming for £25 each to cover it. Guess how many turned up? Two.
There was me thinking you were having a beer and worried about leaving it on a table and someone slipping a tab of e into it...
Pay for leaving drinks? Surely everyone should be buying you a drink?
FWIW in Spain the person leaving buys the drinks. Fortunately beer is very cheap here 🙂
And I've always trusted the barman, it's usually somewhere close to the office and they're not going to risk repeat business for a couple of free pints.
Don't forget pudding tokens.
WHAT NO PUDDING?
Everywhere I've been the leaving person buys the drinks, normally as they're off to a better (paying) job. Obviously you wouldn't celebrate redundancies in quite the same manner...
In Oz the tradition at work for birthdays seems to be the birthday person brings cakes in. Then you get people turning up you don't know, taking cake then ****ing off.
That's Australians for you.
I've never worked anywhere that a leaver paid for other's drinks. Never even heard of this happening.
Where in the UK is this happening?
"Happy to buy drinks for people I can afford to spend £400 (assume they could afford the drinks themselves) - peasants who work there might steal some of this disposable/available cash though" ... seems like an odd sentiment to me.
For reference I was once asked to do this in a bar I worked in, i.e. adding extra drinks onto big rounds, I declined and luckily was only there for a few weeks so didn't have to tolerate the tool who asked me to do it for long. Bar Risa, Watford should anyone be concerned that they were once robbed there, if you were, it wasn't me!
Where in the UK is this happening?
Places where people have enough money to pay for everyone else's drinks (or that don't employ many people and have a lot of leavers) without it leaving them unable to pay the bills.
So London.
Yeah, thought so.
Have a word with the landlord beforehand, put £20 his way, and stand at the bar with a beady-eye befitting a matriarch with her eye on naughty children.
Being London, it will only last an hour anyhow.
Places where people have enough money to pay for everyone else's drinks (or that don't employ many people and have a lot of leavers) without it leaving them unable to pay the bills.So London.
Somewhere where people don't trust anyone.
So London.
ive worked in the city, if it was my birthday, my leaving, my baby's head wetting.. i would be expected to invite everyone to the pub and pick up the tab. there was quite often someone else celebrating something on the same day so you could go halfs but yeah, quite often had £200 bar bills - on a lunchtime! but as already mentioned, you would pretty much drink for free the rest of the year because it would be someone elses turn!
Quite glad I don't live/work in that londonsville sounds like they have all got it arse about face.
Everywhere I have ever worked then left the drinks have been bought for me, personally I'd buy them a couple of bottles of whitelightning and a party pack of straw's and leave them to it.
I'm betting this practice started with s****y city trader-types and has now become the fashion down there for everyone.
London is a very, very odd place.
I'm betting this practice started with s****y city trader-types and has now become the fashion down there for everyone.London is a very, very odd place.
That's old hat down here in that London, now it's about buying bottles of champagne but only pouring a glass and leaving the rest to go flat.
£400/is nothing when beers are £5+, wine £7+, doubles 8/9+ etc a pop.
I think that London and the City are two very different beasts. I have not been to leaving drinks where the leaver has to pay.
Kinda stops anyone tight from leaving.
I don't think I'd ever leave. 😆
if you set the tab lower, then the wnkers will leave faster
anyone arriving late who you know and want to buy a drink for, you ask them when you see them
'Mrs Smith' is having her leaving drinks tomorrow. 3x nat ave wage/London ad agency/creative types (one of STW's many piss boiling targets along with immigrants/dole scrounges/estate agents/bankers etc)
But it's everyone buying their own or small rounds depending on who is ready for a drink. So I conclude from one anecdote and a bit of hearsay that it's the grim north with the peculiar work drinks practice not the braying obnoxious fake cockneys and their abundant wealth.
I would imagine most people just buy a round and the huge bar tab is a thing for city traders which despite internet rumours do not make up a significant proportion of the 9million people who live in the capital.
The smart thing to do would be late for your leaving do and have to leave after an hour for family/dog/train/any excuse and then arrange a drink with the handful of people from work that you have any respect for/things in common with at a later date once you have actually left the company.
whitelightning
Arrgh beaten to it!
trust.
if i was lining up to pay a £400 bar tab, i would be expecting to buy the staff a drink or two each anyway.
put it in a restaurant and most people would think that a 10% service tip was acceptable - £40 (mentioned up front) in drinks will see to it that your tab is accurate.
if i was lining up to pay a £400 bar tab, i would be expecting to buy the staff a drink or two each anyway.
If I was lining up a £400 bar tab, I'd expect it to come with a free girl.
Seriously, maybe it's a North / South divide thing, but I think I'd be dodging that sort of leaving do whether I was the leaver or the free drinks scrounger. At best, I'd decline the tab and buy my own beer.
It might be different on London wages but that's a week's salary for me. To buy a load drinks for people who are acquaintances at best and mostly only ever talk to me when they want something fixing? Screw that, with knobs on.
were certainly not s****y city trader-types - just hairy arse engineers, well more polished arse engineers but you get the dirft. and theres no champagne and cocktails either, just London Pride!
were all contractors on a project by project merry-go-round and will all more than likely end up working with each other again at some point so you dont wanna get a reputation as a tightwad. shit sticks and can hold you back, any of these blokes could be a lead on the next one!
im suprised by the outcry tbh, like i said its one or two expensive days a year but the rest of the time someone else is paying! its a good system - if you like a beer anyway!
Nearly always found it to be "leavers treat" if you're off for a promotion/better opportunity and I'm nowhere near city boy wages.
Just seems obvious to buy the team you've worked with a meal/drink before you leave for greener fields, and as has been mentioned you'll probably end end working with them again some day in most professions - guess it's different if you're in the trades
were all contractors on a project by project merry-go-round
Ah, right. So it's probably a couple of hours' work to pay for it rather than a week's wages. Makes more sense. (-:
[i]were all contractors on a project by project merry-go-round and will all more than likely end up working with each other again at some point so you dont wanna get a reputation as a tightwad. shit sticks and can hold you back, any of these blokes could be a lead on the next one![/i]
Agree, plus you'll be expensing it anyway.
I've mostly worked for London based consultancies and often go out for drinks and there's always a tab Usually it's a manager or the client picking up it up but if its someone leaving then they do - though I was lucky once and a manager said he'd sort it. Have to watch people trying to put food on it though!
It's a cultural thing.