Lessons In Eating Out — Please Start a Tab

Here’s a situation that is almost universally familiar: You’re at a busy bar, it’s a weekend night. This isn’t a chat with the bartender situation — he, she, or they, are running back and forth, taking orders and firing up drinks. You jostle your way to the bar, place your order, and receive your drinks. The bartender asks you — “would you like to start a tab?”

I think George W. Bush, in his memoir, called moments like these “Decision Points”.

You either start a tab, give them your card and ask to close it out, or give him them and ask to close it out. If you choose the latter two, it should only be because you are truly leaving after that round. Because if you approach that bar one more, jostling through the crowd again, to order another round? The bartender is going to smile and give it to you. But in his mind he’ll be fantasizing about grabbing the back of your head and slamming your stupid face right off the bar. Because you are a time-wasting-piece-of-shit. The good news though? You don’t have to be! Simply start a tab.

Guests who want to close out after each round on a busy night are among the most annoying that bartenders encounter, and the reason is simple. It’s a time suck. These Bartenders are people trapped in what after a while feels like a cage, with a thousand faces staring at them. They can’t possibly get to each one fast enough, and that’s without factoring the thirty seconds it takes to run your card for $5.50 after each your rail vodka sodas. To be clear, this isn’t even about their bottom line. This isn’t about turning guests to build up that sweet sweet tip money. This is about the crippling anxiety of not being able to get back ahead of service, when you know that each customer across from you is growing more and more impatient by the second. And when they are in that mode, that zone — the dreaded weeds — every single second is felt like a blow.

So when you unthinkingly ask to “just close it out”, you can bet that while his back is turned to you that bartender is likely saying shit under his breath that is too harsh to even qualify as fighting words in the street outside — he’s not gonna be thinking abou about your stupid shirt, he’s coming at your fucking soul.

There’s a good chance you may read this and think to yourself that bartenders need to shut the fuck up or find another job, and the point is a fair one. But remember two things. First, if you are in the situation i’m describing, there’s a good chance that bartender’s (straight cash) haul when the night is over would make feel a cold, jealous pang deep down in your nether regions. The other is that their frustration truly isn’t framed as a stand-off with you — one guest — nor is it self-serving. Speaking from experience, it’s honest to god about the other guests more than anything. If you won’t just start a tab for the sake of your server, do it for the sake of your fellow revelers — every second spent closing you out four times in a night is another second of dry lips for them, which amounts to borderline criminal selfishness by you.