Bartenders. How often did someone buy a round for the house?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I used to go to a bar where it was fairly common. Particularly late r when there were 12 or so people around. Usually most were regulars, but Randos were included. But sometimes some dude would do it during the busy hours. Mostly it was some named girly shot on those occasions, but sometimes it was a standard round.

Some Round-Buyers were Luxury car salesmen from the local motor-mall who would by a round after a good day. One guy did it regularly, rich dude, but had a tendency to get drunk and obnoxious would buy a round when he came in the next day after a bad night as an apology. Bought one myself after a nice progressive hit at the casino. Cost me about $250 as I recall.

22

Thanks, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be ok.

mmm

23

I’ll be okay too. If I wanted to see it, all I’d have to do is stay at my tavern til closing time on a weeknight…

…when one of the regulars will yell “Laaaast Round!” and pay for it. Or, more commonly, the bartender will line up shot glasses on the bar and pour whatever he’s got a hankering for. Sometimes it’s a good Scotch, sometimes a novelty like Fireball.

Either way, I’ve heard (because I’d rather be tucked into bed with a good book by then) that it’s only a half-dozen old guys there by then. And don’t worry, most of us reg’lers can walk home (205 steps, for me).

24

Only time I’ve seen it done was in the 2010 World Cup. A crowd was watching Netherlands v Brazil at a bar in Buffalo, NY. When the Dutch won, one loud Dutch guy in an orange jersey stood up and shouted “Beer for everyone!”

I did not partake.

25

That’s called stumblin’ distance.

26

Well, okay, 205 steps in not-quite-the-right direction, fall on butt, 137 steps in right direction, lean on neighbor’s car, car alarm goes off, I say “Morning already?”, 32 quick steps to my door.

27

Yes, I saw plenty of round for the house drinks too when it had been whittled down to everyone who was actually friends plus maybe a couple of strangers. :smiley:

A whole pub full, though, if it’s all strangers, that’s something I never saw.

28

It only happened to me in one bar, but it happened there more than once. A salty dive bar in a fishing town. A mix of recreational guys out for the weekend and commercial guys who just got back from 10 days on the boat. Plus plenty of hard drinking locals and surly female bartenders who took absolutely no BS from drunk fishermen. A great bar with a good jukebox.

It was a small place; maybe 12 seats at the bar, and the drinks were cheap so buying a round wouldn’t break you. They put chips in front of you if you had your money on the bar. I can remember having more than one lined up for me at a time, sometimes I didn’t even know who bought it.

29

Rounds for the house are pretty common in our private social club. “The house” in most cases being 8 or so people when it happens. The person buying the round gets his for free.

30

As other posters have mentioned it depends on the bar but it happened every now and then at the end of the night when I was working. In these cases the folks around the bar were a mix of regulars and industry folks with the occasional random person sprinkled in. For end of night rounds I would just set up the shots on the rail and hand them out whenever the buyer (or shooter) was ready. If a round was bought during the middle of a shift then I would mark everyone sitting at the bar with a shot glass.

These rounds were usually shots of whiskey or tequila (Rumpleminze or Fernet for my industry people) but it was always shooter’s choice. If the buyer said “Jameo for everyone!!!” (or something else specific) then I would let the shooters pick anything that was the same price or cheaper.

Customers would also occasionally buy rounds if their non-local sports team did something awesome. Off the top of my head I can’t remember anyone doing this for a home sports team (e.g. a round for a Devils win in a NJ bar).

On the other side, I’ve been in a few situations where someone bought a round for everyone and it can be a pretty fun time since the buyer is usually in a great mood.

One year my roommate and I were watching the Super Bowl at a bar in Pittsburgh that I worked at. The bar was moderately filled but it wasn’t packed like it was for Steelers games. We were at the end of the bar talking to one of the regulars about squares and prop bets because all of his prop bets were hitting and the 1st quarter had barely started. He was way up when he left around halftime and when we went to close out later on we found out that he had paid the tabs for everyone sitting at the bar (through halftime).

The same roommate and I used to frequent a bar called the Squirrel Cage after our Friday afternoon classes. One early afternoon there were maybe two dozen people spread around the bar and booths when a regular walked in, cheerfully chatted folks up, and closed out by buying everyone a round (almost sounds like my former SWPA neighbor @kayaker). Our other friends showed up later and were jealous as soon as they saw the markers in front of us because free booze is always awesome in college :grin:

This isn’t quite what the OP is asking but I’ve also had regulars buy drinks for me and my coworkers when they run into us at other places around town.

31

32

I was an alternate on a bowling team at a local alley, small place, only 8 lanes. They had some little tokens for drinks and I managed to collect three different types, seen below (click to embiggen):

https://imgur.com/a/tGoLsfD

Obverse:
https://imgur.com/a/mdGLSNS

Note the change in area code which happened in 1996-7 so this Free Drink chip is at least 25 years old. I got these maybe 5 years ago so that earlier one has been kicking around a while. It’s interesting that I somehow came up with three different types since I’d say this isn’t a place I regular. I’ve probably only been there about a dozen visits.

A place I do frequent (well, I used to) uses Central European playing cards for the tokens. The cards are a little larger than what we get around here and, of course, didn’t have the usual suits and numbers and are very colorful and distinctive.

33

it wasn’t exactly around but ill tell ya about the greatest bar party I’ve ever been to:

Back in the late 80s and early 90s the greyhound bus company went through a protracted driver strike that became violent and between people sympathetic to the strike and scared people they were dying as a company by the time it ended Well they came up with the “Go anywhere one way for 90 bucks” as long as you booked the trip 30-60 days ahead of time and since the fam in Indiana wanted me to visit I took them up on the offer …

What they didn’t tell you is because of the strike they still had contracts with a lot of small interstate bus companies and there were a lot of stops on them … So you’d be on an actual grayhound from LA to Arizona and then you’d switch over to cactus interstate and stop every 150 miles or so then get back on a greyhound until the next place that had a contract to run a route…

Well I’d gotten to about the middle of texas which was cattle and oil country and it was pouring and we stopped at a place we were supposed to switch over buses at and it was a combo of a bus stop /bar and grill and corner grocery store the grocery/ store was a glorified 7/11 type of place but the other part was pretty big and was being hurriedly decorated for a party The bus stop part was a ticket desk and a few benches inside and some chairs out on the porch …

Well, we were waiting for the bus to come and the phone on the bus desk rang and parts of the route were flooded out and we weren’t leaving until around 10 the next day… and the desk lady called over the owner fo the whole thing who was directing the decorating and asked "well what will we do with them? " meaning the 15 of us who were stuck there he says "oh hell just add em in billy jo bob won’t care tonight "

They gave us lunch which was chicken salad fries and a coke and I remarked jokingly about greyhound being cheap and the waitress remarked "oh don’t worry you’ll be glad you didn’t eat a lot later tonight "

So I read a book and took a nap … Well about 3 o clock they started setting up buffet tables and at about 4:30 they were full of food And someone said oh must be dinner … It was sort of … People started milling in and since it was all locals and we were sitting off to the side until the owner whistled and explained we were stuck here as guests and to be hospitable … so so after introductions we were part of the crowd and everyone said we were lucky we got stuck here on this particular night as a celebration was happening

But everyone kept talking about “billy jo bob” with deference and respect … finally I said with all respect who the hell is billy jo bob around here? and someone said " you know all those cows and oil wells you’ve seen for the last hour in a half as the bus was coming in ? those are his family’s and most of the jobs in these parts are for those cows and oil and what isn’t cows and oil he either owns or is invested in … even the owner of the joint was a cousin of some type …

The aforementioned billy jo bob was celebrating his twice-a-year oil and cattle sales hence the party and everyone in an estimated 50 miles were invited …and boy did they show up … so we were having a good old time with games and such for the kids and I did get to meet William robert joseph the 4th
he actually preferred “billy or billy jo or billy joe bob” and if you’ve ever seen the owner of the station on news radio you knew what he looked like he talked to us “strangers” and come to find out he knew my area of the world as his family occasionally supplied the aerospace companies with the jet fuel they used

Well the family-friendly part ended about 7 and we thought the night was over …

Boy were we wrong …some of the people with kids and non drinking relatives came back they moved the tables for a dance floor and there was darts and cards ,pool and a band came in that played a mix of hispanic/american country music and they moved all the finished off food and put out bar snacks like nachos and such … and rolled in about 5 kegs of different beer…declared an open bar so booze of all kinds were consumed Noow the interesting thing was every so often the singer in the band would ring this alarm and they’d play gunshots and the wait staff would walk out with trrays of filled glasses of stuff to drink … one was rum and coke another was a single malt scotch I lost count at about 12 times … … funny thing is everyone was so blitzed by the end

funny thing was all the girls were endlessly fascinated about California and Chicago and asked us a ton of questions… and lets just say if you sitting at the right chair at the card table you could watch couples sneak off to the storage room in the back together … some with their so and sometimes someone else (one of the gossiping old ladies were pointing out who was with whom … (like the sports coach and the English teacher who supposedly didn’t get along)

… at some point they said last call and the host had them bring out 150 double shots of tequila … the place was wrecked…someone asked about cleaning and and was told a cleaning crew comes in on Sunday since they’re normally closed … by that time the rain was just a drizzle so we bus people found a place to pass out with a pillow if we weren’t all ready and woke up around 9 am most of us still drunk we were handed a take-home tray of breakfast stuff and stumbled on the bus the driver was pissed he missed the festivities and told us since some of were still under the weather as he put it … just sit near the restroom and sleep it off

one amusing tidbit I remember was the foreman of the cattle operation was giving a speech in which he apologized for all the times he called the boss a “yankee SOB amoung other insults that began with yankee” and people laughed boss accepted the apology but wasn’t asmused as everyone else

I asked him about it and the story goes : Apparently his parents eloped since neither side wanted them to married and they were cut off from the family and needed to get what would be the ranch going so they never had a honeymoon

Well when they finally made money and since she liked live theater he surprised her with a trip to NYC for a month and tickets to various plays bu tthen a while later they were going to postpone the trip because she was expecting … well even tho she was far along she knew once she had the baby she wasn’t gong anywhere for a while

So they went anyways about the middle of the month the baby decided he wanted out so she had the baby in a NYC hospital… but because “she was a hardy texas woman” she only needed a nap and left the same day… and resumed the trip so he spent the first 3 weeks or so of life in NYC and when people had problems well the afore mentioned prevacations against his lineage happened …

34

Way back in my programming days (Xenix) I was a developer for a company that did customized software for livestock auction yards. I want to say the number of Billy Jo Bobs I met while working on site doing customizations was surprising, but it really wasn’t. That kind of personality just seemed to be part of the culture.

35

Way back when I was single and a truck driver working for an agency, I was asked to cover at short notice for an urgent job.

There is a factory not far away that makes high-end boats. These things start at £100,000 and on up from there. The urgent job was a replacement part for one of their yachts that was stranded in a small port in the South of England.

It was early evening when I arrived and all the maintenance people had gone home so there was no one to unload me (the “part” weighed in at half a ton or so). It was a beautiful sunny evening and a party was in full swing on the yacht, with a good deal of attractive female flesh on display.

The crew boss, when I eventually tracked him down, told me that I would have to wait overnight and suggested that I help myself to the food and drink on offer. It’s a good job I didn’t have to drive anywhere the next morning as I would have been well over the limit.

36

Once upon a time there was a one-step-above-a-dive-bar in Providence “underlooking scenic I-95” where it was said you could get yourself a glass of any beer they had if you paid with a coin they’d never seen before, and a round for the bar if you paid with a banknote ditto - after a very short while the back-bar mirror was completely covered with a glorious collage of colorful foreign currency, and it was a miracle if anyone could come up with a fresh example. I think they even poured for the first joker who presented Monopoly bills…

37

Old joke:

A stranger walks into a bar, clearly upset, and tells the bartender, “Line up ten shot glasses and fill 'em with your best whiskey, would you? I have some terrible news.”

The bartender, mystified, does as he was asked. The stranger pounds down all ten whiskeys and wipes his mouth on his sleeve.

The bartender asks, “So what’s the terrible news?”

The man says, “I’m totally broke.”

38

The Excalibur Hotel, Las Vegas, circa 2009. I was at a bar where every stool had a table top video poker machine. Someone hit a royal flush ($2500) and bought a shot for everyone at the bar - about 6 of us.

That was the only time I ever saw that happen.

39

Bar in New Zealand when I was living there as a student.

Not a student bar, but we went there a fair amount. M - T closing time was 10:00 back in those days. One Thursday night, a friend and I were there at closing. 10:00 comes, and the bartender/owner goes and locks the doors and closes the blinds. Comes back and pours a beer for everyone (dozen of us left). We staggered out at 12:00, the first to leave.

I’m not sure if this was a regular occurrence or not.

40

In Pat Conroy’s novel The Great Santini, the rule at a Marine Corps base is that if an officer’s wife calls him after hours at the O Club, he has to buy a drink for everyone in the place. Lt. Col. “Bull” Meecham’s mischievous teenage daughter, knowing this, makes it a point to call her dad when he’s there and identify herself to the bartender who answered the phone as being Meecham’s wife. The colonel is not pleased.