In this threadgiving tips about travelling in the UK, three English (or at least UK) posters say that it’s common to offer the bartender a “tip” in the form of saying “and one [drink] for yourself” when ordering.
I lived in the UK for three years and visit regularly (for work and family reasons) but that hardly puts me in a position to contradict the locals, however, I am genuinely puzzled. I have spent a fair share of my time in the UK in pubs, always with UK friends and relatives, from whom I took my cues when ordering. Of course also, when ordering you are usually standing next to, and overhear, other people ordering. I literally never heard someone ordering say “… and one for yourself”. Not once.
I had always assumed that saying this was an old fashioned thing that only happened on quaint period piece English village type TV shows (where it is always a beautiful sunny day, every local is eccentric and there is an interesting murder every week). I suppose most of my pub time in the UK was in very busy, impersonal London pubs, but I spent a fair amount of time on weekends and holidays in villages away from London. Maybe this is more a tradition in locals where you know the bar staff well.
Not so much the English pubs, but my father used to work in a Kiwi pub, and this would be the tradition in the smaller “locals” where the barstaff would know and recognise the speaker.
Not common, as there is / was not a tipping culture - but it does happen. This would have been the early 90s that I am talking about
I worked in a bar in Glasgow in the mid 90s. People would occasionally say “and one for yourself”, most often the regulars. This was a city centre pub. Probably happened once or twice a week.
Convention was that you treated that remark as a tip of £1, since you weren’t actually allowed to have a drink while working.
I heard this on Saturday when I was in the pub (in Scotland).
It is a pub though where everyone knows each other and the bar staff well.
In fact, it’s the kind of place that when you are at the bar you will usually buy a drink for whoever else is standing beside you as well.
So it does happen but usually only ever with regulars.
I have done it, but usually only in my local (which isn’t actually near me but is the place I drink most regularly) where I know the bar staff, and usually at the end of the night as a thank you for them looking after us.
But when you say it happened “pretty regularly” do you mean once or twice a night? In the linked thread it was described as something that happens “all the time”: if that were true for you and you “never cashed out” you wouldn’t be able to stand up by the end of an evening.
Both my daughter and wife have worked in UK pubs, and would get tips in this way. It is not common (at about £3.50 a drink), my wife might have got 1 or 2 a week, my daughter gets more but works lots in busier student pubs and is rather pretty.
In general, there is a book behind the bar for recording drinks purchased for staff, and there is a rule that the purchase is below a certain value (so no buying expensive bottled ciders, sadly, or doubles).
These drinks can be used when in the bar off shift, or taken home as bottled drinks (and thus, we end up with a whole lot of Corona breeding in the cellar when our daughter is home for the holidays). They can’t cash them out, as this upsets the audit.
As a general rule, if there’s a visible tip jar, I tip a little (like, ~ 5% value) every round, but if there isn’t, then the barman gets “one for yourself” every 4th round or so. I expect this to be cashed out/ticked off in a pub, but at the Goth clubs, I generally find the guy will drink with you
I would say it is extremely rare outside small village pubs or cases where you are actually chatting to the bartender. I have done it (/seen it done) in those cases, but no more than a few times in my life. I’ve certainly never tipped in any other way (unless the drinks are on a tab and they have been bringing them over to the table, which is a very different situation).
I used to work in a hotel and would sometimes have to cover the bar. People would occasionally offer, but again, only if we had been chatting specifically and usually only the regulars. It didn’t really seem like a way of tipping me TBH, more like… it’s just awkward to drink alone while chatting to someone, it’s better if they’re drinking too.
it happens a lot in my local, I maybe hear it three or four times a visit. But then we mostly all know each other and the bar staff. Never once heard it outside of that sort of scenario though.
I try to do it any time I’m in a pub for a few hours - an evening, say, for whichever bartender has served me the most. Especially if it’s a busy place.
I had separate tabs open, one with this thread, and one with, “When did you know it was time to euthanize a pet?” I got them mixed up, so I thought I was looking at this thread about how the British tip their bartenders, and the first thing I read was this:
Good Lord, with that gloomy fate hanging over him, I’d buy the poor guy a drink.
1-2 a night on a weeknight, 2-5 on a regular night. I would not take every pint I admit, but I always had one for myself. I had a pretty high tolerance in those days, never had an issue (or at least never got bitched out for it).
This was in a small pub in Oxford, that did NOT have student traffic.
Again, as mentioned in the other thread, you seem to be willfully ignoring what people are saying, though I can’t imagine why you would! Every single one of the British/living in Britain people in that other thread told you that it would be something you might do in a pub where you were a regular/knew the staff, or possibly if you’d been troublesome to them (big/complicated round, unusual drink). Nobody is saying that every time you walk into any pub you offer the bar staff a drink in every round. The whole point was to tell the other thread’s OP that she wouldn’t be expected to tip bar staff, as she might be in the US. No, it’s not a frequent occurrence, but it is something she *may *hear, and *if *she gets friendly/chatty with the bar staff herself, it wouldn’t be out of place to include them in her round.
Sorry but for reasons I have outlined in a post in that other thread, this is just factually incorrect. These qualifications you now give simply were not present until I queried the position.
