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A customer enters one of his regular cafés. He sees some familiar and not-so-familiar faces. On ordering his brew, he also asks the attendant to serve out another round of drinks to the clientèle present, to be put on his tab.
Round-buying drives some people round the bend.
How many times have you seen this happening in a café, restaurant or other similar establishment?
I can’t recall it ever happening in my panadería offices in Bogotá. OK, on the very odd occasion I’ve received an impromptu invite for a coffee but never have I seen a fellow regular wander in and order drinks for all present.
Proper order
Yet, there’s something about places that sell and serve alcohol that sees some people go invite crazy — and that’s before the booze has gone to their brains. Also, we’re talking here about seasoned drinkers who should know better, not once-a-year tipplers.
Such types seem incapable of simply ordering their own drink and no more. It’s not proper order if one orders just a solitary drink when in the company of others.
Now, this behaviour would be very welcome if it didn’t come with an expectation that everyone else should rally round the round. But it usually does. What’s more, one risks insulting the first round-buyer by politely declining the offer.
I struggle to understand this mindset. Or, more accurately, I struggle to understand why certain men — for it’s almost always men, especially in Colombia — feel compelled to buy rounds in the first instance. The practice adds another reason for potential conflict in an environment where conflicts can flare up at, quite literally, the drop of a bottle. Or often for much less of an offence.
‘Forking out for the fornication partners of others is something that particularly annoys me.’
I figure there’s a machismo element to it. In a Bogotá context, this manifests itself as the big man about the barrio, splashing the cash. To a point, that is. Because when the big man starts waiting for others to contribute, he becomes a little smaller in the eyes of both the freeloaders and the more independent-minded drinkers who happened to get caught up in his generosity.
Pay more, drink less
I can understand and even support round-buying when everyone is drinking at pretty much the same pace with the same brew. Or at least a drink at the same price.
This, however, is rarely the case for me. In Colombia, I prefer to drink the bigger presentations. They usually give you more punch for your peso. For example, a 330 ml bottle can be up to double the price per millilitre compared to a 750 ml or litre bottle. Yet, many Colombians opt for the 330 ml bottles. Even in Ireland, my pint of choice was regularly more economical than that of my boozing buddies.
Thus, seldom have I broken even when I get stuck in rounds. Indeed, I’ve often spent more than double the price of what I had actually drunk. The aforementioned freeloaders are usually to blame for this. These freeloaders are generally made up of barrio bums and female companions of other male imbibers. Forking out for the fornication partners of others is something that particularly annoys me. (It’s got to the stage where I’ll avoid a watering hole if I see certain round-buying types there.)
Rounds can also be worth it when it’s a pay-as-you-order system and the payment method is cash only. The latter is certainly commonplace in Colombia — cash is still king here — yet it’s the tab system that dominates in standard tiendas and barrio bars. Pay when you finish up, not as you go. Or, in some cases, pay when you have the money. (See Colombia’s credit contradiction for more on the country’s taxing tab culture.)
So the hassle of handing out change for each individual order doesn’t arise in an average drinking setting in Colombia. In my native Ireland and other high-income nations where card/digital payments have taken over, paying as you order isn’t as much of an issue as it might have been in the past.
With all that in mind, rounds should be the exception rather than the norm. And they should be more frowned upon than they currently are. #JustSayNo.
Nonetheless, if somebody wants to buy me a beer or whatever with absolutely no expectations that I’ll buy one back, I won’t say no to that. It would be better, though, if they treated me to lunch or a coffee or three. It’s not more beer that I’m in need of these days.
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