Round by round we go. Oh no!

@wwaycorrigan

[For an audio/vlog version of this story, click here.]

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.
__________________________________________________________
Listen to The Corrigan Cast podcast here.

Facebook: Wrong Way Corrigan — The Blog & IQuiz "The Bogotá Pub Quiz".

Colombia's credit contradiction

@wwaycorrigan

[For an audio/vlog version of this story, click here.]

'We only give credit to those older than 90 and who bring one of their grandparents as a guarantor.'

Bottle-cap accounting: Foolproof?

That's the English translation of one version of the various we-don't-give-credit signs you'll see displayed in many Colombian tiendas, convenience stores that sell products ranging from beer to brushes and much else besides. (Although some tiendas' chief business line is beverages and sweet and savoury snacks.)

What such signs really mean, of course, is that credit is not given whatsoever. (Perhaps, in a few generations, a 90-year-old might expect his/her grandparents to still be alive. Then again, in a few generations, humanity might be extinct.)

The reality is, however, that in many beer-serving tiendas, no-credit signs on display or not, the payment model in operation leaves the establishment at risk of being what effectively amounts to a moneylender.

Drink now, pay later

This is because the tab system dominates in such environments in Colombia; you pay your bill when you've finished imbibing. Rarely will you be asked for payment upfront, as is generally demanded in pubs in Ireland and the UK.

In theory, paying at the end makes more sense than doing so each time you order, particularly when we're talking about the consumption of multiple beverages.

This is even more so the case in places where cash is still king (working-class Colombia is, thankfully, in that category). It can be cumbersome having to deal with change for each order.

Nonetheless, the tab model can be easily abused, by both the customer and the owner/staff.

The former can do this by simply saying, be it true or not, that he/she doesn't have enough money to pay the bill.

In a country where the financial situation for many is far from stable, this I-don't-have-the-cash-right-now defence is commonplace. I've seen it cause plenty of beer-fuelled, heated discussions.

That much of working-class Colombia falls into the low-income bracket makes the popular use of the tab system even more of a head-scratcher.

That it persists suggests that businesses feel it's the best way to operate. They'll get the money at some stage — as long as the debtor doesn't die with the bill still outstanding. Or it could be one of those just-how-it-is scenarios that I wrote about before.

Bottle battles

As for tienda owners or staff, they can game the system by adding more products to your tab than were actually ordered.

This abuse is, unsurprisingly, far easier to carry out when the product in question is alcohol and the customer is drinking on-site, getting merry in the process.

I'm not the only one who has questioned the amount owed at the end of a session. It can lead to a tetchy tienda environment, if not to something more untoward.

Linked to all this is the method some tiendas use to keep, um, tabs of the tab.

Counting the bottles consumed is one way, something I see less often these days.

'If you happen to have a less-than-attentive tienda keeper, bottle-cap counting could work to your advantage.'

This may seem sound — and it explains why bottles are left on a customer's table until the session has finished — yet a couple of other foreigners and I were the victims of its flaws a few years ago in Bogotá. I wrote about that incident at the time in a blog piece titled, 'You've been had, Bogotá style'.

Summarising that episode, a guy who we'd befriended and who we thought had bought us a few beers actually pulled a fast one on us, or so it seemed.

As he left before us, we ended up being charged for all the beers he'd drunk, even those he'd had before joining our company.

Of course, he could have been — indeed, probably was — in cahoots with the tienda owner. Or the tienda owner might have seen an opportunity to charge for the same beers twice.

As we were in an unfamiliar place, after airing our displeasure we took the financial hit and promptly left, never to return.

Top cap

An alternative accounting approach with tiendas is the bottle cap. For each beer opened, the cap is placed on what we'll call the payment counter.

This is open to some of the same abuses as outlined with bottle-counting, minus the problem of another customer adding to your bill.

One particular flaw it has is with bottle size and associated price differences.

For example, to use my tipple of choice, Poker, very often the cap on a litre bottle is decorated the same as the 330 ml presentation.

So, if you're in a round consisting of bigger and smaller bottles of the same brew, you could be deemed to have had more bigger ones than smaller ones when the reality was the reverse.

Now, if you happen to have a less-than-attentive tienda keeper, bottle-cap counting could work to your advantage. 'Oh no, of those five bottle caps, only two belong to litre bottles, the rest were 330 ml.' One can plead ignorance if caught out.

Pen power

Slightly more watertight than the aforementioned methods is the radical pen-and-paper approach to tab-keeping.

Yes, some tienda workers write down your name — or some title that identifies you, such as gringo or mono — in a copybook and note your orders as they come. Revolutionary.

Again, it's not abuse-proof. If you lose track of what you've had, a few additional beers might be added to your tab. (And yes, this isn't exclusive to rudimentary tiendas. It can happen in fancy establishments using a digital system.)

Also, particularly in a lively tienda, a crafty fellow carouser could get his beers added to your account. Those behind the counter don't always check if a beer has been invited or not, as long as it goes on some customer's tab.

So, like many things in these parts, the no-credit policy is something of a contradiction with these tab systems in operation.

Yet, contradiction aside — and again like many things around here — tienda transactions normally pass off without much ado.

For sure, there will always be those who try to abuse it. They would do well not to, though.

A move to more advanced methods in this digital age may see them easily locked out of the market altogether. So scorn not the simplicity of the tienda's status quo.
__________________________________________________________
Listen to The Corrigan Cast podcast here.

Facebook: Wrong Way Corrigan — The Blog & IQuiz "The Bogotá Pub Quiz".