Red Card and You’re Out!
Some New Zealand bars are trying a new approach to dealing with drunkards: yellow and red penalty cards. Styled after soccer (i.e., football for the rest of the world), yellow signifies a warning with a time out from drinking and red means you’re getting kicked out. Initially, this seemed too confrontational to me, but then I realized that the red card can be redeemed for a free drink!
This could be good in that it helps mitigate the confrontational nature of cutting someone off. (One of the things ServSafe teaches is how to cut off people without angering them.) However, this could also cause people to drink to the point of inebriation, considering they get a free drink out of it.
Either way, it sounds like an unique solution to a common problem, and the country’s Alcohol Advisory Council is monitoring with the hope of success.
August 1st, 2006 at 3:00 pm
I think you’re right about giving someone an incentive to act like a buffoon. While I certainly applaud the ingenuity of the approach, I can too easily imagine a circumstance where a guy is at a bar with a bunch of his friends, he starts to become unruly and a couple cooler heads try to calm him down, but then he realizes that not only does he really want another drink, but if he gets kicked out of the place, he gets a free drink on top of it all.
Maybe he’s too inebriated by this point to connect the dots, but no one should underestimate the power of a free drink.
August 1st, 2006 at 3:05 pm
“…no one should underestimate the power of a free drink.”
That’s the main reason for this blog.