- An American criticized Gen Z for "paying with credit cards and closing out on every round" in a bar.
- While some agreed, a TikToker said that this was "literally how you buy drinks everywhere else."
People have been left baffled by a post on the recently rebranded social-media platform X, formerly Twitter, suggesting that "closing out on every round" is "psycho behavior."
Willy Staley, a story editor at The New York Times Magazine, sent out the post on July 14.
"At the bar last night, the Zoomers were all paying with credit cards and closing out on every round," Staley wrote. "This is psycho behavior. Someone needs to teach these children how to go to the bar."
—willy (@willystaley) July 14, 2023
Zoomers, also known as Gen Zers, encompass those born between the mid-to-late 1990s and the early 2010s.
So far, the post has 7.5 million views, and it has stirred debate about bar etiquette in different countries.
While some Americans agreed that paying for your drinks after each round was unusual, as a tab for the evening tends to be the norm, others said that it's not typical in many parts of the world.
Haley Horton, a TikToker, responded to the post in a video on July 17.
"It's when I read things like this that I sit back, and I think to myself, 'I am really not as culturally American as I think I am' because I read this and I went, 'Huh?'" she said.
Horton told viewers that she had lived in the UK since she was 18 and had limited experience going to bars and clubs in the US.
She said that when she and her boyfriend went to visit the US last year, they paid for their drinks after every order because that's how they were used to paying for drinks everywhere else.
"We had absolutely no idea it was a faux pas," Horton said in her video. "The 'psycho behavior' that this man has described is literally how you buy drinks everywhere else."
@haley.horton american bar etiquette baffles me #americanintheuk #americaninengland #americanineurope #ukvsus ♬ original sound - haley
In one post, an X user called Lawrence Krubner wrote: "Where the hell do you live that people pay after each round? I've been all over Europe and I've never seen people pay after each round.
"Normal, sane people wait till the end of the evening, and then pay one bill for the entire evening. If you live in a country where it is normal to close out after each round then you live in a nation of psychopaths."
Horton and many other viewers seemed shocked by this response. Bar tabs keep a running total of charges that people accumulate while in a bar. They help bartenders to reduce the number of transactions in an evening and make it easier for them to handle complex orders and serve large groups.
While bar tabs are a staple of the US bar experience, they are less common in many European countries.
In the UK and other parts of Northern Europe, customers will often order rounds of drinks at the bar and pay in the moment, while servers in some parts of Southern Europe will bring a check to the table at the end of an evening but not expect customers to leave their credit cards at the bar up front.
Several people questioned the logistics of running a tab and asked how it would be possible to split the check if you're waiting until the end to pay it.
"It's not 'closing out,' it's making a purchase," one viewer said. "Isn't the crazy thing leaving your card somewhere for a whole night?"
Horton added that paying for drinks as you got them was the norm only in bars and that it didn't apply to restaurants.
Cultural differences are a common source of discourse on social media. Americans who have traveled abroad have frequently documented their experiences in other countries to the surprise of many viewers, while others have shared their own culture shocks from living in countries outside the US and gone viral as a result.