She Arrived Already Drunk
Saturday, 10:20 p.m. A woman in her mid-thirties arrives with three coworkers for a birthday. She is unsteady, holds the doorframe, laughs too loudly, and clips a menu stand on the way in. She tells you she had 'a few' at a bar down the street and orders a vodka soda. You have not served her anything. She is pleasant but insistent. Her coworkers say she is 'fine, just a lightweight,' and one adds, 'We'll watch her.' The bar is loud and busy, the group is ordering food, and she has now put a $20 bill on the counter and left it there while she waits.
1. May you serve her? Does it change anything that she ordered food and a soda first, or that the alcohol she has already had came from somewhere else?
Read the worked answer
No - and neither of the qualifiers changes it.
- Where the alcohol came from is irrelevant. The prohibition is on serving a person who is visibly intoxicated, not on serving a person whose intoxication you caused. 'She was already like that when she walked in' is not a defence; it is the reason for the refusal.
- Food and a soda do not buy a later drink. They are a reasonable thing to offer and they slow nothing meaningfully in the next half hour. They also create a trap: the food arrives, she looks settled, and someone pours a drink to be nice. Decide now that the answer is no for the night, not no-for-twenty-minutes.
- Her signs are visible and specific: unsteadiness on entry, holding the doorframe, volume, clipping furniture. Those are exactly the observations that get written down later.
What to do instead: offer water, food, and a seat, take the food order, and say plainly and kindly that you will not be serving her alcohol tonight. Leaving the $20 on the counter is not an order and should not be treated as one.
2. Ten minutes later a coworker orders four vodka sodas 'for the table' and moves to set one in front of her. What do you do, and what is the principle?
Read the worked answer
The principle: a drink served to a third party is still a drink served to her if you know where it is going. Third-party orders are the ordinary route around a refusal, and the person placing the order is facilitating.
Sequence:
- Stop it before it lands. Do not deliver the fourth glass. Once it is on the table in front of her, the situation has changed from a service decision to a retrieval.
- If it is already down, remove it and say why, briefly and without heat.
- Address the buyer, not her. 'I can serve three of those. I can't serve her, and I can't put a drink in front of her.' This makes the rule about your conduct, not her character.
- Change the format if it keeps happening. No rounds, no pitchers, no trays to that table; drinks ordered and received individually.
- Watch for the switch - two people at the table with similar drinks, one swapped for the other - and for the classic move of ordering a soda with a splash of something.
- Tell the other staff on shift. If she orders again from a different server the refusal has to hold.
3. She becomes angry, says you are calling her a drunk in front of her friends, and the group stands up to leave. The driver has had two beers and says he is 'completely fine.' What are your options, and where are the limits?
Read the worked answer
De-escalate first:
- Do not defend the accusation or repeat the word drunk. Reframe to policy: 'I'm not making a judgement about you - I'm not able to serve anyone who arrives unsteady, and that's where I have to leave it.'
- Acknowledge the embarrassment. 'I understand this is awkward in front of your friends' costs nothing and drops the temperature.
- Do not chase them out, block the door, or continue the argument in the car park. Letting them leave is almost always the lower-risk option.
On the driver:
- You cannot calculate his blood alcohol from 'two beers,' and you should not pretend to. What you can do is observe: two beers over an evening, eating, no visible indicators - he may genuinely be fine. If he shows indicators, say so directly and offer a cab.
- Offer the alternative out loud, so it is on the record: 'I can call you a ride; there's a cab company two blocks over.'
- If you believe an impaired person is about to drive, calling police or non-emergency dispatch is legitimate and often the only real lever you have.
Hard limits: you can refuse service and ask someone to leave. You cannot restrain, search, seize keys, or lay hands on a customer over a drink.
Record afterwards: time of arrival, observed indicators, that no alcohol was served to her, the refusal, the third-party attempt, the offer of a ride, and the time they left. If the car is involved in anything later that night, those notes are the difference between a documented decision and a story.