Fallen Soldiers
Insofar as I know, I’ve never ordered or poured an alcoholic drink only to leave it sitting atop a bar or mantle or bookshelf. It isn’t that I fancy myself able to drink more than other people, or that I’m particularly conscientious about refraining from wastefulness. It’s just that I always finish my drinks. It’s the natural thing to do: limit your total drinks to avoid over-intoxication and measure your sips for maximum satisfaction so that you’ve enough for a full swig on the last one.
Every time I clean up after a party, however, perhaps fifty percent of the plastic cups, beer bottles, and beer cans contain a sip or more of leftover liquid. What gives? I suppose I can understand that some people fetch a drink, having overestimated their desire for it, and quit prior to finishing. But fifteen percent of these leftover drinks are filled almost to the rim. Who are these people that open a beer or pour a cocktail only to abandon it untatsted? Were they so drunk that they desired a last beverage even though they couldn’t remember to drink it?
As puzzling are the places that these drinks are found. Under what circumstances does one stick a full plastic cup of warm whiskey on the back of a toilet atop a copy of Heads in the Sand by Matt Yglesias? Who opens a two liter bottle of tonic water, pours a single drink, and deposits the bottle 8 feet above floor level atop a bookshelf, bottle cap unaccounted for, guaranteeing that the mixer is unused by other guests, so that the hosts are eventually left with a flat bottle of quinine infused sugar water?
Or say that the party is rife with Miller Lite cans. These seem like prime candidates for not finishing, beers hardly being created equal. Yet the percentage of Guinness left unfinished is markedly higher.
One day I am going to throw a house party in a state with lax surveillance laws, videotape my guests, and review the night’s festivities in time elapse style to ascertain how it is that so many drinks are left unfinished, once refrigerated condiments are left on the counter top for no apparent reason, and extinguished cigarette butts are placed on the splayed pages of a paperback novel. I won’t expose or reprimand the guilty parties — I’ll merely observe who they are, and hope that the context or something about their expression or my knowledge of their personality helps me to figure out what they’re thinking.
It is a strange thing to clean up after a party, even when one attended it, because despite being there, the way that various objects came to be in certain places beggars explanation.
Who are these people that open a beer or pour a cocktail only to abandon it untatsted?
Often I place my drink down somewhere, only to forget which is mine—mantles and bookshelves often will have multiple drinks sitting on them at the same time. Rather than risk guessing wrong, I’ll go get a new drink.
— right · Oct 25, 01:51 PM · #
I suspect you will find the primary cause has to do with the differences between social sippers, drinkers, heavy drinkers and those who drink far too much. Social sippers and those who drink far too much are most likely the culprits. Social sippers are those who dislike the effects of alcohol, but drink to not stand out by refusing a drink, so they are likely to sip for awhile then leave the container somewhere unfinished. Drinkers and heavy drinkers will finish their drinks unless some unusual situation causes them to lose track of where they placed it. The people who drink far too much will likely not even remember being at the party the next morning, so they might be prone to forget leaving a drink anywhere, especially somewhere around the toilet.
— mike farmer · Oct 25, 02:13 PM · #
As long as you didn’t find anyone’s underwear on top of the bookshelf, you don’t have much to worry about.
— Mark in Houston · Oct 25, 07:04 PM · #
Sinatra was famous for leaving fallen soldiers hidden in an attempt to convince folks that he could really pack it down.
— Klug · Oct 25, 07:34 PM · #
Right is right. Combine natural forgetfulness on top of drunken forgetfulness on top of the fact that even if you find your cup you might not be 100% sure it’s yours and who wants to drink someone else’s beer? And you get maybe a 30-40% rate of drink replacement due to loss rather than emptiness.
One way to minimize this would be to make your cups as identifiable as possible (writing names is one low-cost solution. Or put stickers on them for more entertainment). Also, make hard rules against putting cups on bookshelves and things. People will think it’s because you’re a neat-freak, but it’s really to keep drinks in hands so they aren’t lost.
— sidereal · Oct 25, 09:24 PM · #
I can’t answer all these questions, but when I am at a party I usually drink steadily until I realize that I have had enough, at which point I put my drink down and don’t drink anymore. Usually I leave soon thereafter, but occasionally the conversation is so fascinating that I stay, in which case, after a half hour to an hour, I might be ready to start drinking again. But in this last situation, I would get a new drink, not go find a warm flat drink that I put down an hour ago.
— y81 · Oct 25, 09:51 PM · #
I wonder if this post is just Conor’s subtle way of pointing out that he throws a lot of parties and doesn’t invite us. Well, doesn’t invite me, anyway.
— KenB · Oct 26, 03:04 AM · #
He doesn’t invite me either. But that’s natural, because I don’t live in DC.
Onwards. If I were to have whiskey which I’d put ice in, the ice melted, and then the drink warmed itself, well then I’d be a damn fool. But if I were such a fool, I might reasonably abandon that whiskey. Room temperature whiskey can be fine, whiskey with some extra H20 can be ok, but combine them? No thanks. And if I were to abandon my whiskey, on top of Matt’s book sounds like an ok place to abandon it. Just imagine someone coming in and saying “what’s this book that has whiskey on top of it?” You’ve provided them with a valuable experience.
On the other hand, a man who’d extinguish a cigarette butt on a book is a man who needs shot.
— Justin · Oct 26, 04:35 AM · #
I have to say, though, as a former-drinker who through the years consumed copious amounts of Guinness, leaving such a fine beverage unfinished, even moreso than Miller Lite, is troubling. I fell in love with a female bartender who could form a perfect clover on the head (take this literally or metaphorically).
— mike farmer · Oct 26, 11:14 AM · #
Hypothesis: Marginal cost to the party goer of forgetting where he left his drink and getting a new one: close to zero. (At a minimum, it’s less that the alternative cost of remembering where he left his drink).
Testable Prediction: You will find a greater ratio of unfinished drinks/total drinks dispensed at a wedding with an open bar than at one with a cash bar.
Corollary Hypothesis: You could reduce the number of unfinished drinks by lowering the cost of remembering which drink is which. Get an artist to do a quick line sketch of each person’s face on their cup in Sharpie, or compose a line of doggerel involving each person’s name, and see if it reduces the number of unfinished drinks. This has the benefits of (a) lowering the cost of remembering which drink is yours and (b) increasing the cost of abandoning your drink, because (i) you will have to get a new cup from the Sharpie wielder (ii) you may be shamed when your original, identifiable cup is found, and (iii) if the Sharpie-wielder does a good enough job that people want to save their cups, then the cost of abandonment increases again.
Alternately, you could just serve all the drinks in orgy horns.
— J Mann · Oct 26, 02:29 PM · #
Under what circumstances does one place a copy of Matt Yglesias’ Heads in the Sand in the bathroom?
— Nirgal · Oct 26, 03:42 PM · #
re: Heads in the Sand
As a friend of mine once said, if you buy that book you deserve to own it.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 26, 05:38 PM · #
As long as you didn’t find anyone’s underwear on top of the bookshelf, you don’t have much to worry about.
— 澎湖民宿 · Oct 27, 11:47 AM · #