Gen Z is under fire for avoiding bar tabs, but people are pointing out they'd be the norm outside the US

09.08.2023 - 15:49 / insider.com

People have been left baffled by a tweet on the recently rebranded social media platform X (formerly Twitter) suggesting that "closing out on every round" is "psycho behavior."

The tweet was posted on July 14 by Willy Staley, a story editor at the New York Times Magazine.

"At the bar last night, the Zoomers were all paying with credit cards and closing out on every round. This is psycho behavior. Someone needs to teach these children how to go to the bar," wrote Staley.

Zoomers, also known as Gen Zers, encompass those born between the mid-to-late 1990s and the early 2010s.

So far, the tweet 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 is unusual, as a tab for the evening tends to be the norm, others argued that it's not typical in many parts of the world. 

TikToker Haley Horton responded to the tweet in a video posted 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 has lived in the UK since she was 18, and she has 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 had been 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."

In one tweet, 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 most 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 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.

Sev