1. Thou shalt offer everyone a drink if you’re the first to go to the bar.
Imagine, you’ve gone down the pub with three of your mates. If you don’t have three mates, just make some up. Call one of them Mary. You, Mary, and the other two have found a nice four-seater table in the corner – the chairs are comfy and it’s not even that sticky. Mary gets up and heads towards the bar. A couple of minutes later, she comes back. In her hand is one single G&T. “Surely you can carry more than one drink at a time, Mary, you scabby yolk,” you think. But it’s not that she can’t carry them – she’s only bought one drink. One drink. For herself.
The first person to go to the bar has the unspoken responsibility of kicking off the round system. They must offer everyone a drink, and then everyone who accepts is part of that round for the night. Mary knows this. Everyone knows this. Don’t be like Mary, because Mary is a scab.
2. Thou shalt not shirk on your round, you stingy fuckbag.
This is the “thou shalt not kill” of these Ten Commandments. Having four different people buy you a drink and then “having to leave to catch a train” before spending a cent of your own doesn’t make you smart, or thrifty, or even a bit cheeky, it makes you an arsehole. If you know you’ve got to leave and won’t have time to return the favour, don’t accept the drinks in the first place.
3. Thou shalt not ask for a really expensive drink if everyone else is on cheap pints.
4. Thou shalt keep track of the round order at all times.
This’ll get trickier and trickier as the session goes on – it can be tough to remember whose turn it is to stagger up to the bar when you can’t even remember who did that sick on your shoes (it was you). But sticking to the same order is a vital component of a fully-functioning round system. It’s like the engine of a car – if you take it out the whole thing becomes a useless heap of shit, and then your pub trip has to be taken down to the scrapheap, sucked up by a big magnet and crushed into a sad little cube.
5. Thou shalt not drink your pint three times slower than all of your mates.
Because it’s just really fucking annoying when you really want another pint but the kid you don’t really know but somehow ended up in your round anyway is sipping his Kronenbourg with one pinky sticking out like it’s a flute of ‘ol Dom’s finest.
6. Thou shalt not be a snake.
We all remember the snake from the Bible, because he was a right bastard, wasn’t he? He’s the original big screen baddie. The round system snake can take many forms, and you must make sure you never assume any of them. They can be the person who doesn’t say a word when someone forgets they should be next to the bar and the round skips right past them; they can be the guys who buy everyone a pint of the cheapest lager when you’ve all been on the Peroni all night and hope nobody notices; or they can be the person who sneakily accepts drinks from people outside of their round but then never returns the favour.
Never mix your rounds unless you plan on drinking (and spending) double the amount of everybody else in the pub, and if you’re really going to do that please try not to die.
7. Thou shalt go up and help your mate carry the drinks if they’re ordering any more than three.
Unless your pal has really, really big hands, or you trust their drunk ass to carry seven drinks halfway across the pub through a maze of people on one of those tiny trays.
8. Thou shalt open out your bag of crisps so that everyone can have them.
I see you sitting there, with your bag of cheese and onion; the packet open just wide enough for your own hand to fit in, snaffle them out and stuff them vigorously into your own gob as you stare blankly into the eyes of your six-pints-in-so-getting-a-bit-peckish-now mates. Stop that. Just share the damn crisps, OK?
9. Thou shalt buy someone another pint if you accidentally spill it everywhere like a drunk eejit.
Obviously.
10. Thou shalt not be a petty fuck.
Sometimes you’re going to down the pub, pay for nine drinks, and only drink eight. Whatever you do, don’t fucking whinge about it. If you’re constantly working on your drinks consumed vs paid-for tally, you’re probably not having the most fun night, and more importantly, things always even themselves out anyway. Next time you’re out you’ll probably pay for six pints and have seven, so chill out, enjoy your drinks, and let the rounds system work its magic.
