Who's next?

[oldboots]

I thought I'd seen the last word in crap bar staff and the "Who's next?" syndrome in this pub but bugger me today this happened:

Innocent drinker (me) enters pub and approaches bar, no bar staff to be seen, a bit later barmaid appears like the shopkeeper in Mr Benn and utters the cry "who's next?". As the only other people at the bar were a bloke drinking a lager (glass to mouth) and a kid sucking coke through a straw, I guessed it might possibly be me. Kinell!

Surely the only way this can be beaten is for me to enter an entirely empty pub and be asked the immortal question "who's next?"

[gillhalfpint]

At least you get the choice of answering "me". At a bar yesterday I was standing with money in hand waiting for service and the staff kept serving the chaps coming alongside me. I felt like saying do you want me to check outside to see if anyone there wants service next. A problem being a visitor in a bar of locals I think.

[Soup Dragon]

The Harrier

At least someone turned up!

[Strongers]

The Harrier

At least someone turned up!

[Farway]

I'm with GHP on this, "normal" bar manners mean we all know who was before us, so point out who is next, well I do anyway, but I also let people out of side roads if stuck in traffic and say please & thank you, so by today's standard's I may be the odd one out

[NickDavies]

At least you get the choice of answering "me". At a bar yesterday I was standing with money in hand waiting for service and the staff kept serving the chaps coming alongside me. I felt like saying do you want me to check outside to see if anyone there wants service next. A problem being a visitor in a bar of locals I think.

That's Pub annoyance #115 compounded by #110 and #111 with a top dressing of #634

We can probably add #116:

Sometimes you find that none of the bar staff is over 20 and they'd all rather spend their time piecing together the previous evening's activities with their mates on the other side of the counter. By the time one of them looks over four or five proper customers have shown up and nobody can remember who's next. Sometimes you can wait till someone managerial comes back their smoke break to crack the whip before anyone gets served at all. Certain JDWs are prone to this.

[Millay]

Maybe it would have been fun to look around uncertainly and innocently say "I'm not sure, why don't you choose".