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8th August 2023
11:24am BST
If you've ever worked in a bar you'll know that on the serving side of the counter there's a secret language used to talk about your customers.
It's not necessarily always bad or seedy comments, but when the music is sky high and the crowd are blurry eyed, sometimes you've gotta just shout "50!".
Every bar has its own slightly differing secret language, but in a Reddit thread, many bartenders shared their own code words, so now when you're next in a crowded bar, you can be the Alan Turing of knowing when the barrels gone.
The initial thread was shared by U/joshintheuk who wrote: "A while ago I was told of a 'bartenders code' which consisted of various numbers that were used to represent things on the bar either secretly or quickly between staff.
"Things like '86', meaning to be a ran out of product, '200' meaning a customer waiting, '50' meaning to catch, and '700' to refer to an attractive customer.
"It seems like a pretty fun and useful thing to get my staff doing, and I was wondering if anyone knew any more or had a different/more comprehensive list of expressions?"
Other users then immediately jumped in to say that they used a different code for good-looking customers, saying '699' meant 'hottie at the bar'. While '700' stood for 'probably hottest girl in the building is at the bar'.
Rather grimly, the same user said they would roar 'Barry White' when they were 'going for a s***'.
Another person commented they used '300' to identify an 'attractive lady', but said '300 high' if they could see a 'big ol' pair of b**bies'.
One bar worker even commented that they had a full algebratic scale to explain somebody's attractiveness using three numbers: "First number is face on a scale of 0-9, second number is either 0 or 1 (would or wouldn't) and last number is body. "So 719 is pretty damn good and a 303 looks like your grandfather." Seems a bit mathematical to me.
One person commented that while they didn't use numbers, whenever a: "Hot customer would walk into the bar we used to play Hot Town Summer In The City over the speakers so me and my colleagues knew what was going down."
Though not every comment was crude and crass, some were actually rather wholesome with one manager revealing that when the bar is busy and their staff are under pressure, they call a 'team meeting' in which they get all of their staff together and share a shot.
They wrote: "Everyone normally pours themselves a quick shot or I pour all the shots and we air cheers and keep on plugging away at the crowd of drunken idiots."
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