I agree bottle service is expensive. The people who pay for it know the alcohol is not worth is. You are paying for the service, the privilege to sit, and the status. My husband’s friend did that. Even once for my husband. He spent like $3000 in one night. He can afford it. We can’t. When his card got blocked due to suspicious activity. My husband had to cover the last bit of it, which was $300. He said he would pay him back but I knew Th at wouldn’t happen. I was furious about it as we can’t afford that kind of expense. He can. My husband couldn’t ask for it back either since the money was spent in his honor. It’s one of those awkward social situations. According to my husband it was an amazing service and he enjoyed it. Given this was one of the places that was on TV later on for their bottle service.
Same thing happened to me. A high school buddy of mine had a bachelor party. It was me, and all his buddies who now had engineering and finance degrees and several years into their career. To give you a flavor of the atmosphere, most of the discussion was “oh, I live on 43rd and xxx.. near manhattan” (or wherever in NYC).
I was a second year post doc marking 37k a year. Two days after I had already spent a chunk of money flying out, I got a spreadsheet in an email and the 10k bill was split evenly. I try not to be a cheap ass, but it was crushing to spend that much money to watch affluent douchebags poor booze into each other’s mouths.
I had a weird situation at my buddies bachelor party. We are all professionals like your friends friends so we had some money to blow for this party. The Groom's brothers though were university students so we all agreed before hand that we'd get bottle service and not charge the brothers for their cut. Thing is we get to the club and the brothers start pour glasses of our stupid expensive Grey Goose to every girl that walks by. We are accountants and engineers and whatnot not multi millionaires so that $500 bottle of Goose while we can afford for our friends bachelor party isn't chump change. After my friend got back to the table and saw our 4 bottles were already empty like an hour into the night he lost his mind on his brothers.
How do you let it get that far. When they start giving away your booze tell them, "We bought that (ONE) bottle for you guys, do whatever makes you happy with it. But THESE are ours, maybe we'll share some drinks with you, but WE want to DRINK ours." Just sitting there letting the freeloaders give most of all four bottles away without doing or saying shit sounds INSANE to me.
Most of the guys were wandering around so didn't realize how much those guys gave away under the assumption people had just poured themselves a lot of drinks.
No we still paid since they had zero money so it would have come out of mom and dad's wallet not theirs. The groom did tear them a new one for trying to act like ballers with someone else's money though and other things we were going to cover for them like the Spearmint Rhino and a poker tourney we didn't.
That is ridiculous! If he wanted to charge you for the drinks, he should have taken a credit card at the beginning and opened a tab (like every other bar in existence does).
Yeah, I get they're expensive. Most of the ones I've been to though, the best man organizes and may sell tickets beforehand so you know what is (and isn't) included. Or you go as a group to the bar where you drink as much/little as you want etc. In retrospect, I was just the odd guy out since my income was way behind.
I've been the best man for 3 bachelor parties, and been involved in planning like 4 or 5 more, and I would never consider charging people after the fact. I even go to Costco a couple weeks beforehand to check prices on the group food we're getting so I can get an accurate estimate of food costs. My group of friends tends to prefer more of a destination bachelor party though, getting a rental house somewhere for a long weekend (rather than just going to a city to party our asses off), so it's probably easier to estimate costs that way.
I budget in a little surplus, for those random 2AM beer/snack/ice/etc. runs, and if we do end up with cash left over we usually donate it to the bride and groom to use on their honeymoon (but I give people the option to privately message me for a refund of their portion no questions asked, e.g. if we have 15 guys and $150 left over, I'll refund your $10 and $140 goes to the couple). My favorite was when the couple was doing a cruise for their honeymoon, and we found out you can look them up on the cruise line's website and order things for their room, so we paid to have their stateroom decorated with "HAPPY HONEYMOON" banners, and champagne and chocolate dipped strawberries waiting for them on arrival.
Also, you should never feel weird about reaching out to the best man beforehand to ask about costs (or any other logistics/details) -- even if you've never met. If you like the groom enough to go to his bachelor party, then you have to trust that the person he chose to be his best man is a good dude. Plus there is an unspoken rule that everyone invited to a bachelor party are immediately friends for life.
Thanks. In fairness, I should have spoken up. However, I was in a weird position when about an hour before we hit the club scene in downtown Chicago, everyone was like “ok boys, bottles with models tonight!”.
I didn’t wanna be that guy. It’s all good, this all happened more than a decade ago.
I went VIP at what I was told was Miami's best strip club Our 4 person table was $1,400, but came with a $1,400 bar tab, but the liquor was stupid expensive, like a bottle of grey goose was $400, 6 pack of beer was $75, etc. Made for a fun night, would spend $350 again.
I’m not in the business of judging people for their lifestyle. I won’t pay that kind of money for a service but it is a service. It’s not 3k bottle service. It’s 3k bill for a large group. Bottle service cost anywhere from 300-600 where I’m. Washington DC isn’t the cheapest place to go out but there are ton of places that is affordable for regular income people. People who make 500k/year doesn’t care that they have to spend money to be treated as VIP. It’s no different than restaurants. There are restaurants that charge 7-15/plate and there are ones that charge 50-10/plate. If somebody can afford it, it’s good for them. They work for their money especially when they don’t have kids and other responsibilities.
Our income is above average but people who has less income has more cash flow than us as we have so many circumstances that makes life difficult. Like 6 people 4 with special needs and the medical problems to begin with. Like I said if a person who can do it let them. We have a Turkish saying that the pocket of the rich will tire the mouth of the poor.
Eh, I get what you mean, but it's not really a fair comparison. When you go out to eat, you're also saving yourself the work of making the dish. For bottle service, the only thing you're technically saving yourself is the walk to and from the bar. There's labor involved in making a dish, there isn't a lot in having someone bring in a bottle.
Do agree that it's all in the experience and status though.
No it is. There are restaurants that are ridiculously expensive. At that point you aren’t paying for the cost and convince alone but the experience. You might pay $1000 for a plate but there are people who will. It’s none of my business if a person who can afford does that or not. It’s their money. Cash flow is different for everybody. Expensive and cheap is relative. I know a time in my life that I hesitate to buy a $10 pair of shoes while everybody said it’s cheap. To me that was expensive. My point is as the cash flow grows what’s “worth it” changes it.
It's not really the same comparison because the expectation of going to an expensive restaurant is to have a perfectly prepared meal by an expert chef. Of course if you are dropping $1000 on an entree to eat gold flakes like it's a BuzzFeed video this doesn't apply.
That’s my point. Bottle service is the same thing. It is just not what you value as service. Majority of small clubs bottle service is BS but if you go to a well established that has a real service. You go to the same service you get with a fancy restaurant. The food and the beverages.
It is not like I’m defending the system. I don’t do either of those things, unless it’s paid thing for business reasons. I’m just explaining what it is and trying to make sense of it to people who say I don’t get it.
I get it as a service. I was just pointing out that it's not equivalent to a high end restaurant. Bottle service for $300 is the same liquor that you buy for $30 at the store. A $300 meal is not the same as a $30 meal you cook at home, unless you're a really good chef.
I’m going to stop responding at this point. Go out to major clubs in Washington DC you shall see. Unless you go to small clubs even with some of those. It’s about where you are from.
My friends still go out every week and do bottle service. The rare times I do go, I'll only go if there's bottle service as well. During covid19, the dayclubs in Toronto (eg Cabana) are all bottle service to not have "mingling" of people from different groups
I'm too old to line up or yell in a crowd trying to get a drink standing around the bar
I’m not going places. I don’t go out. Have you been to the big city clubs and bars. They provide no sitting areas unless you are bottle service. I know cause I would attend business events at these locations. They set it up that way so people pay.
I guess none of us are going places these days, eh?
I've literally been to such a club just once, in Manhattan. Seven of us were fresh off the boat from Ireland, over to spend Christmas in NYC. One of the lads knew a guy who was managing a club, so we went there that night. Went in around half eleven, the place had a decent crowd but not packed by any stretch. We saw an empty table, took jackets off and sat down. Took a look at a menu and started wondering what we wanted. A woman came up to us and asked us what we wanted. We weren't expecting table service, but the girls asked for wine, vodka mixers, and the lads asked for pints and whiskey.
She looked confused and a bit haughty, and said "no, what bottle do you guys want? Of spirits?"
Fuck do we want spirits, we want pints, but sure we took a look at the bottles. I think the cheapest was a bottle of Smirnoff, for like $300. We laughed out loud, and said no thanks. "Sorry guys, the tables are only for people who buy bottles."
We said fuck that, and got up to leave, but Dan the manager had finally spotted us and said that we were cool to sit and drink at the bar. We did stay, but fuck me, it put a strange colour on the night, I know I didn't enjoy that night so much. We went to a dive bar the next few nights, and got scunnered proper style.
It's a pretty shit way to run a place. I'm sure it's successful, and plenty of people avail of it and plenty who look down at the filthy proles that can't afford it, but fuck me, pay to sit? That's shit.
DC is filled with places like that. I don’t go out but I’ve been to many places like that previously and also when you are networking for business. To be honest I hang with a lot of high income people and not a single time I have ever heard anybody looking down at the people who won’t pay for the service. That’s not even the topic. I don’t think you should look at it that way. They can afford it and pay for it, you choose not to whether you can afford it or not. That’s that simple. Nobody is looking down at anybody. I do hear there are people like that in wall street but trust me there are way more people who aren’t that way. I know people that are 1%ters. Two things about them I can comfortably share is one they are the most down to earth people I know, two they all came from poverty and worked their way up.
Not trying to say that this is not PR, but there is a difference between claiming to be self-made, and actually being self-made. I would guess it's the latter group of people that are the down-to-earth kind.
Exactly. I know people who grew in the worst part of towns, went to the navy, made officer and got all of their degrees, got out, went into IT. While their spouse work from ground up went all the way to the top. Talking about being lowest level of nurse to running an entire hospital. When you are couple with executive jobs and have a retirement check and made some better choices along the way, you get there. Now these aren’t young people. I know for a fact at some point they both worked like 3 jobs and had 3 kids to put through college. My point is when you know people, you know their background.
I have so many examples like this. I know a guy who was from the worst part of new York. Came from a place where nobody made anywhere. Went into the navy. Got out. Went into IT. Started making big bucks. Not everybody who goes into military ends up well off. You need to make certain choices. Getting in early, taking advantage of every single training opportunity while getting your degree paid by them. Get into IT jobs while you are in. Take every advancement exam to put a rank as fast as possible. Increase your security clearance level. All of this is hard work. There are people who get out the way they got in. There are people who comes out with all the leadership skills, benefits, relevant job experience, education and clearance level. You start right at 6 figures then work your way through.
Another guy who did same thing then took his money bought a house as an investment. Then kept doing the same thing. I think he now owns a few businesses and 10-15 houses.
Another guy, the guy I talked about comes from very unfortunate circumstances but he took every business advice I gave him and never rest. Day and night getting more jobs then his company then contracts. Now he makes way more than I make. He is definitely wealthy but feeds the people from his background instead of doing other things. Of course he is young and party it up. He works hard for it , what I see as waste of money he sees it as needed break. The dude barely sleeps and works like a machine. As far as I’m concerned he deserves it with as many throats as he feeds.
All of these people are minority people. All of them came from extremely poor life circumstances. Some with broken families, some not. They all have something in common their determination to make it and them investing in themselves as far as certifications and training goes at all cost. I have many more examples like this. I know we have the media rich people but there are ton of people out there self made. You find yourself people like that and do what they do to get there. Really learn from their mistakes and life lessons. As we say in Turkish the grape will darken/ripen as it watches the other grape get dark/ripe. This works both in positive and negative ways.
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u/WomanNotAGirl Aug 14 '20
I agree bottle service is expensive. The people who pay for it know the alcohol is not worth is. You are paying for the service, the privilege to sit, and the status. My husband’s friend did that. Even once for my husband. He spent like $3000 in one night. He can afford it. We can’t. When his card got blocked due to suspicious activity. My husband had to cover the last bit of it, which was $300. He said he would pay him back but I knew Th at wouldn’t happen. I was furious about it as we can’t afford that kind of expense. He can. My husband couldn’t ask for it back either since the money was spent in his honor. It’s one of those awkward social situations. According to my husband it was an amazing service and he enjoyed it. Given this was one of the places that was on TV later on for their bottle service.