BE 602: Be Social at Work This Summer Part 2: Make the Most Out of Happy Hour

This is the Business English Podcast, Episode 602. Be social at work this summer, Part 2. Make the most out of happy hour. Welcome to the Business English Podcast from All Ears English.

Get the English skills you need to achieve your dreams in global business. For a presentation, a meeting, or your office party, this is Real Business English with your favorite American hosts, Aubrey and Michelle, coming to you from Arizona and New York City, USA.

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Again, that's allearsenglish.com slash f-l-u-e-n-c-y-s-c-o-r-e. Michelle, how's it going? Pretty well. Aubrey, how are you? Excellent. I'm sad we don't get to meet very often for happy hour.

I love a happy hour. We unfortunately live on other sides of the country, but I used to go to happy hour a lot at previous jobs. And it's such a great opportunity to network and connect with coworkers. Oh my gosh.

Yeah, it's the best. So guys, in the first part of this series, we shared tips and phrases for asking coworkers to hang out. Yes. And once they accept your invitation, how can you make sure it goes well?

Right. So guys, you want to build connections with coworkers. And often the best time to do this is outside of work at a happy hour or another type of social get together.

So today we're sharing an episode with tips on how to be happy. At happy hour, you're going to learn phrases about ordering a drink, details about tipping and picking up the bill, and what to say or do to make sure no one drives home drunk. This is so important, all of these phrases and a lot of things that you know how to do in your first language, but can you do it in English? I'm excited for this episode so that you will be able to.

All right. Awesome. Well, let's listen to the episode. Hey, Michelle, how's it going? Hey, Lindsay, pretty good. Pretty good. How are you? I'm feeling great.

I'm feeling great. It's almost the weekend. So that's good. I'm always looking. And, you know, it's the holiday season. So it's really common to go out to happy hour, you know, with colleagues or with friends around this time of year.

Do you like to do that? Yeah, definitely. I like to go to holiday parties and happy hours and all sorts of things. It's very, it's very fun. Yeah. And we actually had a listener.

So the name is Zheng Yuan Wang. Zhou or Zhou, Alexia is this person's nickname. So thank you to this person. Thank you for asking this. So Zheng Yuan wrote in and asked us the question, how can we order drinks at a happy hour?

What's some of the language that we need to succeed in this situation? And succeed could mean a number of things. It could mean to connect. with our boss, right?

If we go out with our colleagues for drinks or maybe to meet someone. But there are some good phrases that we can give you guys for how to handle yourself in this situation at a happy hour. First of all, Michelle, what is a happy hour? What are we talking about here?

Usually a happy hour is something that happens after work. Usually, I don't know, what time would you say it usually is? Like, I think it usually starts at 5, 5 or 6. Yeah.

Yeah, something like that. And there are usually a lot of drinks on, like, discounted drinks, things like that. They're usually specials, right? Mm-hmm.

And, you know, people often go with colleagues or friends just to get like a quick drink after work, probably just for an hour. Right. Happy hour or two. Yeah, exactly.

And here in Boston, we don't have technically we don't have happy hour. There's weird Puritan influence here in Boston, you know, because of the Puritanical roots in Massachusetts. Yeah.

And it's not legal for bars to offer technically a happy hour, but they still might say they have happy hour, but there's no discount on the drinks. Normally there's a discount on the drinks, right? In New York, the drinks are cheaper during those hours. Yeah.

Wow. That is, I did not know that. There's no, so yeah, that's interesting. So food for thought here. So Michelle, all right. So let's say we walk into this bar with our work group, right?

Often people come from work and that's always a fun thing to do to build that connection. What are some things that we would say when we go up to the bar and we want to order? How do we order a drink? How do we do it?

Right. So one way you could say is, hey, can I get a Smutty Nose IPA? Yeah, that's one of my favorite beers. It's a New Hampshire beer IPA, and it's good.

That's just an example. But the phrase is, hey, can I get a something, right? Hey, can I get a glass of wine? So that's quite casual, isn't it, Michelle?

Yes. yes yes quite casual yeah um another one is i'll have a martini or right a manhattan right i'll have a manhattan mm-hmm yeah that one's a little bit more formal i think the first one is more like going up to the bar like hey can i get it you know yeah yeah exactly it's more of like a very informal kind of situation yeah yeah yeah and the next one is kind of informal also right mm-hmm Yeah. So you could say, I'll get a glass of Malbec.

Yeah. Also very informal. And then another phrase is, could I have a, right? Could I have a Cosmopolitan, right? Could I have a Strawberry Dockery, whatever it is.

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Those are all good. So the next skill, Michelle, is to tip or not to tip or how much to tip. Good question. You know, I mean, what do you normally leave for tip when you go to the bar?

Um, yeah, I would say, well, I was a waitress as I've talked about on the show and I would say about 20% is good, right? 20% or even more, but it's answering a lot of people. It depends.

Usually you're on the holiday season. I think people tip more. Yeah, it's tough. I mean, when you're in a bar situation, it's hard because you're going back and forth to the bar.

If you're getting more than one drink, it's tricky. But usually what I do is I just throw down a dollar or $2 on the bar in addition to my drink. Yeah. And I know if you're sitting at a table and if you have waitress service and then you go to the bar, ooh, you'll make that waitress mad.

Oh, she'll be mad because she'll miss out on the tip, right? Right. Yep. Yep. Yeah, that's true. Sometimes it's confusing because you walk into a restaurant, you don't know where to go.

Like, should I go up to the bar? Should I stay and get served at my table? And oh, God. Yeah. The politics of restaurants. It is tricky. Yeah, it is. And then usually people just get something from the bar while they're waiting and the waitress is like, no.

Yeah, no, it's tricky. I mean, you have a great perspective having worked at a restaurant before. And so the point is tip 20% on the drink, not just on food, right? That's also on drinks.

So the bartender needs to be tipped. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And how – and very important topic, Michelle. It's the holidays. Some of our listeners are living here in the States or in other English-speaking countries, and we want to make sure we stay safe when we're leaving the bar, right?

That's huge. So that means we don't want to get in a car if we've been drinking too much, obviously. I think that goes without saying, I hope. I mean, clearly, we want to have our listeners stay safe.

So what are some of the phrases if we're with someone – who looks like they've been drinking a lot, what could we say to them to make sure they don't get in a car? Yeah. Well, you could say to them, are you okay to drive?

Yeah. Or can I call you a cab? Mm-hmm. Or you could just say, let me call you a cab. It'll only take a few minutes. Right. Or can I offer you a ride home?

And now, Michelle, luckily we have Uber, which is great. I mean, in New York, you guys don't have to worry about this because you have the subway. And same in Boston here. But everywhere else in the country, people have to worry about driving.

And we've got to be really careful about that. That's a really serious topic. And we have to have the language to be able to approach someone to help them out. Right.

And sometimes you might even need to insist because if you say, are you okay to drive? Somebody might say, yeah, yeah, I'm fine. They're really not. So, you know, really, really be careful.

If you have to insist, you have to insist. Oh, my God. It reminds me of when I was in high school. There was a situation where I'd gone to a party and a friend of mine had had too much to drink.

And my other friend, this football guy, this football player, this guy had to literally rip her out of the car. She was ready to drive home. Like she was behind the wheel starting her car. He had to go and grab her, like pull her out of the car.

Oh, my gosh. So intense. Yeah. When I worked at the bar at the restaurant, you know, we would have a lot of people who had had too much to drink. And we we always you know, you have to be careful.

And also as the as you know, someone serving, you know, you have to be really careful that you don't serve somebody too much. It's a little I mean, it's a huge responsibility. Yeah, a lot of the bars have some rules around that, right? Like what did your bar have any specific kind of standard operating procedures around how many drinks you can serve in an hour to one person?

Or was it just kind of you figure it out as you go along? I don't remember, but I don't remember specific things. But I do know that you could, you know, kind of make the decision like, you know, you would say if the person is done drinking, you say, oh, you're cut off. Yeah, you're cut off.

That's the expression. Yeah, you're cut off. You're done. Yeah, exactly. So I don't remember the rules, but I remember we had to watch out for it. Yeah, I'm sure there were some rules.

I don't know. Yeah. And I wonder if you as the bartender could be legally in trouble if something happened or if the bar could be sued. If someone were to drink too much and go out and drive and get killed or kill someone in the car, if the bar – I bet the bars have to take out a lot of insurance –

Yeah. I'll ask my brother because he actually owns a bar. I'll have to ask him about that. Yeah, that's interesting. So anyways, all right. So we're going to hop on another tangent here, Michelle.

But one more thing, one more situation. We're going to go backwards. I know we've just talked about leaving the bar. Let's go back to how do you say that you want to pay for someone's drinks, right?

What would you say to someone if you want to pay for their drinks? You're having drinks with one person and you want to pay. Or even with more than one person. You could say, I'll get this round.

Yeah, I'll get this round or let me get this one. Right. Often a round could be with more than one person. Right. And you got to be careful there because you don't know how many people are going in on the round.

Right. That's the thing is sometimes when I hear somebody say, I'll get this round, I'm like, oh, no, I was only going to have one drink, you know? Yeah. And then you feel like you have to get another drink and pay for everyone yourself for the next.

Yeah. So don't pressure anybody to to be, you know, make sure that everybody's in it for, you know, probably more than one drink. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so then the next one you could say is, let me get this one.

You can get the next, right? So yeah, the politics again of the bar. So we'll come back to this again, guys. But hopefully that gives you some hints that you can use as you're going into this holiday season, going to happy hours and holiday parties with your stat, with your colleagues and your friends.

So guys, let us know if you have any questions. Come back to allearsenglish.com. Go to episode 445 and type in your question. Michelle, let's wrap it up for today.

But thanks for hanging out. Thank you. Everybody stay safe. All right. Yeah. Talk to you soon, Michelle. Absolutely. Bye-bye. Bye. Michelle, I love the phrases for ordering a drink.

It's so subtle, but saying, Hey, can I get a cider? Or Hey, can I get the cider you have on tap? It's so much more casual and natural than I'll have a cider. Yeah.

Oh my gosh. Yes. And knowing what to say to pick up the bill is is also so key so my favorite one is this one's on me um yeah because if most people if multiple people have just ordered a drink and you say this and hand your card it's implied that you are buying the entire round um but what about if one friend just ordered a drink

Yeah, then that would mean you're buying just that one drink for them, right? So it's so important to know what is implied, depending on the phrases that you use, right? And there's just so much to know when it comes to being social this summer. So we are so glad that we were able to bring you this awesome episode with all of these great phrases for being successful at a happy hour.

Oh, definitely. But guys, make sure that you hit follow for the final installment of this series. So in part three, we are bringing you an episode with phrases that you can use to ask a coworker how a happy hour or other social event went. So guys, you don't want to miss this and we will see you at the next episode of the series.

That is so great because you do. That's such a great conversation topic. If you know someone went to a happy hour, went to some kind of social event, you want to ask them about it. So Michelle, I will see you there.

Very excited for that episode. All right, Aubrey. See you soon. Bye. Bye. Thank you for listening to Business English, a podcast just for you, the high achieving global professional.

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