[lit-ideas] Re: Yost's offer

David Ritchie wondered
I was wondering if people have interesting things to say about how one offers to buy someone a drink and what the meanings of such offers are. When I was at a conference a while back, I reached my alcohol limit before another fellow from Scotland did. He had bought the last round and so I offered to stand him a drink, but I said I'd had enough and was thinking of hie'ing me off to bed. He was insulted, and on reflection I can see why. What my gesture said to him was, "You keep drinking alone, I'm off to the moral high ground." The polite move would have been to order a round and just have a glass of water or a soft drink myself, or just wound up the conversation.
I should of course have just said no I haven't. However, I'll uninterestingly report that I seldom find myself drinking with people whom I don't know well enough that the etiquette of how to go about buying them a drink after they've bought me one isn't appealed to to settle things. At 'no host bars,' which open at the end of the day during philosophy conferences circulation is the thing. Never talk with one person for as long as it takes to finish a drink: there's always some more famous person visible over one's shoulder across the room. 'Oh, you'll have to excuse me; I see someone I really need to talk to…sorry!' 

Robert Paul,
solitary drinker
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