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" Buying a round for the house is best done late at night. Sober people don&amp;#039;t want you to buy them drinks. Sober people will think: &amp;quot;Who is this guy?&amp;quot; But you do this when everyone is already drunk? Appreciation will be deeply expressed. Drunk people are better equipped to handle spontaneous generosity because they&amp;#039;ve forgotten how to be skeptical. The point is, people should already be having fun. But be selective. You should buy a round for the whole bar no more than five times in your life. These moments should be as memorable for you as the recipients of your goodwill. So, some criteria: Good Reasons to Buy a Round for the Whole Bar: \u2022 You got a hole-in-one.  \u2022 You&amp;#039;re having a kid.  \u2022 You&amp;#039;ve inherited a great sum of money and enough time has passed that you are no longer grieving.  \u2022 You won the lottery.  \u2022 You pitched a no-hitter. In softball.  \u2022 The diagnosis was incorrect.  \u2022 You&amp;#039;re on a third date with someone fun but frustratingly inaccessible and this seems like the kind of thing that will impress.  \u2022 You&amp;#039;ve been released from prison.  \u2022 You&amp;#039;re about to enter prison.  Bad Reasons to Buy a Round for the Whole Bar: \u2022 You just got laid off.  \u2022 Your ex is having a kid.  \u2022 You&amp;#039;re unbelievably drunk and have lost all sense of personal finance.  \u2022 You want to impress your father-in-law. (Never out-spend your father-in-law.)  \u2022 Some magazine told you that this is one of the things a man should do before he dies.  \u2022 It&amp;#039;s not your credit card.  The Economics of It: You don&amp;#039;t want to spend more than $200 on this. So, doing the math, you want to make sure there are 30 to 40 people in the bar and you want to make sure they enjoy drinking beer, which costs less than, say, imported whiskey. Fewer than 10 people and the gesture will seem hollow \u2014 to the drinkers, to the bartender, to you. More than 30, and things get pricey. You&amp;#039;re paying for the thrill of public response to your generosity. And the going rate for that is around $200.  (Spend more, we don&amp;#039;t care. Maybe you just got a raise. Maybe you just found a $100 bill on the sidewalk outside. Maybe you&amp;#039;re a great deal wealthier than we are.) Two Methods: Either you scream at the top of your lungs: &amp;quot;Next round&amp;#039;s on me!&amp;quot; Or you quietly say to the bartender: &amp;quot;Put everyone&amp;#039;s next round on my tab.&amp;quot; With the first approach, you will be the focus of an immediate upsurge of delight and appreciation. The main swell of joy will last around 30 seconds and then there will be little bursts of appreciation after that, for as long as you stay in the bar. And there are few interactions more satisfying than the appreciative nod-and-response between strangers.  Now That We Think of It, a Third Method: There&amp;#039;s another way you could buy everyone a round in a bar. You could leave some cash with the bartender on your way out and tell him to use it to buy people&amp;#039;s drinks. Lone Ranger-style. Anonymous. Which is the purest form of generosity of all. In general, we support anonymous gestures such as this. But this, this seems empty. Because you&amp;#039;re only being generous, nothing else. This act should be a generous and gracious and sociable. And you should be its emblem. In a bar people want to know who their friends are. Even brand-new ones. Especially brand-new ones.  This is the fourth in an ongoing series of instructions, or at least suggestions, regarding how to comport yourself while drinking. Need advice? Have some of your own? E-mail us at eatlikeaman@esquire.com, and stay safe out there. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/food/how-to/a8273/how-to-buy-a-round-082010/>