Thursday, March 21, 2024

This one should get some "corrective action"

In Livonia, Michigan, a 12 year old boy ordered a "virgin daiquiri", but was served the alcoholic version instead.  Despite the fact that the young man only drank part of it, he apparently woke up with a splitting hangover.  How so?  Well, the daiquiri is one of many sweetened drinks with a typical alcohol content below 20% that does not "burn" as it goes down.  

I can see a couple of corrective actions here, one for the family, and a few for the restaurant.  For the family, it's probably a good idea to not order the "virgin" type of drink, because somebody back in the bar is going to eventually get confused and include the booze.

For the restaurant, there are two major corrective actions.  First of all, give the drink another name so the wait-staff doesn't confuse it with the alcoholic version, and second, take a very close look at how strong the bartenders are making them.  To get to the level of excessive drinking that would cause a hangover, a 75-100 lb boy of that age would need 3-4 shots of rum in the drink.  Given that the lad didn't drink the whole thing, that means most likely 5 shots of rum  (or more) was in the drink, which is over twice the strength of a standard daiquiri.

And that means that the "Outhouse Steakback" was squandering a fair amount of money on extra rum (at least if it wasn't total rotgut stuff), and was also risking having patrons hitting the roads with a couple of sheets to the wind.  Four to five drinks gets a 210 lb man (like myself) to the legal limit for driving, and....let's be honest....the daiquiri is very often a woman's drink.  A woman of 140 lbs is going to be at about twice the legal limit with that dose of alcohol.

I'm all for the responsible use of alcohol, but quite frankly, this isn't it.  Hopefully the family and the restaurant learn their lessons before someone gets seriously hurt.  Getting to know lawyers (and the police) on a professional basis is no fun.

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