Bar Buttons

I come from Ireland where the national pasttime is drinking alcohol in crowded bars (or pubs, as we call them). They can be very full at the weekend and sometimes getting served is a problem. On a typical night, you could be at the bar five or six times, each time for at least fiveminutes. That's at least half an hour waiting at the bar!

It's Friday night, you're out with friends having a laugh and meeting nice young ladies (the kind who like fat, bald men in their thirties...). But the whole mood is destroyed when you got to the bar to get a round in and find yourself standing there for ten minutes without service.

Bar staff are undertrained and overworked and can't always tell who has been waiting longest to be served. So what can you do? Get angry and irritable? Huff and puff? Shout "Oi!" at the staff? None of these tactics seem to work, and climbing over the bar to get your own often results in the night ending sooner than you had planned.

No-one likes to be kept waiting at the bar while their friends hit on the little redhead, and no-one likes to "line-up" for drinks at a bar. Ticketing won't really work in a bar, either.

The solution: bar buttons. Get to the bar, and push a button. A series of small lights on the inside of the bar let the next free staff member know exactly who should be served next - only one light is lit at a time. As the barman serves you, he pushes the button again which deactivates your light and causes the next light in line to come on.

Easy to use, and relatively cheap to install. No more frustration as the young spotty guy who has scored with the little redhead gets served before you - you know for a fact he was in before you (in both senses of the word).