Cheers to the honest drinkers – people you can trust

If you want to know whether you can trust a man, ask him if he drinks. If the answer is yes, you most definitely can. But if the answer is no, be very careful.

Drinking men – and women, of course – are, in fact, the only people to be trusted completely.

Proof? That’s easy. Look at all the honesty bars worldwide.

For those who don’t know, an honesty bar is an unattended bar where the onus of payment is left entirely to the patron.

And it works. You take whatever you want to drink, then leave your money in the box provided. No barman, no tab, no stealing.

Now, imagine a world where all of us are drinkers.

We could have honesty supermarkets. Imagine walking in, filling your trolley with all your groceries, then doing your own check-out and swiping your card.

For us drinkers, heck, we already pay for our dop on the principle of honesty. Of course we’d do the same for a loaf and a litre of milk.

Or imagine an honesty clothing store. For starters, they’d have no need for all those security tags that poke holes in all the new garments. And they wouldn’t need to count the items taken into the fitting rooms.

What about an honesty car dealer? They could just leave the keys in all the vehicles and us drinkers could go and take our pick. No paperwork and credit checks and all that rigmarole that makes purchasing a car so time-consuming. All that will be needed is for the buyer to fill in a debit order form.

Simple and honest – that’s the way to go.

All of the above can work if you make speciality stores reserved exclusively for drinkers. And to enforce this, entrance would have to dependent on a positive breathalyser test.

The ultimate for me would be an honesty toll road. Toll fees could be drastically reduced as there would be no administrative costs, no non-payers.

Problem is, the teetotallers might crash the party and cause chaos.

Maybe that’s what’s killing e-tolls – too many sober people on our highways.

Danie Toerien

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