Campaign group launches bid to ban Gen Z queuing up in single file for drinks at pub

A campaign group has launched a wave of resistance to stop Gen Z boozers queuing single file for a drink at the pub.

Older drinkers hate the trait because it was a rule designed to ensure social distancing during the pandemic. They say younger drinkers, many of whom first began to drink socially during the pandemic, appear to have maintained the habits. Pictures on social media show lines of drinkers snaking back towards the back of pubs and beer halls, with the length of bars left empty.

Such is the extent of the phenomenon, that a campaign has been launched to educate younger drinkers on how to approach the bar. The group Pub Queues is leading the fight against the trend by calling out infractions and praising establishments challenging such behaviour. The campaign states its purpose is to “end the recent phenomenon of queuing single file in pubs”.

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It says: “We queue for the bus, or for the checkout, not at bars.” It champions establishments that put up signs to discourage drinkers from forming single-file lines. One notice posted reads “Please stop queuing in a line. Come to the bar”, while another sign states “If there is a single file queue in front of you, walk straight past it and go to the bar. This is not a Post Office, there is no need to queue like one,” another reads.

Oisin Rogers, the owner of the Devonshire pub, which is considered London’s busiest after opening last year, said Gen Z were the main culprits. Mr Rogers said: “When people became 18 years old and they were under lockdown restrictions, they wouldn’t have been in a proper drinking environment before and wouldn’t have had that culture.

“I think it’s a lot of Gen Z who are doing it because of the hangover from Covid with the two-metre rule.”

Generation Z, or Gen Z, is the generation of people born between the mid-to-late 1990s and early 2010s. Some say it specifically refers to those born between 1997 to 2010. They are the generation after Millennials and before Generation Alpha.