Man leaves drink unattended while he goes to restroom. Then the bartender does something that shocks him: ‘Men, we have to be better’

“Watch your drink” is a piece of advice overwhelmingly aimed at women. Men, on the other hand, are rarely conditioned along the same lines.

But a small, unexpected moment at a bar is now prompting one man to ask a simple question: why?

‘She Sees Me Leaving and Covers My Beer for Me'

Communication coach Dan (@divergentdialogue) shares a few seconds' worth of footage from a bar. His video has since accumulated more than 384,000 views.

The footage features Dan's beer, sitting on top of a bar table, covered by a coaster. Dan overlays a short paragraph of text onto the video.

“I'm sitting at the bar by myself and need to use the restroom,” Dan writes. “I want the bartender to know I'm not running out on the bill, so I leave my card. She sees me leaving and covers my beer for me. Men, we have to be better.”

In his caption, Dan reflects further.

“It never occurred to me to cover my drink, but she unfortunately knows better and acted with kindness to someone far less vulnerable than she,” he writes. “Why can't men do the same when it's so much more needed?”

Dan's thoughts on safety arrive in the wake of the “Cornell 7” case dominating headlines. It's no surprise, then, that safety remains at the forefront of many people's minds.

What Does Data Say About Spiking?

Women are more likely to be victims of roofieing, with men being overwhelmingly identified as perpetrators. However, these are broader patterns, not rules.

A 2021 YouGov survey of 1,693 British adults, reproduced in a U.K. Parliament Home Affairs Committee report, found 11% of women and 6% of men said they had personally had a drink spiked at some point. This already indicates male victimization happens, although it's less common.

A separate study, analyzing police records through freedom-of-information requests, reviewed 437 needle-spiking incidents where victim sex was recorded. It found 86% of victims were women and 14% were men. Of the only 25 suspects actually identified in that dataset, every single one was a man—regardless of whether the victim was male or female.

A peer-reviewed analysis of Reddit posts about drink spiking upheld these statistical trends as well. It also found that men who were spiked often assumed they were not the intended target. 

“Overwhelmingly, victim-survivors of [alcohol and other drug-facilitated sexual violence] are female, and the perpetrator is male and known to the victim,” the analysis found. “A common narrative in the data was that men were not the intended target of the drink spiking, but inadvertently consumed spiked drinks meant for a female partner or friend.”

But protecting a person's drink isn't exclusive to one gender or the other. And as Dan notes, it's a kind courtesy that's not often thought about.

@divergentdialogue

Subplot News reached out to Dan via email.

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