A common theory when ordering any drink with “light ice” is that the person will receive more liquid in the glass without paying for it.
One bartender, named Al, took to TikTok to reveal his reaction to customers making this same assumption by ordering their drinks this way. “How customers expect us to react when they ask for less ice,” he reads in the text that appears on the screen in his video as he acts out the scenario.
Throughout the clip, the waiter is overly sarcastic when he responds to a fake customer, saying, “You're right. Yes, I was going to fill this with ice and give you less alcohol, but now…”
Al then says that because the customer asked him to “definitely give him more alcohol,” he jokes that the customer must be “really smart” because that was the first time anyone had mentioned that to him.
A coworker can then be heard in the background asking why the ice in the customer's glass is so low before Al tells him that the customer “got it.” The coworker also agreed that the client was “smart” and shouldn't let people know the “secret.”
As Al states in a later video, this is not an entirely original idea. For example, in February 2023, a bartender shared a video from work in which a customer does not order ice and is then disappointed by the amount of alcohol he receives.
“Just because you say there's no ice doesn't mean you're going to consume more alcohol,” the bartender stated in this video. He then added that, if someone wants more alcohol, he should simply order a double.
Al's TikTok went on to receive over a million views, and commenters were divided between people who support less ice and those who don't.
Some commenters gave suggestions for why customers might not want a lot of ice in their drinks.
“I don't want more alcohol. “I want less ice,” wrote one commenter.
Another agreed, writing: “Some of us just don't want the ice in our drink to melt and ruin the drink.”
“I don't like watered down liquors, nothing to do with less or more alcohol. a little condescending,” a third person wrote in the comments section.
Some other commenters were in favor of Al's idea.
“I'm seeing these comments, I was a bartender,” explained one user. “When they ask you this, they almost always give you back your drink for not being strong enough.”
“Don't listen to anyone in the comments, I've been told many times that they ask for less ice to get more liquor but they just give them more mixer,” offered a second.
Al then posted a follow-up video explaining why he made his original video to respond to all the comments.
“The video was for people who ask for less ice, and then say their drink isn't strong enough, and then they try to do this thing where they try to get me to serve them more alcohol,” Al said. “I've been doing this for a while.” . This has happened before. It's an old waiter joke: I'm not reinventing the wheel here.
“For people who have sensitive teeth, who just don't like ice… who don't want ice hitting their face, this video is not for you,” he added.
