In the news from my hometown of Livonia, Michigan:
12-year-old served alcohol at Outback Steakhouse in Livonia
From the story:
The bartender confirmed that they had made a big mistake – they added alcohol to the slushy drink, Collins said.
“It was supposed to be a virgin daiquiri, but it says a daiquiri,” she added, with the receipt in hand.
It’s unclear if the order was put in wrong (as “daiquiri” instead of “virgin daiquiri”) or if the bartender made it wrong. It sounds like the order was put in wrong by the server if the receipt said “daiquiri.”
If the bartender thought they were making a virgin daiquiri, it’s possible that they’d grab the bottle of rum out of sheer muscle memory. They should probably taste the drink to confirm that it doesn’t taste like it has rum. Should the server double-check that in the name of caution before serving it?
They should use “the straw test” method for every drink they serve, just to check the quality in general?
Again from the story:
“We take this situation very seriously and are thankful that the child involved was not seriously harmed. We have taken the appropriate disciplinary action, and all our bar and staff has been retrained to ensure this does not happen again,” according to the restaurant.
“I just hope they don’t make the mistake again,” Collin said.
I’m always skeptical of “retraining” as a countermeasure. The servers and bartenders know not to serve alcohol to minors. This isn’t a “knowledge-based mistake” — it was an execution mistake.
It’s probably difficult to mistake-proof the order entry system to prevent putting in “daiquiri” instead of the virgin drink. Instead of re-training, maybe they need additional processes (or new processes) put in place to deal with the ordering of any “virgin” alcohol-free drink like a virgin Bloody Mary.
How would you design those bar workflows to reduce or eliminate the risk of serving a drink with alcohol to a minor (or an adult who ordered such a drink).
The episode reminded me of a story from my childhood. My younger sister, who might have been ten years old at the time, ordered a virgin daiquiri when we were on a family vacation. A regular daiquiri was made by mistake… but the server tasted it and caught the error before it would have been served to my sister. I’m surprised the server even admitted the “near miss” mistake!
