Is standing in pubs underrated? Well, not underrated precisely but is it not quite the evil it is made out to be? Yes one goes to the pub to relax after a hard day/week at work/arsing about online, and relaxation is best attempted with one’s bum comfortably on a seat. But let us face the realities of the modern world – gone are the days when pubgoers, or certainly the pubgoers we all associate with, retired to the pub after a day’s backbreaking labour in field or forge. Not to put too fine a point on it, we already spend all day sitting on our arses: standing should from an energy-level point of view not be much of a hardship.
Also a standing group has greater mobility and flexibility, especially in conversational terms. This becomes especially key when a pubgoing group is made up of both regular drinking comrades and newer arrivals whose conversational skills may be – to put it crudely – lacking. Escape is much easier in a standing situation. The greatest disadvantage of standing is beer-arm fatigue and the consequent rapid drinking, and for this reason it is surely still preferable to sit. But standing in pubs, even for quite a long time, is no barrier to an enjoyable evening.