Ordering a Mocktail so you can Hang Out in a Bar in the Late Afternoon

An underused variant on buying a coffee so you can hang around in the coffee shop waiting for something. Find yourself arriving early for a movie? Not enough time to drive home from work and then all the way back to the bowling alley around the corner from your office? If it’s late afternoon, you can go to a bar and order a soda water with a twist of lime, sit at a table in the dim coolness feeling like Philip Marlowe or something. They can’t kick you out if you have a drink.

This technique really shines when you’ve shown up too early for a rep screening of a movie on a school night.