Every Spritz has a hidden cost: the time you spend elbow on the counter waiting to be served. This (utterly unscientific) calculator adds up all those waits across years of nights out and gives you a number that stings: the days of your life spent simply queuing at the bar.
How much of your life you've burned waiting at the bar, in brutally real numbers.
The number is startling because it shows how small dead times pile up. Twelve minutes of waiting feels like nothing, but multiplied by two nights a week and fifty-two weeks it becomes over twenty hours a year, and across a decade it turns into whole days. It's the same arithmetic as compound interest, just applied to time: it's not the single event that weighs on you, but how often it repeats.
The useful lesson isn't to stop going out, but to choose better: go at off-peak hours, get to know the bartender, or favour places that serve fast. Curiously, it's exactly the problem every operator tries to solve on the other side of the counter, where cutting wait times means serving more covers and turning costs over better. If that side intrigues you, take a look at the drink cost and Spritz cost calculators below: the same frequency that cost you days becomes revenue for a bar.
We multiply nights per week × 52 × minutes of waiting × years, then convert the total minutes into days. Ruthless arithmetic, nothing more.
It's a deliberately rough estimate made to make you laugh (and maybe book ahead). Your real wait varies with the venue, the hour and how much the bartender likes you.
A silly entertainment game. No years of life were actually harmed during this calculation.