Why sofas in pubs need to be banned
The constant decline of the pub in the UK is viewed as a real social and cultural issue. But one thing that could help is banning them from having so many damn sofas!
If you’re part of any left-leaning, liberal-minded, or just plain “not an out and out fascist” community online, a fun game that pops up fairly regularly is “What’s your most right-wing opinion?”
I say it’s fun, and I mean that in the neuropsychological sense. Human’s aren’t pure logic machines, we’re creatures of flux and chaos. As a result, nobody is entirely 100% consistent with their political ideology.
This doesn’t just apply to left-wing/leaning people, of course. It’s universal. As evidenced by the cliché of clearly racist people saying “I’m not racist, some of my best friends are [insert loathed ethnicity here]”.
The human brain is very good at compartmentalising, meaning we can sustain views and beliefs and assumptions that are, from a purely logical perspective, incompatible.
Which means many progressive, liberal, ‘right on’ people can end up genuinely thinking “Freedom of expression and individual rights are a fundamental requirement of any decent human society… except for this particular thing, that I personally hate”.
And yes, that applies to me too. My own most totalitarian, right-wing opinion is, as the title of this post suggests, that no pub should have sofas. Or armchairs. Or futons. Or beanbags.
Basically, anything which involves reclining, laying back, on a soft, yielding surface? No, get rid of all that. By force if necessary. Like in prohibition times, but when the police forces storm the pub, they’re looking for the couches people are sat in, rather than the booze they’re holding.
Why would anyone believe something so ludicrous? Well, I’ll TELL you!
Sofas work against the point of pubs
Just to clarify, I don’t have any beef with sofas in and of themselves. I like a sofa, they fulfil an important role. People having somewhere they can sit back and relax is a boon to any living space.
That’s the key, though; sit back and relax. That’s all well and good in your own home. But at the pub, you’re there to engage, to socialise.
And as any introvert will tell you, socialising is work. It requires neurologically-taxing effort. If you don’t want to invest that, fair enough. Going to the pub isn’t mandatory, and there’s nothing wrong with pursuing other socialising options.
But if you do go to a pub, then you’ve entered into an implicit contract to engage in the norms of the context, no? Imagine being noise-sensitive and going to a Heavy Metal gig, then expecting there to be a soundproof chillout room for you. That’d be silly.
Sofas in pubs are, I’d argue, essentially the same thing. You’re there to sit forward and engage, not sit back and relax. Reclining in softness means you’re more likely to be relaxed, drowsy, disengaged.
And pubs involve drinking, and occasionally eating1. And while nobody seems willing to admit it, those things are much harder to do when you’re in a sofa next to a knee-high table. It involves a lot of leaning forward and back and not knowing where to put your drink, or your hands.
And while the 90s sitcom F*R*I*E*N*D*S implied otherwise, it’s much harder to socialise when you’re all sat on sofas. You’re reclining, you’re drowsy, you’re having to turn your head a lot. All minor issues in isolation, sure, but in unison they make it trickier to produce free-flowing discourse, like how you can’t accelerate to full speed when driving on a bumpy pothole-ridden dirt track.
The point is, if you’re going to a pub, you presumably want an easy, relaxed, alcohol-infused social exchange with friends. This is much harder if you’re sat in a sofa the whole night.
Sofas reduce accessibility
Even if you love sitting on a sofa in a pub, you surely can’t deny the following statement.
A sofa is a lot bigger than a chair. As in, the hardback, dining-table-esque chair you’d find in most normal pubs. It’s certainly much bigger than a stool. As in, barstool. Not the ‘human effluent’ sort. Although a sofa is definitely bigger than that.
The point is, sofas take up a lot more space in pubs than the usual chairs or stools. So, the more sofas there are in a pub, the less people can can fit in there in total. Which isn’t great for a any pub.
That’s not even including the extra hazards they present to wheelchair users, or people with other mobility issues. A waste-high upholstered armrest clearly takes up more room than a straight chair back, or the legs of a stool.
Overall, the modern pub would logically want as many people as possible to patronise it. The more sofas they have, the lower this number would be. Which is bad for business.
Of course, a lot of publicans may believe that having more sofas will tempt more people in. So it’s a chicken/egg situation. Personally, I feel like that’s akin to putting more cheeseburgers in the fish tanks at your poorly-attended aquarium.
Because people like cheeseburgers, right? So the more of them you put in, the more people will come. The fact that they’re completely incompatible with the format doesn’t matter. Apparently.
Sofas introduce needless hierarchies
One of the best things about pubs is, they tend to be egalitarian. Everyone is there to drink and socialise and be merry. And a lowly street cleaner can sit next to a CEO and neither will think anything of it2.
I’d argue that an important aspect of this is that nobody in a standard pub is able to obviously ‘assert’ their position, via the furniture.
Sofas change all that. Few, if any, pubs have nothing but sofas. Which suggests they know they’re a bad idea. But the pubs that do have sofas, they invariably have a few. It’s never only sofas.
This is a problem because, even though they are, as I’ve said repeatedly, a shit addition to pubs that achieve nothing, most people would still rather sit on a sofa than a firmer straight-backed chair. Which means sofas quickly give rise to a ‘haves v have nots’ mentality.
Basically, when a group of people end up in the same place where tribalism is invoked, trouble occurs. And any decent pub wouldn’t want that at all.
Conflict of interest
I grew up in a classic working-class South Wales valleys pub. There were no sofas in it, because it was the 1980s and such a thing would have seemed baffling to all and sundry. Therefore, I like pubs, and wish they’d confirm to my nostalgic notion of how they should be.
Also, I’ve been frantically busy this week, hence I’m doing a post about something so inconsequential.
Maybe buy my latest book? For no reason, I’d just like it if you did.
Unless you’re one of those maniacs who insists ‘eating is cheating’.
I appreciate that most millionaire/billionaire CEOs wouldn’t go to a pub which had the working classes as patrons, but if they did…
Sofas discriminate against those of us who are aged and struggle to get up when backside is so near the floor. Thus could lead to embarrassing situations if a crane is not available.
Another problem that interferes with the good work of pubs is those that still have 'only table service' which reduces human interaction especially stopping the meeting of strangers.
Fine words.