If you minesweep, you’ll have no friends when you leave uni

Because who can’t splash out £5 on three VKs


You’re tired, broke, and your mates have forced you out to a night out you can neither afford nor want to go on. The fiver for your ticket has set you back already, then there’s the £2 taxi there, and you definitely didn’t drink enough in pres.

Solution? Cue the part where most people turn to minesweeping. Urban Dictionary defines it as “The act of stealing, appropriating, or simply picking up an unattended drink, with the intention of acquiring it as your own”.

But when does minesweeping get boring? You’ve made your friends, you’ve established your close circle, why still do it? These are the people that stop getting invited after a while, the person who simply ruins the night because they are such a liability, and no one wants to take care of them after they’ve necked those three random drinks on the side. You start being invited to less, losing your mates because of it, you know the drill. All because you can’t pay that 99p for a jägerbomb.

Someone has paid a good £2 for their double, which you’ve now nabbed on your way to the loo. We justify it with “well if they didn’t want it they wouldn’t have left it there” or “well there’s not much left they’re obviously done with it”.

Minesweeping is most common in freshers; there’s the lad who tries to impress the girl he’s been eyeing on the other side of the bar, seeing a drink by his side and chinning the whole thing in an attempt to look cool. Then there’s the rugby fresher who will chin anything and everything he finds, no matter what it is.

Two doubles – £5, can’t complain at all

Yes, the stereotype for students is that we are financially broken, barely able to pay our bills, but let’s be honest, the reality is, while we’re all broke as hell to an extent, we can afford those 99p jägerbombs, those three for £5 VKs and those £1 Becks. Yes, maybe buying one turns to the next and maybe another, but you literally can afford to pay a pound for a drink. Don’t play on the stereotype.

Secondly, why the hell aren’t you smashing pres? It’s a good two or three hour period for you to absolutely destroy that bottle of glens, chin your pints and longarm your VKs. Most of the time you’re attending some distant mates birthday, in a room full of people you don’t know. Cue nervous drinking and shots, shots, shots. Then you don’t need to stoop so low as to minesweep.

Forever guarding your drinks with your life x

“Minesweeping has glandular fever written all over it” Faye tells the Tab, “it’s just grim as fuck.”

“I genuinely minesweep every night I’m out”, says Meg, “I know it’s gross but drunk me doesn’t care, she just wants a free drink.”

If you minesweep once or twice then fine. But make it a habit and you end becoming the person no one invites to birthdays and no one wants to stay in touch with after graduation.