Roughly 12 million people in Australia are in some sort of lockdown at the moment thanks to a grim outbreak of the coronavirus.
People in parts of New South Wales, the Northern Territory, Queensland and Western Australia have had to stay at home unless absolutely necessary, meaning many small businesses have closed.
Restaurants and cafes have been forced to only offer takeaway food and drink and other establishments have closed altogether.
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While many are looking forward to the day they can stand up and have a beer at the pub, there's one journalist who is hoping Aussies will turn their back on venues when their doors open up.
The award-winning Alice Clarke wrote an opinion piece for the Sydney Morning Herald urging people not to go back to the pub when lockdown ends because she reckons we're better than that.
"When we finally emerge from this pandemic fully vaccinated (probably some time around 2025 at this rate), let's not just go back to the way things were, but make society better," she wrote. "And let's start with pubs, because I think it's time we admit that they're just not all they're cracked up to be."
It didn't take long for Alice's work to do the rounds on social media and people were not happy.
Alice admits that she doesn't drink, but says she's been to enough post-work drinks to know that they don't offer much, at least for her.
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She added: "Having spent countless hours in these poorly lit, overly loud, perpetually sticky and ludicrously overpriced venues, I can understand why some people are driven to drink to get through it. There's only so many $7 substandard mixers from those mouldy taps in half-clean glasses you can have before the novelty wears off.
"While I understand that the music in these places is deliberately loud so you're forced to shout in each others ears, making your throat sore and another drink seem like a good choice, it means they don't exactly make great venues for conversation. Then again, drunk people are hardly good conversationalists (no matter how interesting they think the words they're slurring are), so that might be for the best."
Alice is hoping bars go down the route of offering something more fun for people who don't drink (like the non-alcoholic pubs that have opened up in Sydney and Melbourne) or that drinkers find something more fun to do.
Featured Image Credit: PATopics: Australia
