I started a book club in February 2023 and since the beginning I pushed for the rule that if you don’t come, you pay for everyone’s drinks next time.
I’m very surprised that in that particular form that worked, because the extremely obvious way to postpone (or, in the end, avoid) the penalty is to not go next time either (or, in the end, ever again). I guess if there’s agreement that pretty close to 100% attendance is the norm, as in if you can only show up 60% of the time don’t bother showing up at all, then it could work. That would make sense for something like a D&D or other tabletop RPG session, or certain forms of competition like, I dunno, a table tennis league, where someone being absent even one time really does cause quite significant harm to the event. But it eliminates a chunk of the possible attendees entirely right from the start, and I imagine would make the members feel quite constrained by the club, particularly if it doesn’t appear to be really required by the event itself. And those don’t seem good for getting people to show up, either.
That’s not to say the analogy overall doesn’t work. I’d imagine requiring people to buy a ticket to go to poker night, with that ticket also covering the night’s first ante / blind, does work to increase attendance, and for the reasons you state (and not just people being foolish about “sunk costs”). It’s just payment of the penalty after the fact, and presumably with no real enforcement, that I don’t get. And if you say it works for your book club, I guess probably it does and I’m wrong somehow. But in any case, I notice that I am confused.
I’m very surprised that in that particular form that worked, because the extremely obvious way to postpone (or, in the end, avoid) the penalty is to not go next time either (or, in the end, ever again).
This is definitely based on two assumptions that I mention in the article:
Let’s assume everyone who joins generally enjoys it.
Just like in Poker the negative impact should be small. There is a reason why blinds and antes are small amounts compared to your entire stack.
If people don’t really want to attend or the costs of the “blinds” are huge then things are different.
That being said, you raise a good point. I can elaborate a little about the book club:
You can cancel “for free” if you do it sufficiently in advance (in theory 7 days, in practice 5 seems ok). This allows postponing if too many people cancel.
You can completely skip any book you don’t find interesting (books are chosen via voting so only books that are generally popular make the cut).
There are now 10 attendees so paying for drinks is getting expensive. We are discussing how to keep it simple (e.g. collecting money to later spend it seems annoying) but also reduce the costs.
In practice everyone ends up paying occasionally so it evens out.
Some attendees feel ambivalent about the rule because it’s constraining as you wrote. As I mentioned, it’s important to be careful (and communicate well) about such things.
Ah, okay, some of those seem to me like they’d change things quite a lot. In particular, a week’s notice is usually possible for major plans (going out of town, a birthday or anniversary, concert that night only, etc.) and being able to skip books that don’t interest one also removes a major class of reason not to go. The ones I can still see are (1) competing in-town plans, (2) illness or other personal emergency, and (3) just don’t feel like going out tonight. (1) is what you’re trying to avoid, of course. On (3) I can see your opinion going either way. It does legitimately happen sometimes that one is too tired for whatever plans one had to seem appealing, but it’s legitimate to say that if that happens to you so often that you mind the cost of the extra rounds of drinks you end up buying, maybe you’re not a great member for that club. (2) seems like a real problem, and I’m gonna guess that you actually wouldn’t make people pay for drinks if they said they missed because they had COVID, there was a death in the family, etc.?
I’m gonna guess that you actually wouldn’t make people pay for drinks if they said they missed because they had COVID, there was a death in the family, etc.?
This is a tough call. How do you determine what is a “legitimately bad enough” case to miss the event? The examples you mention are clearly bad enough but there are other situation where it’s much more personal. If I’m feeling low on energy is that a choice I am making or an unavoidable fact about my metabolism? You would have to set up some kind of tribunal or voting for deciding on these cases. That’s a lot of effort and would only create bad vibes. So no, if you don’t come you pay, no matter the reason. However, enforcement is lax. Mostly it’s up to the people themselves to say “Yeah, today is my turn since two weeks ago I couldn’t make it”. If someone considers their case to be special they can easily get away with not paying and in all likelihood nobody would even notice let alone question it.
I’m very surprised that in that particular form that worked, because the extremely obvious way to postpone (or, in the end, avoid) the penalty is to not go next time either (or, in the end, ever again). I guess if there’s agreement that pretty close to 100% attendance is the norm, as in if you can only show up 60% of the time don’t bother showing up at all, then it could work. That would make sense for something like a D&D or other tabletop RPG session, or certain forms of competition like, I dunno, a table tennis league, where someone being absent even one time really does cause quite significant harm to the event. But it eliminates a chunk of the possible attendees entirely right from the start, and I imagine would make the members feel quite constrained by the club, particularly if it doesn’t appear to be really required by the event itself. And those don’t seem good for getting people to show up, either.
That’s not to say the analogy overall doesn’t work. I’d imagine requiring people to buy a ticket to go to poker night, with that ticket also covering the night’s first ante / blind, does work to increase attendance, and for the reasons you state (and not just people being foolish about “sunk costs”). It’s just payment of the penalty after the fact, and presumably with no real enforcement, that I don’t get. And if you say it works for your book club, I guess probably it does and I’m wrong somehow. But in any case, I notice that I am confused.
This is definitely based on two assumptions that I mention in the article:
If people don’t really want to attend or the costs of the “blinds” are huge then things are different.
That being said, you raise a good point. I can elaborate a little about the book club:
You can cancel “for free” if you do it sufficiently in advance (in theory 7 days, in practice 5 seems ok). This allows postponing if too many people cancel.
You can completely skip any book you don’t find interesting (books are chosen via voting so only books that are generally popular make the cut).
There are now 10 attendees so paying for drinks is getting expensive. We are discussing how to keep it simple (e.g. collecting money to later spend it seems annoying) but also reduce the costs.
In practice everyone ends up paying occasionally so it evens out.
Some attendees feel ambivalent about the rule because it’s constraining as you wrote. As I mentioned, it’s important to be careful (and communicate well) about such things.
Ah, okay, some of those seem to me like they’d change things quite a lot. In particular, a week’s notice is usually possible for major plans (going out of town, a birthday or anniversary, concert that night only, etc.) and being able to skip books that don’t interest one also removes a major class of reason not to go. The ones I can still see are (1) competing in-town plans, (2) illness or other personal emergency, and (3) just don’t feel like going out tonight. (1) is what you’re trying to avoid, of course. On (3) I can see your opinion going either way. It does legitimately happen sometimes that one is too tired for whatever plans one had to seem appealing, but it’s legitimate to say that if that happens to you so often that you mind the cost of the extra rounds of drinks you end up buying, maybe you’re not a great member for that club. (2) seems like a real problem, and I’m gonna guess that you actually wouldn’t make people pay for drinks if they said they missed because they had COVID, there was a death in the family, etc.?
This is a tough call. How do you determine what is a “legitimately bad enough” case to miss the event? The examples you mention are clearly bad enough but there are other situation where it’s much more personal. If I’m feeling low on energy is that a choice I am making or an unavoidable fact about my metabolism? You would have to set up some kind of tribunal or voting for deciding on these cases. That’s a lot of effort and would only create bad vibes. So no, if you don’t come you pay, no matter the reason. However, enforcement is lax. Mostly it’s up to the people themselves to say “Yeah, today is my turn since two weeks ago I couldn’t make it”. If someone considers their case to be special they can easily get away with not paying and in all likelihood nobody would even notice let alone question it.