Responsible Service of Alcohol certificate is a mandatory certificate for anyone serve alcohol in Australia. I know that, this has been explained in other website millions of time.

But do you know what is responsible service? and how responsible you are after you get the certificate and working in the bar.

Probably you will know all the theories at the RSA course. After I work at a bar for three years, according to my experience, two most important things for responsible service are: never sell alcohol to people under 18 years old and never sell alcohol to people who are drunk.

The only way to check if a person is under age is check their photo ID. One busy night at my bar, my workmate asked a guy for ID but she didn’t realise this guy bought a bottle of coke only. I found it is quite funny.

To tell if a person is drunk is a bit tricky. If the customer is suspicious and you are not confident to handle that, just ask your supervisor for help. Sometimes drunk people get very aggressive if you refuse to severe alcohol to them.

The other day while I was working at the bar, I was thinking why we cannot have alcohol sale machine like the soft drink serf service machine so the business owner can save a lot of wage. I think the biggest difference is machine can not tell a person is under age or drunk.

Luckily Australia has Responsible Service of Alcohol law, otherwise a lot of people working in the hosipitality industry will be unemployed.

Hope you find using my working experience to explain Responsible Service of Alcohol is more interesting and clear than the text book. 🙂