What if, we thought, we each bought a glass, and made sure that was our only purchase at the bar, and put that on our room account. We could fudge the dates, and put an extra day stay. My colleague said he knew the payroll woman and this probably would work.
First problem though, we had no idea what Armagnac tasted like, how could we tell if it was good if we had never tried it before? At this time the bartender came by and asked what we wanted. We thought, lets order a 'good' one and pay cash, then we order the fancy one for the room. So we asked him for a 'good one'. He poured us one and showed us the bottle, then left.
We looked into the book for it, and found it was $40 a glass. Well whisky was around $4, and Jack was like $5, for comparison. That was fairly pricey at the time for our own cash, we weren't that well paid, but we did say a good one. We smelled and tasted it. It smelled good, and it was so smooth. We savored it.
The bartender came back, asked, "How is it?". We said, "Its really good, but... $40 a glass? I know we said a good one but ...". Bartender stood back, "I would never do that to you sirs!". Punched the drink into the computer, it was $4, same as well drinks.
Honestly, the next sip I took was harsh, and had a bad aftertaste. It completely changed just knowing it was the same price as the cheapest swill you could get. Now the bartender could have given us a discount, but what it meant for us was that the $350 one was a waste of effort. We would have no idea if it was good or not.