Default ice barriers between strangers can ruin an entire business.

All of us have seen it at one point or another. You frequent a certain bar to see a certain bartender that you are friends with and have grown attached to. It may even be one of those "bar & grill" types of facilities where you can have lunch or dinner, like at a restaurant. Then one day you go there, you see a stranger behind the bar or serving your regular table, and then learn that the one you're there to see doesn't work there anymore, and then you leave.

Later, you learn that many other regulars have stopped going there as well. And then months later, you hear the place closed it's doors and the next time you go past it, there's a "For Lease" sign on it.

What you have seen is a place that has become another victim of the default ice barrier that exists between all strangers, including bartenders and servers. And things like that are very common occurances when a server or bartender stops working at a particular bar or restaurant, including when it's one of those "bar & grill" type facilities, and the regulars stop going there as well, unwilling to break the ice again with a stranger server or bartender, and in many cases, the new stranger bartender/server isn't as friendly or as attentive as the previous one was.

And the lion's share of a bar/restaurant's business comes from regulars that frequent the place, especially those that go there to get served by a particular server or bartender they like. When especially a server or bartender that is liked by many regulars stops working at the bar or restaurant frequented by those regulars, the place will lose a lot of business. Those regulars are not going to stick around and break the ice again with some stranger bartender/server or wait to see if their favorite bartender/server comes back. More often than not, those regulars end up scattering into the four winds like cottonwood seeds.