''So what's your story?''

''I don't have a story. I'm just a girl in a bar.''

''I'm just a guy in a bar.''

-- Dr. Meredith Grey and Dr. McDreamy upon meeting for the first time at The Emerald City Bar in Grey's Anatomy.

Happy Hour -- once a term reserved for U.S. Navy men in the 1920s to signify that a sailor was slightly drunk, and therefore happy -- has become one of the most ubiquitous phrases ever. There's even a new TV sitcom called Happy Hour, for those who prefer a screen scene instead of a bar scene.

We set out to find some of the more promising happy hours in South Florida and found the after-work cocktail custom to be quite an anthropological phenomenon filled with verbal miscues, battles of the sexes and great expectations -- sometimes met and sometimes not.

At one swanky Wednesday night happy hour we found women socializing on one side of the bar while the men hung out on the other side, reminding us of our seventh-grade school dance.

What this reveals about the modern happy hour, says author Nancy Slotnick, is profound. Slotnick, a Harvard graduate with a degree in psychological anthropology and the author of Turn Your Cablight On: Get Your Dream Man in 6 Months or Less, says, ``Relationships are all about having fun. But women don't get that across and they take it so seriously, and that's why men and women end up standing on opposite sides of the bar and not talking to each other.''

As the one-time owner of Drip Cafe, a New York City coffee bar/dating service, Slotnick has had a hand in thousands of introductions and hundreds of marriages. While discussing the happy hour ritual, Slotnick applies her ''cablight'' theory -- derived from New York City cabbies who turn their lights on to indicate they're available.

''It comes down to very simple things,'' she says. ``Eye contact is key. Smile with your eyes. The whole cablight thing is to let the guy know you're interested in subtle ways.

She adds, ``Positioning yourself in the room is very important. Make sure you stand near the guy you want to talk to.''

But what about the men, we ask. ''Men can be more aggressive and more direct. Women usually want a guy who's assertive. Women should put their cablight on but shouldn't necessarily be assertive,'' Slotnick says. ``The basic rule of thumb in dating is men pursue, women flirt.''

When pressed about why women have to work so hard to give off the right messages, Slotnick says, ``Sometimes it's true that women have to put more into it than men. And that's OK because a relationship is a woman's realm and it's not all about fair. It's about getting what you want and being happy.''

So armed with Slotnick's advice, we set out to find the happiest of happy hours, searching for good conversation, eye contact, stellar body language and maybe even a deep and lasting connection to the person on the other end of the bar.

ALL KINDS OF SPORTS

• Rivals Waterfront Sports Grille at Diplomat Landing. This is one Friday night happy hour that lives up to its name. Inspired by sports rivalries, the management team organizes drinking competitions pitting companies against one another.

On the night that we stopped by, Suffolk Construction and 123 Lump Sum were battling it out by passing a cucumber from one teammate to another without using their hands or knees.

All this fun and games -- and the restaurant's famed Beertini -- seemed to inspire some true confessions.

''Happy hours are better than bars for meeting people,'' said 40-year-old Hollywood resident David Lidskin. ``Girls are more on the defensive late at night at bars because they know what a guy's looking for. At least in the daytime at 5 or 6 p.m. it's a little less threatening.''

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