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Comment by forgetsusername | Hacker News Reader

>talks of a culture that has never made drinking a forbidden fruit

The same thing is often said about Italy and France.

For the life of me I can't recall where I read it (maybe someone can help out), but I've seen that because alcohol isn't treated as a forbidden fruit in such countries, alcoholism is also not treated as a problem, and that rates of it are severely understated. In other words, for example, it's far more socially acceptable to have 3 glasses of wine with your lunch every day in France than in the US.

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Anecdote:

Many of my coworkers are from Spain. It is commonly said that two hour lunches with a beer or three are the norm. When I first started, the director took the 5 new hires to lunch, and I recall him stating that he would have bought pitchers for the table if our client was not a stickler about noon drinking.

It is also very common for company events (perhaps twice/month on average?) to be held at bars immediately after work. There is no pressure for anyone to participate, but there is definitely an emphasis on drinking.

> It is also very common for company events (perhaps twice/month on average?) to be held at bars immediately after work.

I mean, I don't think that is necessarily rare in the US either. We have weekly happy hours that get expensed if someone senior enough is there. And we have quarterly company parties that are paid for by the company and are just three hour open bars in a different location each time (boat, bowling, etc).

3 five ounce glasses of wine with lunch is not really that bad for or all that much to drink. At 130+lb you would probably stay under .07 BAC which is still legal to drive in the US.

Alcoholism generally involves either heavy drinking or life impairment issues.

Really? That's all you need out of an employee after lunch - that they won't crash their car on the way back?

Its inappropriate to do any drinking at lunch, if you have work to return to.

Its inappropriate to do any drinking at lunch

That's pure social stigma.

There is a vast difference between drinking to intoxication and 2-3 glasses of wine with a meal. It's about as limiting as eating a heavy lunch and spending a few hours digesting.

There is a vast difference between not drinking at all, and coming back to work muddle-headed and slow. Especially at a technology company. If you're just moving packages between bins in the mail room, ok maybe. But you're for instance checking in to my code base, forget it.

You're severely underestimating a lot of people's alcohol tolerance, I think.

No, I understand that completely. Some folks can look normal, while their critical judgment skills are already compromised. Those with high tolerance are a bigger problem than most.

> Some folks can look normal, while their critical judgment skills are already compromised.

I think that this illustrates that you do not understand that completely.

People actually tend to overestimate their own alcohol tolerance.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21604830

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19895775

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12198408

In IT/Programming, if you go out to lunch, a beer or two is not going to hurt your technical abilities. (anecdotal)

Don't move the goalpost.

My ancestors for thousands of years have drank everyday, and they managed not only to survive but reproduce. I think the same goes for every person of European descent. We can drink an awful lot and be fine.

...and yet, I don't imagine they were checking into a kernel source base very often. Maybe they managed to not-chop-off-their-hand while cutting trees.

Mine managed to put a scientific instrument on Mars.

I have actually tested this and several people and some where better at coding with a slight buzz. This is not that uncommon for a range of tasks. People used to break out alcohol for specific types of planning where creativity and the free flow of ideas was useful.

There are even suggestions of long term benefits. The authors concluded that for middle-aged subjects, increasing levels of alcohol consumption were associated with better function regarding some aspects of cognition. http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/3/240.long

PS: Initially reflex tests where considered for in car breathalyzers, but many people performed better slightly over the legal limit than they did normally.

> "I have actually tested this and several people and some where better at coding with a slight buzz."

I've experienced this once before, not with coding but with software testing. Liquid lunch (couple of pints of Guinness), and was a lot easier to focus on work after lunch because the slight buzz kept me feeling warm and happy, I remember being quite productive. It's not something that I'd want to make into a habit but I definitely think it can help with focus on repetitive tasks (so long as it's well within your personal limits).

...and drunk drivers think they are driving just wonderfully, until they hit a post.

I'm suggesting it helps with repetitive tasks, not tasks that require quick thinking.

> Its inappropriate to do any drinking at lunch, if you have work to return to.

Wait, who are you to tell me I can't have wine or beer at lunch before going back to work?

This sounds like pure moral judgement and that seems completely inappropriate to me.

You could have said "it's inappropriate to do anything that prevents you from doing your work correctly", and that would have been fine, but please let me judge that by myself, because a lot of socially acceptable behaviours have as much influence on work efficiency, like not sleeping enough or being stressed out because of events not related to work.

Well, if I was your boss, that would be all I needed. I have no interest in letting you judge anything for yourself that impacts your performance. The effects of alcohol and other drugs are notorious for compromising that judgment.

And by the time I can see effects in person, its way over the line for effective job performance. As others mention, some people have high tolerances for alcohol before showing any obvious symptoms. I maintain that critical job-related judgment skills are compromised long before that happens. So their 'tolerance' is a problem for me, the boss, not some excuse for them. My response: ban alcohol at lunch.

> I have no interest in letting you judge anything for yourself that impacts your performance.

How far does that extend? Should I let you monitor my sleep patterns? Are you going to enroll me in a smoking-cessation course before allowing me to work? Will there be mandatory coffee breaks?

Will you take my phone away so that my family doesn't call me with upsetting news, thereby affecting my critical job-related judgment skills?

> My response: ban alcohol at lunch.

Well I'm glad I live in a country where bosses can't dictate what their employees eat at lunch, then. What next, ban onions and cheese because they give bad breath and that's unacceptable?

Though since my boss drinks beer at lunch about as frequently as I do...

Got it. Don't work for Joe, terrible boss. Just one of many good life tips.

>please let me judge that by myself

If you are self-employed, fine. I'll let you judge that for yourself. Your potential clients would also probably judge that too, can't ask them not to. And if they don't like it, they'll take their business somewhere else.

If you are not self-employed, you can't judge that for yourself. Your boss will judge that for yourself, your co-workers will judge that for yourself, and your company's clients will also judge that.

I don't think that not sleeping enough and being stressed are "socially acceptable", as no one actually endorses these things. At the end of the day, your boss/clients likely won't care much about something being "socially acceptable" as much as something giving them an inferior product or costing them more money.

> I don't think that not sleeping enough and being stressed are "socially acceptable", as no one actually endorses these things.

Unless you're in your early 20s, working for a startup.

Everyone complains about these things though.

A project lead at one of my former workplaces would buy a beer around lunch and keep it on his desk, drinking slowly for the next few hours. His code was always good, he was an exceptional developer, his conduct was amicable and never once did he shirk his duties.

Your outburst on the other hand, would have seen you thrown out for hate speech.

You're not making a good case for prohibition.

Outburst? A comment about drinking and driving just under the limit gets a pass; my response that its a very low bar is 'hate speech'? Really?

Never mind, I get it; folks who are emotionally invested in alcohol consumption get really nervous whenever it gets criticized.

Calling it hate speech is very unusual.

> Its inappropriate to do any drinking at lunch, if you have work to return to.

Blimey.

I used to work for a UK branch of a US Fortune 100 company. On release nights we were provided with beer and pizza..

Most developers and testers were on a rota for releases but because of my role I had to attend them all. Free beer and ( bad ) pizza every second Friday for several years.

I seem to have survived OK, I wasn't sacked...

I'm sure that there are times and places where the state of mind induced by alcohol are not inappropriate.

That kind of drinking can have serious health implications. Two or three glasses of wine with lunch, the same with dinner and a night out at the weekend adds up to about three times the recommended limit.

Increasing numbers of "respectable middle-class drinkers" are ending up with alcohol-related diseases, particularly women. You don't have to be a binge drinker or a dysfunctional alcoholic to put your health at risk.

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