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, 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.
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.
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?
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...
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.
Unless you're in your early 20s, working for a startup.
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.
I think that this illustrates that you do not understand that completely.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21604830
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'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).
Your outburst on the other hand, would have seen you thrown out for hate speech.
You're not making a good case for prohibition.
Never mind, I get it; folks who are emotionally invested in alcohol consumption get really nervous whenever it gets criticized.
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...