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Comment by scrollaway | Hacker News Reader

With rare exceptions, I'm a non-drinker. Nowhere in Europe have I ever had an issue ordering a coke instead of an alcoholic drink, even when hanging out with people getting completely shitfaced.

Is this seriously a thing in the US? Feeling like you have to drink if you're surrounded by people drinking? I keep hearing stories like that. Nobody is going to judge you for not consuming alcohol - if anyone does, they're certainly not people I'd want to hang out with regardless of whether drinks are involved.

It doesn't hurt not to give a fuck, once in a while.

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It's not a problem for anyone other than the overly self-conscious, who are looking for reasons to explain their anxiety. Literally no one cares.

I was once rejected from a job interview at a DC startup because I didn't order a beer when they took me to lunch.

Even if that is what they said, do you honestly believe that was the real reason?

Beyond the slightest doubt.

Well, it's safe to say you dodged a bullet then :)

This seems a reason so stupid to reject somebody that either a) they didn't like you but didn't want to tell you the real reason, but didn't care enough to think about a plausibly sounding fake one; or b) you dodged a major bullet as these people had seriously messed up priorities. I'd bet on a) but can't exclude b) completely of course.

Interesting. What do you mean by self-conscious ?

https://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2014/01/26/how-to-be-... for examples.

The tl;dr is that people who are insecure will attempt to rationalize their feelings, and this frequently includes feelings of judgement and persecution from others where none exists.

I believe I was rejected after a job interview because of not drinking.

Another boss I had any a different job told me he fired someone for not partying with everyone else. If you went to these parties and didn't drink, the boss would harass you all night.

I agree with you that many people are just self conscious, but it's not exclusively that way.

Both of your cases sound like shitty places to work.

It's not that people will judge you IME, but that it's really fucking boring.

What's boring about it?

Unless being drunk is your idea of fun (in which case it seems doubtful you'd be a non-drinker), I cannot understand how drinking liquid A at a party is any more boring than liquid B.

As a person who does not necessarily enjoy drinking (nor does so very regularly), I would say that being sober around people who are drunk is objectively less enjoyable than being drunk around drunk people.

In fact a graph of my enjoyment as a non-drinker (in my experience) would probably be inverse to a graph of the enjoyment of the people getting progressively more shit-faced.

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