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Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

I know it sounds a bit extreme.

Not extreme at all. Except for salespeople having business lunches, in the United States, drinking on company time is pretty much verboten outside of the tech bubble.

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in the United States, drinking on company time is pretty much verboten outside of the tech bubble.

I don't think this is true, especially for company parties. I have also heard of people in other industries drinking in the office, usually these were smaller companies, or the people doing the drinking were upper management.

WeWork banned meat at company events or on company expense accounts [1]. Would it be that hard to do something similar for alcohol? Then, bringing it back to Google, if people misbehave after having alcohol - then they bought the drinks, and came to a company event while intoxicated.

When I was at OpenDNS, @davidu used to say something along the lines of, "When you try to host a big company party with over 100 people, you expect to have to fire somebody for their behavior there. Don't be that person." Maybe the costs don't outweigh the benefits of work parties.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/13/wework-m...

Wow, WeWork won't even allow employees to expense meals that have meat in them?! That's ridiculous. The environmental situation with beef is a little more complex than "less beef eaten -> fewer cows -> less methane -> less climate change."

What's even more ridiculous is that beef is the costly meat from an environmental perspective, but they've also banned poultry and all other types of meat. I can understand not serving meat, but not allowing employees to expense meals involving meat would make me reconsider working there - especially because of the heavy handed way they did it.

> The environmental situation with beef is a little more complex than "less beef eaten -> fewer cows -> less methane -> less climate change."

I'm not aware of this, and would be interested in knowing more; as I understand currently, that flow really does apply.

Welcome to world of political correctness. Also is minority of employees claim anyone eating meat hurt their feelings companies could reasonably ban meat in office meals claiming it is creating non-welcoming workplace.

It was nothing to do with feelings. Why don't you try reading?

It's not just an environmental issue. It's an ethical issue.

Maybe some companies out there also banned slave ownership across the board. Probably seemed unfair, too. Did they not realize how useful slaves are?

Now, this seems like a silly comparison because we're all so used to eating meat for every meal, but does familiarity trump ethical concerns?

Absurd. I'd never work at such a company, in part due to the type of people that kind of policy would attract. If this rule was enacted and I was already an employee, I'd spend the money to bring large meat spreads to all of the events.

Perhaps WeWork knew what they were doing.

Why would that be a reasonable response to this policy? It largely seems childish, and reactionary, in the face of a policy that is (clearly!) intended to improve the world.

It's a response that will improve the world. Opposing it is childish and reactionary.

> I'd never work at such a company, in part due to the type of people that kind of policy would attract.

I think you may be overestimating the volume of job applicants that pay attention to such policies, and/or their qualifications.

I am referring only to the prohibition on expensing certain types of meals, not non-meat food/environments in general.

They are probably happy you wouldn't have joined then. Win-win.

It isn't in the Midwest, although vary by company but It tends to be a "don't abuse it, use your judgement". Sometimes that can be a beer in the middle of the day. Sometimes it's happy hour on the clock on Fridays.

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