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Comment by koolba | Hacker News Reader

> … It's about 11:30am, and three guys all get done with the excavator and jackhammers …

> … and bottle of wine …

So operating heavy equipment after consuming alcohol?

i guarantee you that at most american construction sites, at least one of the equipment operators has had a beer with their lunch.

I worked in landscaping a few summers during college. About a third of the crew was drunk or high most of the day. Driving small pickup trucks, operating commercial mowers. It was definitely eye-opening for me.

Warehouses, Kitchens, Construction. A lot of the blue collar jobs in the US are done while people are high on something. I think weed is more popular than alcohol though.

I had always heard, but never corroborated, that the typical 750ml volume of a bottle of wine was chosen because it was an appropriate amount for two people to consume at lunch.

Is it true? I have no idea! But those guys would have emphatically agreed, I think.

Whoever told you that was an alcoholic.

One random site[0] on the internet says the 750ml[1] size began to be standardized on in the early 18th century. That's something like 250-300 years ago.

It could be entirely true that it was considered an appropriate amount of wine for two people to share over lunch at that time. Certainly other norms have changed since then.

[0] https://disndis.com/blogs/blog/why-wine-bottles-are-750-ml

[1] Give or take a margin of error, decreasing over time, one suspects.

> It could be entirely true that it was considered an appropriate amount of wine for two people to share over lunch at that time.

Alcohol content in wine went up significantly, as well.

I think the "appropriate" amount of alcohol to consume before operating construction equipment is actually lower than 750ml... lower by about 750ml...

What kind of lunch ? A sunday lunch maybe, if you down half a bottle of wine per day during the week you have an alcohol problem. At work it's certainly not appropriate, especially not for construction work

Someone told me that he doubts anyone could get anything built in Germany without beer, but that was decades ago, so maybe it's changed. This someone and I were talking about construction workers.

That's the point: the French have your sunday lunch every day.

I have no idea, but the alcohol content of different wines varies by quite a bit, and probably also changed over time?

Yes. AFAIK "Table wine" (and table beer in northern regions) was pretty light. Just enough alcohol to kill germs.

As in the immortal words of Lucille Bluth: "wine only turns into alcohol when you let it sit".

Here in France it certainly was nothing that would get you labelled an alcoholic 40 years ago. But it was rather an upper limit.

That makes sense really. It's about 5 glasses. So for two people if it's a 2 hour lunch break even with a very low tolerance at the end of lunch your BAC would be very close to 0.00. The average 150lb male metabolizes 1 glass of wine per 45-60 minutes.

This was normal everywhere not so long ago

Woo Woo It's the sound of Le Gendarmerie.

Seriously though, and while it's falling rapidly, France has a very high rate of what other countries might label functional alcoholism. A very high, daily alcohol intake, by way of habit, but not hidden, not a binge.

If a glass or two is your background level, lunch isn't going to significantly impair you.

> Woo Woo It's the sound of Le Gendarmerie.

Woop Woop that's the sound of la brute?

Air France pilots used to get wine with their in-flight meals...

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