Drinking at work: the boredom of boozeless business
economist.com
economist.com
As a European, I've always gotten the feeling that corporate America has been trying to ban almost any kind of potentially disruptive but generally perfectly normal social activity from the workplace. Take for example how uptight many American companies seem to be about people forming intimate relationships in the workplace.
Maybe this has more to do with American fear of legal liability. Whatever the case, the strict separation of social and professional settings seems to go well beyond just booze.
In another culture the two would've just broken up, caused a stir in the office, and in the worst case one of them might have left the company if they wouldn't have been able to recover and speak to each other again.
For example, the reason we have a stupid warning on coffee cups about the contents being hot, is because someone decided to sue for getting burned by coffee. This may not have escalated as quickly elsewhere in the world - not because someone wouldn't try it, but perhaps the legal system would have laughed at them instead of allowed for a case to happen. It's not the US culture at blame, and the lack of such people elsewhere in the world who would attempt to make such a lawsuit happen - it's the system that people can easily abuse - and miraculously are able to get away with it.
edit: I stand corrected by rfurmani and v0cab below - I actually did read up more about the hot coffee case in the past - and the details completely slipped my mind while posting this. It is not a good example and doesn't really fit the point I was trying to make.
"A British court later rejected this argument as scientifically false, finding that 149 °F (65 °C) liquid could cause deep tissue damage in only two seconds."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonalds_Restauran...
"If this submission be right, McDonald's should not have served drinks at any temperature which would have caused a bad scalding injury. The evidence is that tea or coffee served at a temperature of 65 °C will cause a deep thickness burn if it is in contact with the skin for just two seconds. Thus, if McDonald’s were going to avoid the risk of injury by a deep thickness burn they would have had to have served tea and coffee at between 55 °C and 60 °C. But tea ought to be brewed with boiling water if it is to give its best flavour and coffee ought to be brewed at between 85 °C and 95 °C. Further, people generally like to allow a hot drink to cool to the temperature they prefer. Accordingly, I have no doubt that tea and coffee served at between 55 °C and 60 °C would not have been acceptable to McDonald's customers. Indeed, on the evidence, I find that the public want to be able to buy tea and coffee served hot, that is to say at a temperature of at least 65 °C, even though they know (as I think they must be taken to do for the purposes of answering issues (1) and (2)) that there is a risk of a scalding injury if the drink is spilled."
http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/markup.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/...
And yet they can cope, even lead a socially healthy life afterwards.
Even if only 1% end badly enough that it would impact negatively on the company, there's surely a valid argument that it's worth preventing to avoid those occasional cases.
I can't say that's something I find very encouraging.
Sometimes it reaches lunch time, I have some dull task to finish, motivation is leaving the body. The cure. A whisky. Definitely not to get to drunk, just to get the juices flowing.
I find my productivity greatly improves when I get a small buzz. I find the quality of my work stay's the same as I never drink enough to truly impair judgement. It would be win / win but I feel the negative connotations of drinking of the job means this isn't really something I should be talking about.
There is nothing like a glass of wine to make a two hour conference call more bearable.
I think you mean you never drink enough to offset the impairment you get from being enormously bored :)
The point is, it probably affects people in completely different ways depending on physiology, age and health.
15 years ago Friday afternoons used to be pretty much a write-off in terms of getting anything done. We had one project sponsor that would agree to something, then go down the pub, get lashed, and reverse his previous decisions. That was... fun.
I also knew one guy that used to get wasted at lunchtime, and then lay down in the data centre to sleep it off. Different times.
Wow, never thought I'd see scientific evidence for the Ballmer peak.
Alcohol is often seen as a social thing to do - and with companies trying to get a more solid culture going, alcohol seems to tie in well to aide in creating the social ambiance. Obviously there should still be limits on when you should be drinking, and how you conduct your self - but that should be considered in any social setting.
Here is a related article regarding drinking on the job and tech companies: http://www.brewcitybeerbuffs.com/2012/05/20/drinking-on-the-...
Bankers and corporate types seem to be concentrated in compounds miles from anywhere, so drink/drive limits (preferably zero) come into play.
As far as commute goes - this could certainly be true for NYC which is where I am as I don't think a single person drives in to the office unless it is a special occasion - though I am not sure how much of a factor it might be for other localities.
Sadly this is a country that has a huge amount of laziness - and there are indeed people who will drive down their drive way to pick up the mail or take out the garbage - and I am sure that is what most people see America as in general. Consider the innovation that comes out of this country and the intelligent people on HackerNews and you can see that there are people who are not lazy and are extremely passionate and even visionaries in the industry - you can't lump everyone up in the same assumptions :)
My current office is right across the street from a different microbrewery. I can't get anybody in my office to go over with me.
That's definitely what we need more of, investment bankers being "creative".
I don't drink so much beer these days, but an Aperol or Campari and Soda around 4pm seems to be quite a nice and not very alcoholic way to round off the work day now and again.
In the UK, sales lunches tend to be fairly boozy affairs - this is an exception to the 1 pint rule, although I generally wouldn't go past a third pint of beer on a sales lunch unless we'd agreed we'd take the afternoon off for some time out.
"This may help to explain the success of Silicon Valley, one of the last workplaces in America where hard and soft drinks still jostle for space in the company fridge."
Is a little stupid.
Alcohol is a recreational drug, its association with industries such as journalism has to do with working wierd hours and drugging contacts to get leads, not with productivity, and certainly not with creativity.
People that order wine instead of a soft drink at a job interview probably are less intelligent. Not because they like wine but because that's just not a very intelligent thing to do at a job interview in the USA in 2012.
A SV note: Asana has a stocked bar in their office and IIRC encourages people to drink while working.
I would definitely order wine at a dinner, mostly because I like wine at a dinner, and secondly because it would allow me to use it as a negative filter--to see if they have some sort of a problem with it.
I would rather apply elsewhere if the company didn't like wine-drinking (or if they made me file TPS reports), and leave them alone with their drinking problem.
Observation: The culture has changed to the point where people think you are dumber if order a wine during an interview.
You: You are dumber!!!!!
There are many situations where there are feedback loops like this: For example: Male peacocks grow large tails because this is attractive to peahen mates. It's attractive to peahen mates because their male offspring are also likely to have big tails, which will lead to better reproductive success because they are attractive to peahen mates.... and so on. So a gene that favours big tails will make more copies of itself in the peacock population than some allele that favours smaller tails, even though from a "design" point of view the smaller tail makes more sense (not as heavy to carry around, means you can run fast to avoid getting eaten etc.)
There are many equilibria like this:
- the bank is going to go bust because everyone wants to take their money out because it looks like the bank is going to go bust...
- the credit card company declines your application because you were declined from getting a credit card by another credit card company.
- The company doesn't take you in for interview because you've been out of work for 6 months. They'd rather go after someone that already has a job.
In all of these cases, although the outcome is often not optimal (e.g. nobody wants the bank to go bust), and often not fair, the individuals making the decisions are behaving perfectly rationally.
For a hiring manager to think about whether a job applicant is thinking about what a hiring manager is thinking sounds confusing - but we're thinking about that right now.
I ask by phone before if there is stuff they don't eat/drink to choose the restaurant, or avoid this protocol.
We're in Germany and this is not usual here :)