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Comment by chrisldgk | Hacker News Reader

I remember at the ad agency I used to work at (somewhere around 2018) we used to have a happy hour every Friday where from 5pm onwards all drinks (including booze) in the cafeteria were free, which led to people of all departments including C-Suite to get together and drink. I remember it as a good time though, I don’t remember anything ever happening that led to people having repercussions for employees. Then again, this is German drinking culture and the stiffest drink you could have was wine, so people wouldn’t usually get wasted, just tipsy.

The Christmas parties were a different breed though. HR definitely had a lot of work to do after those.

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When I was still in my early 20s, at my first office job, drinks after hours (beer, wine) were free from the company kitchen.

Only took part once (because I was new, first week and all), saw how openly employees spoke to the directors (luckily nothing came of it), and never again in my life ever consumed alcohol in front of a boss.

As GP said, it's a full on soft power thing - always keep your wits about you when in the presence of colleagues and bosses.

There is no safe space at work; you can be fired!

Japan here and there is a word for it "nominication" for nomu (to drink) and communication. Instead of Christmas party we have a year end party (bonenkai). Otherwise reads the same. It's common and many people actually like it. There can be negatives, like the pressure to drink too much. But I never heard of anyone getting fired in all my social circle.

Outside of Japan, the idea of bureikō is not necessarily similarly part of the culture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomikai#Nomikai_etiquette

I've been to a work Christmas party where one of my coworkers got so drunk that she couldn't talk and kept grabbing my arm and walking with me. I don't drink at all, so it was a bit surreal, and, compared to Greeks, Brits are on just a whole other level on the normalisation of alcohol consumption.

Obviously there were no repercussions, and when I mentioned something the next day, I got "you're not supposed to talk about that stuff in the office", which was interesting context for me. The drunk colleague and I went on to become really good friends.

Here in Canada I worked at a company that had free alcohol on Fridays, and it got to the point where people would invite their friends - non-employees - to come and drink. They'd all get so blackout drunk they'd pass out in the lounge and the customer service staff would have to climb over them on Saturday morning to get a coffee.

That particular perk was removed after a couple of months.

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