stories:
Drink
 |
Thirsty BusinessWho drinks on the job these days? |
At the three-martini lunch of the ‘50s through the ‘70s, high-rolling businessmen got together over steaks and knocked back a few cocktails to close a deal, expensing every last drop. In those days, companies were allowed to write off 100 percent of the booze-besotted lunches as business expenses, so everybody won. But a 1986 change in the tax code meant that suddenly businesses could deduct only 80 percent of expense-account expenses; in the ‘90s the rate was reduced again to just half, and suddenly corporate budgets didn’t have room for martinis.
At the same time, the War on Drugs got under way, and the public paid more attention to alcoholism and drunk driving, which lent a new stigma to on-the-clock inebriation. Conferences and after-work networking functions became the last places where it was still acceptable to knock back a few; otherwise, the party was over, and workplace drinking waned, even in party environments like winning locker rooms. “When I played in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, we had beer in the locker room after the games and beer on the bus,” says a baseball scout for the major leagues. “But now players are a lot more conscious of what they put in their bodies, and teams are protecting themselves—if a guy has three or four beers in the locker room and then goes out and gets in a car wreck, the team is liable.”
Last Call
Today, about 15 percent of employed people nationwide still drink during lunch, on coffee breaks, or before work, according to a study published last January by SUNY Buffalo researchers. Among the likeliest workers to imbibe on the clock are folks in sales, management, food preparation and service, building maintenance, construction and mining, trucking and transportation, sports, and a range of creative fields, including the arts, design, entertainment, and the media.
“Christopher Hitchens used to come in for meetings at 11a.m. drinking some kind of brown liquor and smoking a cigarette,” says a former editorial assistant at Vanity Fair. In publishing, lunchtime drinks are sometimes a job requirement. “One way to get on an author’s good side is to go boozing with him, if that’s his thing,” explains book editor John Rauschenberg. “So every once in a while, you’ll go to a lunch with a writer and end up having several mixed drinks, really tying one on, and not going back to work that day.”
An Image to Uphold
The last strongholds of daytime drinking may be some high-tech, consulting, and advertising firms, judging by reports. “I actually feel self-conscious if I order a Diet Pepsi,” says Rudy Geronimo, an event planner who works in San Francisco’s video-game industry, “because the only things I ever see people get are water, beer, and wine.”
There are tales of companies setting up bars in the office around 5 p.m., even with three-plus hours of work left to go; beer- and wine-stocked fridges that regularly get depleted throughout the day; off-site meetings and company retreats with open bars. “One time we had this competition between different departments to see which one could invent the best cocktail, and the winner would have its drink served at all of the agency-wide meetings from then on,” says Amanda MacLaren, who works at an ad agency in San Francisco. MacLaren speculates that the youth of her coworkers (under 40) has something to do with it, as well as the nature of the industry itself: “The people on the media side get schmoozed by sales reps when they go out to lunch, and on the creative side it’s kind of this idea that, ‘We’re artists, so we should be partiers.’”
And then there’s the food-service industry. “Oh yeah. In the places where I’ve worked, everyone in the kitchen drinks on the job—sous chefs, line cooks, everyone,” says a server at a Michelin-starred restaurant in New York who formerly worked at Chez Panisse. “It’s the only way to get through it. Servers do it too, though it’s more just drinking small amounts steadily throughout the night, as opposed to taking shots. When you’re waiting tables, you want to get a nice buzz going and become more personable.” When I asked him if that was why, on my recent visit to his workplace for an early dinner, our server (his coworker) had seemed a little spaced out, I got set straight: “That was too early for him to have been drunk—he was probably stoned. It’s ‘Come in stoned, leave drunk.’”
That explains the waiter at a restaurant I went to in Santa Barbara, CA for a rehearsal dinner. Incredibly congenial guy, but he forgot my order (it finally came 20 minutes after everyone else began,) never replaced my dropped fork, and brought the wrong dessert. Ne'er an apology, either! I had to admire his pep and complete obliviousness in the face of a potentially shriveled tip. My favorite exchange of the "performance":
Woman: Can we have a side of marinara, please?
Waiter: Well, ok, but it'll be cold.
Woman: Then microwave it!!!
(Waiter, as if it hadn't ocurred to him: Yeah, ok. We could do that.)
I am a cook, and can attest to the fact there is a fair deal of drinking in the kitchen. However I personally wait till service is over before I crack a cold one. An ice cold beer after a long hard service is one of life's small pleasures.
No judgments here, but it does seem to be the case that a lot of line cooks are (active) alcoholics.
I've been a waitress and a bartender. Sometimes the intensity of the job, especially on weekends, required a shot of something or other to take the edge off, to ease the tension. I usually didn't even feel the alcohol, just slightly more relaxed.
Real drinking was after work.
I think that if you have an allergy of the body and an obsession of the mind the restaurant industry is a perfect place to drown in. I got out when i sobered up. If you need to drink I can relate, i'm glad I don't need to drink in order to get out of bed today. When I was cooking in NYC we all got ripped on many types of chemicals, and made it happen day in and day out. It takes its toll. Its good to be free of that bondage. By all means if the individual can drink and do whatever else, more power to he/she.
After ten years in finance and banking, I recently made a move into the advertising business. Nevermind that Iam in HR (but still LOVE my wine)but I couldn't get over the fact that my firm offers a free, on-site Happy Hour with wine and beer every Friday at 5:00pm. And just today, I was passing through the reception area and saw a cart filled with openedwine bottles and beer (and a huge cheese plate), mid-day. Idon't know what they were for but it was an oddsite to see during office hours. I guess the advertising is a hold-out in the teetotaling business world.
Other than that my SO is a union electrician, always doing work on office spaces here in NYC and it is more than common for those guys to have more liquid than lunch on their mid-day breaks.
I must say I find it VERY scary that truckers were found to be one of the most likely groups of workers to imbibe on or before the job.
Please forgive my above post. I am not drunk, I have a space bar that sticks.
I think there may have been some wine spilled in there. LOL
I work at an LCBO (casual part-time) and it's amazing the amount of people that come in during the day to buy alcohol and don't want a bag or a receipt. The minis are our most popular selling items. I've even had to stop people from opening up their purchases in the store and emptying them into McDonald's cups, thermos's etc. These are well-dressed people in the financial district too!
The printing industry was famous for it's love of alcohol. Salesmen for the biggies - perspectus' etc. would often have the clients over during the printing and an open bar was THE order of the day. I remember (kinda) going out to four hour lunches with the boys and getting ripped. It wasn't unusual to see people go out to lunch with clients and never make it back to the office. My dad was in the industry and when five o'clock hit, it was martini time. Followed by a few more. Dinner around seven or eight. And bed around ten. Oddly enough, there weren't any drunk driving incidents that I ever heard of. Some inappropriate passes, but no convictions.
I miss the good old days. I'm damned tired of our self-appointed cultural nannies looking out for our safety and health. If I wanna drink, smoke, or sleep outside in a blizzard, it's my damned business. It's a Civil Liberties kinda thing...and I want my liberties BACK! I can't abide these uptight teetotalers, bible-thumpers, and do-gooders...they are making me crazy and threatening to make life a bore.
I agree with auldjaded...I prefer freedom to safety.
Piss off and let me be.
Freedom or safety? why does there have to be a choice? Me? I prefer life to death, so for all of our sakes make sure your freedom doesn't include a three martini lunch before driving home.
"the likeliest workers to imbibe on the clock are folks in sales, management, food preparation and service, building maintenance, construction and mining, trucking and transportation, sports, and a range of creative fields, including the arts, design, entertainment, and the media." Gee, only those few people?
My industry, railroading, was notorious for drinking on the job until the 80s. At that time there was a notorious accident with fatalities in Silver Spring, Maryland involving an Amtrak train and a Conrail engine trying to occupy the same space at the same time. The engineer at fault tested positive and used "everyone does it" as his defense. This claim was probably about half right. Legislation ensued, and now Locomotive Engineers in the US are subject to pre-employment, random, for-suspicion, and post-accident drug and alcohol testing. They risk fines and suspensions of their certification, which is basically a carreer ender.
There was grumbling in the beginning, but a quarter of a century later the culture, thanks in large part to management and Union leadership, and retirement of the old gaurd, is now very much against drinking on the job.
As for freedom vs safety, do the libertarians here think I should be "free" to drink on the job,? Would you ride my train if I was drunk? Would you ride any random train/bus/plane/boat knowing the operator might be drunk? C'mon now. :)
Drinking on the Job is a waste of alcohol. If you can't wait until the end of your shift then you have a problem. I've had to fire people on the spot for drinking at work or coming in to work intoxicated, because it is unsafe and unfair. What it boils down to is that someone is paying you to do your job and do it well. If you can't guarantee that to your employer, you need to change jobs or careers.
If i had a drink at lunch, i'd be asleep at my desk mid afternoon for sure. Ennyhoo, years ago in my college days, myself and a friend worked as seamstresses and went out for mexican once at lunch and had a couple of margaritas....i came back and within the hour, had an industrial sewing machine sew my finger through with a needle...not so fun.
I manage a restaurant, and I while I do drink at work, it's only after all the customers have gone home and we are done closing up. The only thing left to do is lock the doors.
75% of my serving staff will have a drink or two after work, but no one actually drinks while they are serving (or, if they do, they are incredibly discreet about it).
I think the fact that we all sit around to bond and drink together actually improves our team. Most of our staff are friends who get together after work and on days off too. For those of us who work 80 + hours a week, it helps to have friends on the job and to unwind with them afterwards.
I have an internship right now but I don't drink during lunches. However, I do once in awhile drink between classes during lunch breaks at school. This is legal because I am in college and over 21 haha.