Does this happen outside the US? Every single white-collar job I’ve had in the US, work lunches were like this. Everyone suddenly becomes a puritan and gasps when anyone drinks alcohol at lunchtime.
My friend who works a trade involving being very high up and handling electrical equipment tells me drinking on the job is not at all uncommon. Granted this probably has a lot more to do with his location and horrible ownership of the small company.
Drinking on the job doesn’t mean getting tipsy or hammered on the job. Many people can handle 1 beer or a glass of wine with a meal just fine. But, not all bodies react the same to alcohol, and not everyone eats the same, and more importantly, not everyone can exercise moderation and stop at enough drinks to not be a hazard on the job.
It takes one person having one too many for whichever reason for a preventable accident to happen. There are certain jobs where zero tolerance is the best policy, imo. I don’t want to worry about whether my colleague handling the big-ass knives or driving the forklift half a meter away from me is tipsy or not.
I did hear from a guy I worked with who used to be a straight up “Leaving Las Vegas” alchie that pissing is the best way to quickly lower your BAC, to the point he claimed that pissing yourself when you get pulled over by a cop is the best chance you got to avoid a DUI.
He went to jail for wrapping his car around a fire-hydrant so IDK how good his advice was. He was sober last time I talked to him though, got really into Jesus.
This absolutely does not work. Basic physics, your liver processes alcohol at the speed your liver processes alcohol. You cannot speed this process up and alcohol does not make it through to your bladder in any appreciable level. You only have so much alcohol dehydrogenase and acetaldehyde dehydrogenase in your body, and these are determined solely by genetics.
Alcohol does have a diuretic property, in that it suppresses vasopressin (antidiuretic hormone) release in the brain, which makes you have to urinate. The whole “breaking the seal” thing is also bullshit, emptying your bladder just means there is now more room in your bladder to refill with urine. The rate at which you refill that bladder is somewhat controlled by urea concentration in blood, but primarily by the diameter and quantity of nephrons in your kidneys.
Okay but the image you posted is not someone puritanically considering 1 lunch beer to be inappropriate when returning to work after, they are quite reasonably considering 4 lunch beers inappropriate
Lol so if he drank 12 beers would your response be “I didn’t know there was a hard cap at 11?”
Nobody said anything about a hard cap but 4 beers on a single lunch break is pretty far from the norm of what one can reasonably expect not to get shit about.
Bartleby the Schrivener in-passing drops a reference to the endemic alcoholism in the USA at the time. They hire Bartleby because the other two clerks are booze pooches and one shows up hungover and his work improves and the other shows up sober but starts to drink so his work degrades.
At the time? Oh buddy, I have some upsetting news for you. The majority of American adults are alcoholics, they’re just not as drunk during work hours specifically. There isn’t an absolute quantity or frequency threshold for alcoholism, people just ignore the problem until it starts impeding work or social activity.
In Europe the culture is borderline the complete opposite. Unless you’re doing an actually responsible/driving job, if you can’t keep up with work lunch drinks you ain’t workin’ right.
Does this happen outside the US? Every single white-collar job I’ve had in the US, work lunches were like this. Everyone suddenly becomes a puritan and gasps when anyone drinks alcohol at lunchtime.
Drinking on the job is almost universally a terminable offense
Drinking on the job is, like all other vices, acceptable again once you get paid enough.
e.g. cocaine, pedophilia, etc.
And for some jobs (factory work, trades, warehousing) that makes sense, being impaired by drinking puts you and your coworkers in danger.
Of course that’s not what most cases of this are about. It’s about controlling workers
My friend who works a trade involving being very high up and handling electrical equipment tells me drinking on the job is not at all uncommon. Granted this probably has a lot more to do with his location and horrible ownership of the small company.
Drinking on the job doesn’t mean getting tipsy or hammered on the job. Many people can handle 1 beer or a glass of wine with a meal just fine. But, not all bodies react the same to alcohol, and not everyone eats the same, and more importantly, not everyone can exercise moderation and stop at enough drinks to not be a hazard on the job.
It takes one person having one too many for whichever reason for a preventable accident to happen. There are certain jobs where zero tolerance is the best policy, imo. I don’t want to worry about whether my colleague handling the big-ass knives or driving the forklift half a meter away from me is tipsy or not.
My rule is that if you work with something that rotates, you should not drink on the job.
Naw. Its just that a lot of people who do construction work have drug and alcohol problems.
A lot of people have drug and alcohol problems
I could see it being more medicinal if you start freaking out a bit from being up so high
He wasn’t on the job though he was at lunch. As long as he pissed the booze out before clocking back in he wasn’t drunk on the job.
I prefer to crap the booze out.
I’ve never heard of that lol.
I did hear from a guy I worked with who used to be a straight up “Leaving Las Vegas” alchie that pissing is the best way to quickly lower your BAC, to the point he claimed that pissing yourself when you get pulled over by a cop is the best chance you got to avoid a DUI.
He went to jail for wrapping his car around a fire-hydrant so IDK how good his advice was. He was sober last time I talked to him though, got really into Jesus.
This absolutely does not work. Basic physics, your liver processes alcohol at the speed your liver processes alcohol. You cannot speed this process up and alcohol does not make it through to your bladder in any appreciable level. You only have so much alcohol dehydrogenase and acetaldehyde dehydrogenase in your body, and these are determined solely by genetics.
Alcohol does have a diuretic property, in that it suppresses vasopressin (antidiuretic hormone) release in the brain, which makes you have to urinate. The whole “breaking the seal” thing is also bullshit, emptying your bladder just means there is now more room in your bladder to refill with urine. The rate at which you refill that bladder is somewhat controlled by urea concentration in blood, but primarily by the diameter and quantity of nephrons in your kidneys.
Well they might not want you in their car after that.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Its relatively normal in Europe to grab a drink on your lunch break. Or at least it was a decade or two ago when my dad worked there.
A drink, not four drinks
Maybe it has changed but it was recounted to me as “drinking” and “getting drunk” but from his puritan American eyes that could be 1 drink
Okay but the image you posted is not someone puritanically considering 1 lunch beer to be inappropriate when returning to work after, they are quite reasonably considering 4 lunch beers inappropriate
Didn’t know there was a hard cap of 3 lunch beers
Lol so if he drank 12 beers would your response be “I didn’t know there was a hard cap at 11?”
Nobody said anything about a hard cap but 4 beers on a single lunch break is pretty far from the norm of what one can reasonably expect not to get shit about.
Didn’t know there was a hard cap of 3 lunch beers
It probably depended on the specific place in Europe even back then.
capitalists don’t want alcohol to impede the productivity of their workers
(this is not a defense of alcohol)
Bartleby the Schrivener in-passing drops a reference to the endemic alcoholism in the USA at the time. They hire Bartleby because the other two clerks are booze pooches and one shows up hungover and his work improves and the other shows up sober but starts to drink so his work degrades.
At the time? Oh buddy, I have some upsetting news for you. The majority of American adults are alcoholics, they’re just not as drunk during work hours specifically. There isn’t an absolute quantity or frequency threshold for alcoholism, people just ignore the problem until it starts impeding work or social activity.
In Europe the culture is borderline the complete opposite. Unless you’re doing an actually responsible/driving job, if you can’t keep up with work lunch drinks you ain’t workin’ right.
I think I even have something about that in my contract.
in aus after work: norm is hammered at the pub on boy’s club industry. friday arvo beer acceptible, often with casual work related chitchat