Should having a drink at work be allowed?

[darkangel218]

I've seen a lot of my coworkers in the past having beer at a local pub in the lunch break. But what about those of us who can't leave premises, or don't want to spend $5 a beer, why can't we have some?

Just wondering ..

[boston bean]

1. I think that sometimes people worry too much about what their co-workers

are doing, at work, off work and on lunch hour or on their breaks.

If the boss is ok with the work, then I guess all is well.

[darkangel218]

4. I need to find a different job i guess.

[boston bean]

8. Are they doing something that affects their work

when they return from lunch hour.

We are talking about an office job, right?

[darkangel218]

10. No, theyre fine.

I just wish I could have a beer too. My position doesn't allow it, which sucks, especially in super busy aweful days.

[boston bean]

11. are you doing their work, while they are out at lunch? nt

[darkangel218]

15. No, im jealous they can drink and i cant.

[loli phabay]

52. change jobs then. no idea why you are upset over this

Lots of jobs allow no alcohol. What do you work as that makes you different than you co workers.

[RiffRandell]

47. What if they went to a strip joint on their lunch?

Had lunch and came back at the time they were supposed to.

Any problem with that?

[boston bean]

49. why should I care? nt

[Major Nikon]

2. I'd just as soon my airline pilot didn't

[darkangel218]

3. Dont you own and fly your own plane? nt

[Major Nikon]

6. Exactly

No smoking 8 hours before a flight and no alcohol within 50 ft.

That's my rule.

[darkangel218]

12. I cant tolerate drinking on high altitude

I was on a transatlantic flight a couple years ago, I was flying from Germany back to the States, and the plane they decided to use was an old Boeing, so old some of the ceiling was either stained or rusted and the tv's were the old bulky ones. I got really claustrophobic and I ordered a couple cups of wine to ease my anxiety. Well half hour into the flight I started feeling real sick and the flight attendants moved me to Business class for free! I slept all the way home.

[RiffRandell]

46. If it was Denzel I'd be completely fine. n/t

[riderinthestorm]

5. It depends on the people imho. Some people are responsible about it, others not so much

I usually have a cooler with some beers, water, soda for the employees (and coffee). I don't monitor everyone but they know its available. Nobody drinks any alcohol during the day (handling the horses and drinking don't safely go well together) but at the end of the day, and sometimes at the end of a big project like putting up a semi-load of hay, its pretty common to grab a beer or two and sit for a while before we finish up.

If it began to be a problem though, I'd change it. Fast.

[Chan790]

7. I'd say it depends on one's job. n/t

[lunatica]

9. When we have receptions or department special catered lunches a few times a year

Usually we have them anytime from noon onwards we have wine and beer. I work in administration in UC Berkeley. It's no big deal in the academic setting. I've never seen anyone get drunk at these events and usually the staff go back to work afterwards with no impairment as far as anyone can tell.

[darkangel218]

13. Omg youre so lucky!!

Of course one drink won't cause impairment, that was my point. Thing is, most jobs would fire you on spot if you dared drinking on duty. They need to change that

[HopeHoops]

14. No, but it never stopped me.

[mnhtnbb]

16. My oldest son works for a small software apps company that provides lunch for all employees--

and yes, sometimes they bring in beer.

They also have a ping pong table in the office and a 'lounge' area with an inflated plastic
palm tree that overlooks a huge picture window to the street below.

[7wo7rees]

17. My company has a beer fridge. On every floor.

Four floors. Four hundred employees. Fridges are stocked for special occasions.
We have a great sales day: The beer fridges are open at close of business. Everyone skips happy hour, and stays in the common ares, drinking either Coors Light, Bud Light, or Miller Lite. (I know, kinda like kissing your sister.) But it's free and cold. (Hey, it could be Blatz, Iron City, and Schmidt's.)
Other than that, they are open for any work after hours, but nobody really does it unless it's a company-wide hoo-ha.

All beers drunk at lunchtime are off-campus. Beer fridges are not open, and bringing your own is ill-advised.

It is comforting to know that when I come in to do work on weekends, I usually have 500 to 1000 beers at my disposal.

[TeamPooka]

23. are you hiring? :)

[7wo7rees]

35. Yep.

PM me.

[wtmusic]

18. Are you a commercial pilot?

[trof]

25. Air France pilots used to have a glass of wine with meals. In the cockpit.

[larocks4552s]

19. I think it depends on the job

Though an occasional drink shouldn't be frowned upon

[azurnoir]

20. well as I work in Medical I think perhaps it depends on the job

maybe albeit I really can not think of one where drinking is beneficial

[darkangel218]

22. My mother and grandmother, they both worked in medical field

In my old country. My mom was telling me stories about a surgeon who never had a surgery without a few shots of vodka beforehand. He was claiming vodka was making his hands stop shaking

[MiddleFingerMom]

38. Pool hustler. I used to tend bar in a pool hustler's bar. Although we were a small bar...

.
.
.
... with only one table, out-of-town hustlers knew to come to our bar for serious money games.
.
It's a DANGEROUS profession and ALL of them smoked or drank a little bit to calm their nerves.
.
They were less tense/anxious and it actually improved their games.
.
.
.
One of the better shooters used drinking as a con. He drank "Kool-Aids", which was sloe gin &
Coke (YUCKO) and he drank them FREQUENTLY. He YELLED for another when he was done with
the last -- letting everyone in the bar KNOW what a lush he was.
.
He would start slurring and stumbling around the pool table until he got the person being
hustled up to the amount of money he wanted to take from him/her... and then suddenly he
was sober and focused and ON!!!
.
I learned later that he had been going into the bathroom and out behind the bar quite often
and intentionally throwing up. Eventually, he would be HAMMERED on a nightly basis, but
the vomiting delayed the intoxicating effects long enough for him to work his hustle... and he
was smart enough to stop playing when the alcohol did start to kick in.
.
.
.
Worst part. I always assumed that he was in his mid-to-late 30's. I found out (from him)
that he was only 24-years-old.
.
.
.
Ouch.
.
.
.

[MiddleFingerMom]

21. My perspective may be skewed, as I drank alcohol for its medicinal effects...

.
.
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... rather than for its taste.
.
I prefer sodas or tea or juice or cocoa to beers or cocktails -- UNLESS I was going
for a buzz of one degree or another.
.
I really like Bloody Marys but, to be honest, a virgin Bloody Mary tastes better
than a "normal" one.
.
There may be insurance clauses going on. And no offense, if this is a real issue,
you may be focused too much on what your coworkers are doing too much OR
the problem may be with the alcohol itself.
.
You already know the workplace environment is different -- there are certain
behaviors that are less-tolerated there than in others. Some don't like the smell
of an empty beer bottle/can emanating from a nearby wastebasket or the smell
of whiskey wafting up from a spill. It's considered bad form to heat up something
realy odiferous in a microwave and see how long you play well with others if you
keep overcooking your popcorn.
.
.
.

[tjwmason]

24. Allowed? It should be compulsary nt

[JoeyT]

26. Depends on the job.

I've drug up(quit) jobs where it was obvious a whole bunch of people were drunk. If they're not in a position to kill someone, I'm absolutely ok with it.

[LiberalElite]

27. Drinking on the job would get you fired where I work

[geardaddy]

45. Me too.

Corporate America.

[Honeycombe8]

28. No. If it's that important to you, maybe you should seek out a nearly AA mtg. No one I know...

drinks at lunch. Except for those I later discovered were alcoholics.

[darkangel218]

30. You want me to seek an AA meeting cuz i would like a beer at lunch?

!!!!

Thanx for the laugh!

[Honeycombe8]

34. Yep. No one drinks at lunch, dude, esp. on a workday. Unless you're used to dark places....

indoors on a sunny day. Which means alcoholism.

I think the first stage of recovering is called denial.

[OriginalGeek]

36. No offense but people have a beer at lunch all the time

Every day someone somewhere is having a beer or a glass of wine. The same people may not do it every day but every day someone is. There's not a thing in the world that should be considered wrong about that. Certainly not an absolute sign of alcoholism

[Honeycombe8]

37. Not people who work in offices. Not in my city. Not if you want to stay employed very long.

It's inappropriate. It affects the reflexes and thinking ability.

Meeting friends after work for a drink....okay. Not being able to wait four hours for a drink, or thinking everyone else is drinking...not okay.

[OriginalGeek]

40. Yes people who work in offices

probably in your city too. Definitely in my city. We go out to lunch almost every day. Most every place we go serves at least beer and wine. There are people there drinking every time we go - they are not all tourists on vacation. Sometimes it's me. With my boss. Sometimes his boss is there too. Between us we have more than 30 years of continuous employment at this company.

Hell, it wasn't that long ago office people had mini bars in their offices. I would expect some still do.

It is not inappropriate to have a beer at lunch every once in a while. Especially if you're entertaining clients or being entertained by vendors.

Of course, every situation is different - I didn't allow it during the day when I managed warehouses. Fork-lifts and alcohol are a bad combo. But one beer at lunch and by the time you get back to the office to answer the emails that piled up you aren't impaired at all.

[Honeycombe8]

41. Nope. I'm in my 50s. Been going out to lunch nigh on 40 years. Seen thousands

upon thousands of people eating lunch.

It has been decades since I've seen anyone drinking anything alcholic at lunch, and even then...I think I saw it once.

No one that I can see drinks at lunch.

Now I HEAR that one of my friends used to drink during the day a bit, as well as take pills. He was an alcoholic. I never smelled it on him, but others told me they did, after he left the company. We're still friends, and he goes to AA now.

There also used to be a woman secretary who would drink sometimes during the day. She was eventually fired for incompetence...turned out she had a drinking problem stemming from her divorce and other problems.

I've gone out of town, working with some hearty men, all drinkers. NONE of them drank one drop during the day, even at lunch. But after work, they'd pick up a beer or whatever. Even waiting for our flight, some of the people would hit the booze booth.

If you think one beer doesn't impair you, you are in denial. It does, in fact, impair you. Not much. But it does. That is a concerning statement...it does really sound like something a person with a drinking problem would say. Here you go:

"At a .08 BAC level, drivers are so impaired that they are 11 times more likely to have a single-vehicle crash than drivers with no alcohol in their system. But 25 years of research has shown that some impairment begins for both males and females even after one drink.

.02 BAC Level
At the .02 blood alcohol concentration level, experiments have demonstrated that people exhibit some loss of judgment, begin to relax and feel good. But tests have also shown that drivers at the .02 level experience a decline in visual functions, affecting their ability to track a moving object, and experience a decline in the ability to perform two tasks at the same time. These changes may be very subtle and barely noticable to the person who has had only one drink, but in an emergency situation while behind the wheel of a vehicle, they could cause the driver to react (or not react) as they would without having had a drink."
http://alcoholism.about.com/od/dui/a/impaired.htm

[OriginalGeek]

43. So here we have 2 instances of anecdotal evidence

I see drinking, you don't. I feel pretty safe in saying that the number of drinkers at lunch in America is somewhere between nobody and everybody. (Although, to be fair, I never said "everybody&quot

Also I never said 1 beer doesn't impair you. I said by the time you have had it, eaten your lunch, shot the bull with friends/co-workers and gotten back to your office, your emailing capabilities are not very much in danger. In fact, I expressly said it does make a difference as to what type of work you are in. I excluded my former employees who operated heavy machinery from drinking. Because the risk of a beer at lunch impairing them would be too great.

It seems like you have had some bad experiences with drinkers in the past but that doesn't mean your experience is the most common. (And neither is mine). Stop trying to project your situations with alcoholics onto me. I never said there are no alcoholics or that it is not a problem anywhere. All I said is that a beer at lunch isn't a terrible thing. I don't know why your beefy friends chose not to have a beer at lunch - perhaps they knew you and were simply being respectful of you. Maybe they just don't like to drink at lunch. But that doesn't automatically make them morally superior to someone who does.

Cheers!

[datasuspect]

42. i take it you've never been in the executive suite

geez.

[fizzgig]

39. so i'm an alcoholic because i'd have a drink at a company lunch once in a while?

geeze, the things i learn about myself

[4th law of robotics]

58. Perhaps it's a cultural difference. It's actually quite common to have a beer at lunch

and used to be in the US as well (stupid prohibition).

That doesn't make one an alcoholic (who get's drunk off one beer anyway?).

/oh well I guess people should stick to healthy drinks like Coke.

[RiffRandell]

50. I know plenty of people that aren't working that drink at "lunch."

The day after my wedding we had a brunch and most people were drinking mimosas or Bloody Marys.

I meet my friends at lunch and we have wine.

If you don't drink alcohol, fine.

Just don't preach your tea-totalling opinions that are way off base.

[Initech]

29. My work imposed a "no drinking at lunch" policy a long time ago.

My coworkers were telling me that when our company was a lot smaller we used to do these birthday lunches. One time they went out on a birthday lunch and had several long island ice teas. Needless to say most of them who were at the lunch went home for the day and that really angered my boss.

[MiddleFingerMom]

33. Our company (a small, but highly-successful call center) used to throw monthly parties...

.
.
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... at local bars, bringing out the company credit card and picking up all the
employees tabs (middle management all came from the Atlantic City casino
culture) until one of our young trainers wrapped his car around a tree on his
way back, breaking his arm... but killing the much-loved HR manager who
had been his passenger (a really NICE guy... but he did two years of prison
time for it).
.
They still allowed drinking at get-togethers, but they no longer enabled any
overconsumption brought about by an open bar.
.
.
.

[hollysmom]

31. when I visited an office in Germany they had a beer vending machine and sold it in the cafeteria.

[MiddleFingerMom]

32. Our Army barracks in Germany had beer-vending machines, but...

.
.
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... you weren't allowed to access them before 4 PM (normal quitting time) on weekdays...
even if you had the day off.
.
.
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And we were officially allowed two drinks at lunch.
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Of course, the Army had a MASSIVE problem with substance abuse during this time
(early-to-mid 70's -- drugs, but ESPECIALLY alcohol) and this MAY have been a
concession to the realities of the times and designed to help seriously alcoholic
soldiers get through their workday.
.
I worked closely with the rehab counselors at our post, and they were universally
disgusted by the Army's alcohol practices and policies.
.
.
.

[LWolf]

44. It sure would help

get through a day surrounded by large crowds of middle schoolers.

[Kali]

51. !

[felix_numinous]

48. I think traditions vary

across the country. Like brewery towns, university towns might be more laid back.

[Aerows]

53. Never had a problem with it

I worked at a place where a few times per year, they held parties and drinking in the middle of the day happened. Everyone did their job, had a fun time at lunch, and that was that. If it became a problem, I'm sure it would have been discontinued, but as long as it is responsible, I have no idea why it is a problem.

[Cleita]

54. Go to work for a brewery. You can have a beer any time you have a break. n/t

[Posteritatis]

55. I'm starting to think it should be mandatory in some jobs. (nt)

[ellisonz]

57. I can be fired for being under the influence at work.

-Municipal Employee

[HEyHEY]

59. If I were an employer I would not allow it

I'm not paying for your half-drunk thoughts on life. When I worked in Beijing, they sold beer at the cafeteria, but Chinese don't drink like us. So that may explain why. However, it was handy for a cabride home from work at night if you were going to a party.

[darkangel218]

60. How can anyone be " half drunk " after one beer?

I never said ppl should get drunk at work.