What about Drinking at Work?

dudes drinking beer, circa 1970's

With Mad Men Season 6 debuting on Sunday, this week’s posts will have a connected theme. Let’s start with a taboo question: what about drinking at work?

Let’s just establish that I am not suggesting that all the 1960’s stuff on Mad Men is good. How about Peggy smoking and drinking while pregnant? Or little Sally Draper playing “spaceman” in a dry cleaning bag? Yikes! Having a drink at work has sometimes gone badly even for the Mad Men, especially for Freddy Rumsen, who peed his pants right there at his desk.

Let me say that I have almost never had a job where drinking is appropriate, just like most of you. I’ve spent the greater part of the last decade working in education and I never drank alcohol at work, and teaching is clearly not one of the professions I’m talking about. Let’s just agree that there are professions that drinking will never be ok, like heavy machine operators, or pilots, probably most assassins.

There are still some professions where drinking is accepted, though, even though I suspect it happen less than it did in the 60’s. How Drinking Vodka Makes You More Creative summarizes a scientific experiment involving creative workers. They were tested on response time when they had has drinks until they were just below the legal limit. Their response and thought time was improved over non-drinkers. You can read through the science of the experiment here, titled “Alcohol Intoxication Facilitates Creative Problem Solving.”

Curious about corporate friendliness to booze, KegWorks interviewed a company about their monthly Craft Beer Exchange, which they consider part of corporate team building. Nathan Miloszewski, VoIP Supply’s Content and Conversations Leader, said “We have a pretty awesome environment and having a beer while on the clock is 100% acceptable so long as the person is being responsible and maintaining the company’s Core Values.”

So….what about drinking at the office? Do you ever enjoy a company-sanctioned tipple, particularly those of you in “creative” jobs? Post pictures of your office bar in the comments.

3 thoughts on “What about Drinking at Work?

  1. Anonymous

    While I don’t have a bar in my home office (yet), I have had a drink in the late afternoon while finishing up work on my computer. This is probably one of the best advantages to working from home.

    Reply

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