So said Slate editor Jacob Weisberg upon encountering a several sheets-to-the-wind DoubleX staff in the midst of their experiment to see what a work day would actually feel like if they drank as much as the retrograde characters in AMC’s Mad Men. Luckily for us, they captured the not entirely pretty, but certainly funny, results in the video below:
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LOL!
Actually, when I began working for Time Inc, back in 1982, drinking during the work hours was de reguire (sp?). But the "cocktail hour" was usually at the end of the day, or on a Sunday night, when the magazine's current issue closed. But those were also the days when people would gravitate to the bar downstairs (which was sort of a Chinese version of Cheers), and cigarette ashtrays lined the hallways.
Lots different now. But sometimes I long for the days when things were a little looser.
#1 Posted by batoutofhell, CJR on Sat 3 Oct 2009 at 04:24 PM
very amusing... but I can't help thinking their productivity decline is due to the fact that they are a bunch of 100-pound women who can't hold their liquor...
If they drank like that every day then they might be more functional at work... instead, the only positive effect seems to be that they were able to speak their minds during tense meetings, and be forgiven.
It kind of reminded me of modern Japanese office drinking habits. During the day, the boss-man is always right and always in charge. However, at the after work happy hour, after a few drinks underlings are allowed -- and in many ways expected -- to say what's really on their minds... and there is a shared illusion that insubordination is allowed when drunk.
It's kind of a safety valve so the boss man can get honest feedback and not make a huge mistake... yet everybody gets to "save face."
#2 Posted by bex, CJR on Sat 3 Oct 2009 at 04:46 PM
Working for a SoCal newspaper in the 80s, drinking was not done at the office, but at lunch - 3 drinks usually on the paper's dime. After lunch it was right to the coffee machine or risk falling asleep at your desk. By 4pm it was time to head for the beach.
Good times....
#3 Posted by joe, CJR on Sat 3 Oct 2009 at 07:24 PM
What no smoking? I'm sorry but trust me if they smoked as much as the guys on Mad Men it would really take the edge off all those cocktails.
#4 Posted by Andy, CJR on Sat 3 Oct 2009 at 07:41 PM
Office work is not brain surgery. Nor is most customer service, or creative work, or construction work, or equipment maintanence. The world existed for hundreds of years while bear or wine was the customary drink at morning noon and night.
When I was in the Navy from 1977-1981 no one blinked much when we accompanied our Leading PO (read shift supervisor) to a burger and beer club on base on any given day. Maybe not a good idea if our complicated missile direction equipment needed some trouble shooting, but within reason not so bad if we needed to intstall a new motor in a radar 130 ft up or even less so if we were just chipping paint. Different categories of cognition required more or less attention to alchohol.
But somehow somewhere in the 80's we lost track of situational drinking and zero tolerance became the norm. In every job I have ever held I have been the number one producer on my team. On the other hand it has always been understood that I drink a little. Hmm maybe a lot. But only in the last fifteen years has this become the absolute first test. "Jeez that guy had a beer for lunch, got forbid he run a can of pork and beans across a scanner!"
What is triply ironic is that one of the defences the CIA presented in defence of their failure to see that foreign agent Aldrich Ames was living beyond his means and sleeping off lunch time drunks at his desk is that many agents lived even more beyon their means and were worse drunks.
But what was okay at the FBI and the CIA were firing offenses if you worked for Krogers or Jifffy Lube.
#5 Posted by Bruce Webb, CJR on Sat 3 Oct 2009 at 10:22 PM
This was a pretty silly exercise, but it did go a long way toward explaining why I can't stand Slate these days.
#6 Posted by bkharmony, CJR on Sun 4 Oct 2009 at 02:10 AM