It was in the early 60’s that an ad exec instructed his people to drink bourbon or scotch instead of vodka. The reasoning being when they screwed up a presentation in the afternoon, he’d rather the client think they were drunk rather than stupid.
Sounds like drinking on the job was pretty widespread.
Submitted for debunkification:
I thought that there was a major change in IRS rules back in the eighties or so that severely tightened up write-offs for dining/entertainment expenses. Something along the lines of no longer allowing or limiting the amount of liquor that could be written off–hence the beginning of the end for the proverbial three-martini lunch.
Did I make that up?
Did I read it in a cartoon somewhere?
Anyone?
Thanks,
Rhythm,
Who works at home, and in honor of this thread is about to pour himself a glass of scotch 
I did a few months work with a company a few years ago where going to the pub was a fixture every Friday. The company was only small, but everyone in the office went, had a few, then went back to work.
You see what life was like without the SDMB?
Are you hiring? Do you need a lawyer?
This cite references such tax reforms in 1986 and again in 1993.
http://waysandmeans.house.gov/Legacy/fullcomm/106cong/6-23-99/6-23woly.htm
I thought I read it on the Straight Dope that the drink known as the Gibson was created for this purpose. A guy named Gibson had rather weak martinis made and marked with an onion rather than an olive. The client would be getting soused while Gibson stayed steady on his lower-powered cocktail.
And the slogan for Smirnoff Vodka was Smirnoff leaves you breathless.
As a kid at a time, it made no sense to me but later I learned they were pushing vodka so you didn’t have the telltale scent of alcohol on your breath.
And the Gibson story, while widespread, is almost certainly a UL.
This one is more likely:
Unless/until Cecil comes in with a definitive answer, the origin is in doubt. Some stories from Wiki:
I don’t know what kind of bank you were in where the Bankers stopped working at five!
But yes, we could drink. A lot.
There are still remenants of this culture in the UK, and I am sad to see it go. I partly blame stronger beers: I haven’t seen a pint of mild for donkey’s.
Disgusting, really. A few people who couldn’t handle their drink spoiled the fun for ninety nine percent of us. And said people still can’t handle their drink.
But this is always the case with the nanny state culture when it discovers a good yet treacherous thing.
My conservative large corp employer’s policy is ‘no drinking at company events, property, etc’ and has a single exception.
Salesmen entertaining customers can use alcohol as they see fit.
A little more treacherous than you think, maybe:
From a recently published study:
"About 42 percent of men and about 19 percent of women reported a history of either alcohol abuse or alcoholism during their lives. Whites and Native Americans were more likely than other ethnic groups to report drinking problems.
Alcohol abuse was defined as drinking-related failure to fulfill major obligations at work, school or home; social or legal problems; and drinking in hazardous situations. Alcoholism was characterized by compulsive drinking; preoccupation with drinking; and tolerance to alcohol or withdrawal symptoms."
Note the crappy definition that makes someone who calls in sick one day with a hangover as having an alcohol problem.
Not to mention “tolerance to alcohol.”
If definitions like these are applied, just about everyone is an alcoholic.
I drink quite a bit and I don’t call in sick because of a hangover. If I have to go to work the next day, I just don’t drink as much. If you drink to the point that you can’t go to work, I’d say you did have a problem. Now that’s not to say I don’t tie one on if I don’t have to work, but it’s been a good 20 years or so since I’ve called in sick because of being hungover (not to say I haven’t gone to work hungover).
Interestingly enough, I hardly drink on the weekends. I don’t want to feel even the least little down on my free time 
No, that’s not what it means. It just means that alcoholics aren’t by any means the only people to have significant problems related to alcohol use over the course of their lifetimes.
They’re actually quite specific about the definitions. I’ve just observed that a lot of people write off a pretty chronic problems related to alcohol use just because they aren’t, clinically-speaking, alcoholic.
I’m not trying to hijack, I just objected to the notion that 99% of drinkers were just fine thank you and it was those few alkies that ruined everything.
Someone in another thread mentioned that they knew someone who was fired because her boss found out she used a sick day to go the beach. How would using a sick day to nurse a hangover be any more acceptable?
So you did have an alcohol problem, twenty years ago?
No, the government limited tax deductions for “business entertainment” as part of the tax reform act of, I believe, 1986.
The issue was first raised by Jimmy Carter during his 1976 campaign. Carter coined or at least popularized the phrase “three-martini lunch”. The gripe at the time, with respect to three martinis, wasn’t so much that they were alcoholic but that they were extravagant. Businessmen (and it was usually men at the time) were treating themselves to expensive lunches at company expense, for which neither they nor the company would pay taxes.
Carter failed to get a tax reform law enacted during his administration, and the issue remained to be mopped up during the Reagan years. By that time, however, the literal three-martini lunch was already in decline, due to the reasons mentioned in this thread–social disapproval of heavy drinking, liability concerns, more women in the workplace, and a more rigorous and competitive business environment.
I tended to not give a fuck back then, I’d call in sick for any number of excuses including staying up all night drinking. Then I grew up.