So your two beer equalled a litre of beer? Two beer sounds like not much, a litre of beer sounds like more somehow!
Anyway, all you need do is keep a supply of breath mints in your car, and pop one every morning before going in! There you go, problem solved!
Regardless, I would make dead certain of two things; I would let no one know this upset me, in any way. Smile and shrug, let it go. And secondly, abandon the idea you know who did this. You’re probably wrong, for one, and if you’re going to pull off not looking upset, you’ll have to let go of this part too. Any inability to shrug this off, on either point, is going to make people think there’s more to this.
Telling them you had two beers the night before was a mistake. It was none of their business and sounds like a lame excuse. But it’s too late to do anything about that now. I think you do need to write a letter, I don’t know what to put in it except a flat out denial that you were drinking that day and that you’ve never been drinking or drunk on the job.
I don’t know what kind of asshole makes an accusation like that. And it sounds like you’re working for assholes also if they’d take someone’s statement like that as a reason to confront you. Your life is stressful enough right now and adding a job change into the mix is the last thing you’ll want at the moment but it’s something you’ll have to consider for the future. I don’t know how the laws work up there north of the border but I’d consider contacting a lawyer if your employment suffers as a result of this incident.
In the future if someone asks you if you’ve been drinking the answer is “Absolutely not. I don’t drink on the job and never have.”
It sounds like I should just keep quiet and let it slide at this point.
And Elbows, I know exactly who it was because I only talked to one person up close as the regular printer was down and I needed to figure out how to install another network printer, which I hadn’t used before.
I feel bad for you because it’s a shitty thing to have happen and I don’t see a good way to deal with it. let it slide, probably, but it’s so unfair.
also, there are a lot of asshole replies in this thread seems to me :dubious:
anyway, good luck - have you considered just straight up asking the one co-worker you think it was? Hey, did you say I smelled like I’d been drinking? because I don’t see how that could be. if you can be casual about it, rather than defensive.
When one hasn’t eaten in some time the body can produce ketones, which can smell like alcohol on the breath. Eating some breakfast should eliminate this as a possibility/recurrence of what happened.
Except, as already pointed out, ‘Someone said they smelt booze on your breath.’, could sooo easily be what the boss said just to keep from revealing how he really got the idea. It’s a big mistake to jump on who you assume it is, based on this statement, in my humble opinion. Getting het up about it could prove an tactical error, proceed cautiously.
We’re in a low-trust era and the ice floes are shrinking. I’m not surprised by this story in the slightest. OP, listen and observe everything and above all, do not retaliate since HR is on alert and you’ve lost the first strike advantage.
Dear lord if you want to keep your job don’t write letters, you’re putting things down in writing that they pretty much have to respond to and blowing the situation up into formal, written complaints instead of a minor incident that has good odds of not even being on paper. Letters aren’t going to make anything better, and can make things worse by escalating a minor verbal investigation into something written and formal, or by convincing the company that you’re planning to sue them.
How are the bosses ‘assholes’ for choosing to ‘confront’ him like that? It sounds like the boss was told something, boss asks the guy accused of drinking ‘were you drinking’, guy says ‘no’, boss wraps up the situation. Are the only bosses who don’t qualify as ‘assholes’ people who assume that all employees never do anything wrong and dismiss any reports of wrongdoing? “Ask the employee about the situation, then close it out if there’s nothing to it” sounds like the reasonable, non-asshole way to handle most situations like this.
I agree with the “lay low” plan and try to forget it. Best plan. You don’t want an escalation as mentioned or make a bad move. Use this space to vent, fret and worry, not work. At least you’ll get humorous responses. Mostly.
Quick question though. Do you use a mouthwash? Sometimes those smell of alcohol.
In your shoes I’d wanna know with 100% certainty who it was. Then I’d wait patiently for the day when he had a flat tire (or similar) and I’d whip him the finger as I drove right by without stopping.
