Not a regular basis, but the department I work for has a year-end party with an appetizer buffet and open bar. It’s held at work (I work in a medical center), so we just close the clinic a little early and let the caterers set up, then go for it.
My bolding
What, as opposed to the kids?
Many places still have parties that serve beer. They are generally not liable for the person drinking and driving is my understanding.
Don’t know about fired, but I wonder if sponsoring any sort of religious-based activity at work (Christmas parties as opposed to Holiday parties, Easter celebrations, etc.) would get you a stern talking-to? Or for that matter, being overly religious (evangelizing, etc.) to coworkers.
When I was growing up, my dad’s office (an office of the USDOE/ERDA/AEC) had summer picnics like that, with a keg of beer for the adults. One year, they actually had a drinking game at the end in order to “finish off” the keg. All the participants (anyone 18+, since this was pre-Reagan Colorado) formed a circle, and the keg tap was pushed on. They then filled their cup (about 20 oz), and then the person behind them had to get their cup under so as to not let any beer spill. Everyone would continue filling their cups in this manner. They then had to drink all of their beer before it was their turn to fill up again. Anyone not finished with a cup of beer by the time of their next turn at the keg was eliminated. Also, anyone who allowed beer to be spilled at the tap was eliminated.
This game actually went on for about 20 minutes, with about 30 initial players. By the end, the last two guys were just spinning in place, just getting about a swallow of beer in their cup, drinking, and refilling, all the while spinning in place in their two-man circle. The winner: the son of one of my dad’s coworkers, who was in the 18-21 age range. He won some sort of door prize, to everyone’s cheering. He then handed the prize to his dad, sprinted off to the bushes, and ralphed for several minutes.
Not sure I want to contribute. I worked in investment banking for 7 years in Tokyo and Hong Kong in the 1990’s. This was after the glory days of Liars Poker but not by much. The fact that we were not in the US meant that none of those pesky HR rules and/or laws applied. Japan was wierd too, in that there were a lot of Japanese practices like openly keeping a secretary as your mistress was generally OK, mixed in.
Most of it was politically incorrect jokes. I’ll never forget the institutional sales team going out to a bar. This included all the women on the team. And the head of sales, and then quickly everyone else, dropping trou and setting their pubic hair on fire. Comedy gold.
Basically, you take relatively young guys who make at least 6 if not 7 figures, think they will retire by 40 with at least $10 million clear in fuck you money, have zero threat of getting beat up for being obnoxious at work, and it can get a little out of control. I have to say that 95% of the time it was really damn amusing. Shit, you’re stuck there at work for at leat 10 if not 14 hours a day every day with a lot of abuse going on so blowing off steam without overt violence is pretty needed. Yep, a lot of it was bad taste gallows humor type stuff, and sometimes it went over the top.
Now I never saw this at UBS, but I heard multiple times, frome multiple people that were generally reliable, that Goldman Sachs traders and sales guys got BJ’s on the trading floor during business hours.
It was a rare day in those 7 years that the bar tab was not expensed to any of the companies I worked for. And those bar tabs were cringingly large in retrospect.
Sadly, we’ve become an almost humorless society within the confines of the workplace.
When you can have your career ended for no reason other than ‘head-count-reduction’ ordered by a faceless corporate drone, you learn to keep your head down.
word
Yes, I have memories of smoking in the brokerage office. The older guys dropped their ashes on the carpeting! One older broker worked way up into his 80’s (age) and used to give the secretaries cartons of cigarettes for Christmas. The secretaries would go to the tobacco store to turn in the cartons for money or their own brand.
We had an association that would hold boxing matches after work, but I can’t really talk about it.
No mention of any episode of Mad Men? My favorite office no-no was chasing down a secretary to see what color panties she was wearing. Everybody, including the secretary, laughing and having a swell time.
I was going to chime in on that – during more prosperous times, there were a lot of culturally-supported perks that went with the hard work and long hours – people rarely paid for their own dinner, bar tabs, pay per view and mini-bar expenses when traveling on business, car service every night – sometimes appropriately so, sometimes pretty clearly not work-related. No one ever challenged it unless someone out and out falsified an expense.
These days all of that stuff is limited, scrutinized, or eliminated.