Devil Brew
by Crom
Every Friday my office has a brief period around 3:30 where you can go and get a beer and shoot the breeze with your fellow office grommit's. I personally think this is stupid for two specific reasons:
1) Most of our employee's are call center agents, so they're talking to guest's at hotel's with internet issues. Considering the already bubbling cauldron of hatred most of them have for the idiots who call them, adding alcohol is essentially sending a memo to fate, for total meltdown.
2) I have no desire to socialize with my co-workers. This isn't to say I don't want to be social with them, I am, we have jokes and talk about issues, but I have no desire to incorporate them into my existant base of friends. I have a work life and a private life, I don't like mixing them. There's been a few rare times they've crossed over, but it always takes a long period of acclimatization before i'm comfortable with it.
I have another reason to dislike it. I think it's a cop out. They do it to placate the employees, and all too often they perceive events such as this, as a salve for genuine issues. Then things get ugly and blow up in their faces. If you want people to be relaxed and have fun at work, make every moment they work that experience, don't try and wedge in some out of place social event into their work day.