Except for the non-drinkers in your team. I suspect that they either
a) feel left out, because a non-drinker at a pub has a boring time, and has to keep justifying their empty glass
b) probably miss out on important decisions if a majority of the important people in a team are present, which is bad dynamics
c) maybe your team doesn't have any non-drinkers. What does that tell you in terms of diversity / inclusiveness?
I'm not pointing fingers at you specifically because you mention explicitly making plans around people who don't/won't drink, but i think there should be more awareness around this, especially since it can seep into the culture quite insidiously, and invisibly.
Every social activity will exclude people who don't like the activity by default. There's no real working around this.
Even if you just have a 'talking' club, you exclude people who aren't natural extroverts or find large group conversations to be maddening.
In essence, there's no way to be perfectly fair... so at best you can have different choices to try to be as inclusive as possible with limited time.
Is this seriously a thing in the US? Feeling like you have to drink if you're surrounded by people drinking? I keep hearing stories like that. Nobody is going to judge you for not consuming alcohol - if anyone does, they're certainly not people I'd want to hang out with regardless of whether drinks are involved.
It doesn't hurt not to give a fuck, once in a while.
Another boss I had any a different job told me he fired someone for not partying with everyone else. If you went to these parties and didn't drink, the boss would harass you all night.
I agree with you that many people are just self conscious, but it's not exclusively that way.
The tl;dr is that people who are insecure will attempt to rationalize their feelings, and this frequently includes feelings of judgement and persecution from others where none exists.
Unless being drunk is your idea of fun (in which case it seems doubtful you'd be a non-drinker), I cannot understand how drinking liquid A at a party is any more boring than liquid B.
In fact a graph of my enjoyment as a non-drinker (in my experience) would probably be inverse to a graph of the enjoyment of the people getting progressively more shit-faced.
I drink regularly; but every now and then I'll go a week or month without drinking. I'm currently in the middle of one of these periods; but I've still gone out to happy hour or events that involved drinking every day since it's started. I manage to have just as much fun sober drinking soda + bitters.
The best part of this drink is that they rarely charge me anything for it. I'll usually tip a couple bucks per drink, and everybody ends up happy!
If your culture is one where that's necessary then the entire management chain should be fired.
We do these things:
1) We don't make any decisions when team members are missing; they have to be done during work hours when everyone is able to participate 2) There's no obligation to drink (why would there be?); several of the team don't drink, and there is no pressure to do so, they get soft drinks/tea/coffee/whatever they like
As someone who is very shy and introverted, it's one of the few times I actually go out socially, and it's a time to unwind and have a chat with your coworkers and associated friends/partners/family. I don't think doing this has any negative impact upon the rest of the team, so long as you don't do any serious discussion and decision making which excludes others.
If you're pregnant, this basically means that you can't be a part of the team's social gatherings for at least 9 months straight.
You were offended by a gift? Just say thanks and give it away or throw it away.
The vast majority of company gifts are useless to many people. Most people can cloth themselves, buy drinks for themselves, buy bags for themselves, etc and have no need for whatever crap the company is getting them as a sign of appreciation.
Unless they demanded you chug the wine in front of them, you really should not have offended yourself this way.
If I give an observant Jew a kilo of bacon as a gift, why shouldn't they be offended by my being an arsehole?
Same thing.
And if the person knew I kept kosher but still offered the bacon, I would laugh it off and then donate it.
Being easily-offendable is not a virtue. Being gracious is.
[1] http://www.ehow.com/how-does_5132052_chocolate-affect-person...
Sounds like a more balanced view of what I've seen at some companies. Implies grown-ups are in charge.
Is drinking actually bonding though?
It also provides a shared experience that is an easy conversation starter when meeting sober later on "hey, thanks for last night! Where did you end up going after.." etc.
Obviously YMMW, in EU/Denmark it's a very common way to "crash course" people on each other when you suddenly find yourself in a new environment with nobody you know (university, new work). Then again, I'd say EU drinking is a lot more mature than the US one. We usually get introduced to it a lot earlier in life, and have a gentler intro curve rather than going from zero-100 real quick, when entering college or the likes.
"hours-long conversations over beers" sounds like getting wasted to me or at at very least tipsy.
It doesn't. But it can be, because - besides the "social grease" benefits it confers, which I mentioned before - why not?
We don't do it at lunchtime. We don't do it during the working day. 5:30pm on a Friday? Let's have a glass of whiskey together.
Somebody joining/leaving, or we haven't been out together for a while? Let's go to the pub after work one evening.
There is a #drinks channel in Slack where people who fancy a drink after work co-ordinate, and several of will grab each other once a week for a couple of pints.
That does not mean we are drunk when coding. As for team dynamics, it means we know each other better and bond more frequently. Not a problem, I think.
The downside is that for people who don't want to engage in this or can't (have to look after family, etc.), it can feel exclusionary, so we spend some time making sure we do things with those people too.