I used to work for a large well respected software company. On Fridays, after work, there was a subsidized bar where we could have a beer or two and discuss work or non-work things in a more relaxed atmosphere. Would you ban that?
If I go to a conference and we have an official conference social meet-up should I be prohibited from consuming alcohol?
I have my own straw man. You say:
> they should be presenting to work fit & as prepared as possible to do it
I propose that we ban coffee in the workplace because we should all be at 100% all the time and coffee obviously shows you aren't turning up ready to work.
On the contrary, I have a very broad view of the workplace. Yes to all your questions. I don't work in tech, and there are no subsidised bars or alcohol at conferences. We got subsidised gym memberships and tea at the conferences I'm used to. If you want to drink, your money, your time, after work. If you want to get tipsy with colleagues in your own time, it is not in any way endorsed by the company.
My personal guess is the tech industry _will_ eventually ban alcohol at all such things as the link between drinking, uninhibited men and sexual harassment is bought up again and again. The bad apples will spoil the whole barrel.
> I propose that we ban coffee in the workplace because we should all be at 100% all the time and coffee obviously shows you aren't turning up ready to work.
Well, I don't agree with you. But if you have evidence, sure. My understanding is coffee is a mild stimulant, so it should be linked to a very mild improvement in work performance - so I doubt you have evidence.
People do turn up to work unprepared. We can't really stop that - maybe they just get a bad nights sleep. But alcohol is going to have a pretty strictly negative effect, so employees shouldn't be drinking it in company hours or before work.
My point about taking a narrow view is that "the workplace" is not only at-your-desk time. Its geographic-but-after-hours, related but off-site social events.
On a related note, a lot of the discussions around software project codes of conduct are based on the fact that software projects fundamentally are human endeavours. It's not just about the code you churn out. If you want to employ humans you have to let them be human. That means some degree of socializing. If you want to employ machines you have to maintain them too.
My coffee counterexample was to illustrate that your approach seems to be binary, zero tolerance. With humans involved, I think it's just not that simple.
> a subsidized bar
And if an employee does something stupid after being in that bar, it requires an absolute contortion of language to say that maybe the presence and cheapness of the grog wasn't a contributing factor. Say in a bad case a male employee sexually harasses some female coworker - the woman involved (and, I suspect, a judge) might well question why the company was enabling this. I personally think that the company should be held responsible as much as the drunk employee.
It is simply too easy to link subsidised alcohol to someone acting inappropriately due to alcohol.
> official conference social meet-up
Ditto. If the meetup is official, there should be no alcohol. Learn to socialise over a lemonade. I've seen a very large number of professionals who, somehow, manage to do just that.
> My coffee counterexample was to illustrate that your approach seems to be binary, zero tolerance. With humans involved, I think it's just not that simple.
If I, in a capacity as an employer, am going to have some responsibility for some employees actions then that employee, whilst I am responsible for them, is not going to be drinking alcohol. There risk far outweighs the hypothetical employee who can only socialise with a glass in hand.
I'm not even making that decision on any specific risk factor - alcohol leads to worse decisions, in a way that coffee does not. We live in an age where companies are often responsible for outcomes in a _very broad_ definition of "workplace". If the company might be responsible, then employees have a responsibility to be making their best decisions.
If you want to drink with your workmates the process should be organise it unofficially, go find a bar and don't wear a hat with a corporate logo on it. It isn't hard to do. If drinking is mandatory to having a career then that is the problem, not my hardline approach to alcohol.
By suggesting that companies ban taking part in that activity, but not preventing them from taking an ever increasing part of our lives through long hours and after work events, you are effectively advocating that we ban the activity in it's entirety
If I leave at 5 PM and go to a bar, how is that meaningfully different from staying in the office and starting to drink at 5?
So I would not want to work where you're in charge where everything I may want to do (or consume) is judged on its productivity basis.
You probably have habits that sacrifice your work performance. There's a good chance, at the very least, you weigh more than you should, work out less than you should, and eat fewer vegetables than you should. You might even have children or plan to have them one day. Yikes!
And all of these cost you much more than the morale boosting beer I get to share with my team as is tradition towards the end of a Friday.
So do many other things. If the only thing that keeps morale acceptable is providing alcohol, then you have a problem either with the people you hire, the work you make them do, or the amount of resources you're willing to expend on morale.
Responsible human beings don't drink alcohol in the workplace. If a person is drawing a salary, they should be presenting to work fit & as prepared as possible to do it. There is no good reason for employees to be drinking at or prior to work. Unless, I suppose, there is some well-replicated study showing that alcohol in low doses increases cognitive function despite all my expectations.
Management doesn't have a magic crystal ball to tell truth from falsehood and fact from hearsay - and because of that uncertainty firing people is a far last resort for creating a safe and welcoming workspace. Banning alcohol at work is both prudent and reasonable.