Edit: apparently I‘ve been rate-limited by HN’s anti-spam techniques, so I can’t comment further for a few hours, but encouraging employees to ingest a drug, especially at a workplace, especially a drug that makes people more susceptible to manipulation, doesn’t seem to square with any good-faith interaction between a company and its employees. The point of throwing a party with alcohol at the workplace seems to be an effort to throw money at employment satisfaction, but extremely cheaply and to no positive material effect for the employees. Why not just give the money spent on the party to employees and organize off-site as “normal” people uninhibited by corporate values? Well, that doesn’t benefit anyone BUT employees.
I’ve been to a fair number of off-campus celebrations, lunches, dinners, events, etc and the atmosphere is greatly relaxed and more respectful for it.
So I think you'll send a clearer message to explain what you mean instead of leaving it up to everyone's interpretation of the word "creepy".
Edit: To respond to your edit, I can see how you can think something like that. But at the same time, alcohol is also an effective age-old mechanism for social bonding, and social bonding is important at a workplace. I think there's a certain cynicism in looking at social drinking at the workplace as some manipulation-play that errs into the side of unreasonableness. I, myself, often opt out with a sparkling water, yet I think the ritual is useful to really meet and befriend others at work.
The nice thing about our drinking rituals is that they are inherently social. We don't need to go to some contrived "team building" activity. And it's effective to get people to talk to each other in a way that "Okay everyone, it's social time! Get chattin'!" just isn't.
Alcohol definitely has its downsides. It's unhealthy. It can get people to make fools of themselves. It can make people aggressive. For sure, these are problems. But I wouldn't so quickly dismiss the upsides. Some social drinking can make things possible that I'm not even sure how to replicate without it, like getting people to actually open up and be real with one another. There's something to say about that that isn't just negative. Just like I don't think the workplace is optimal when we're all just impersonal professional drones who never really get to know the real human behind our coworkers.
And no, I'm not an alcoholic. I'm tipsy already after a beer.
Anyway get your drinking rituals away from me, I don’t want to bond with my coworkers, especially not at the workplace. I consider it creepy to even conflate a paid relationship with anything personal.
If I make friends with my coworkers, that’s certainly not the business of my boss, or their employer, or really anyone.
i have absolutely zero interest in friendship, i have absolutely zero interest in jokes, i am simply here to collect data and earn respect
How is encouraging your employees to drink at your workplace creepy of all things?
A manager encouraging employees to take up smoking to fit in better with their coworkers is unethical, and extremely creepy.
A manager encouraging employees to consume alcohol at work in order to foster team building is not fundamentally different than either of the above, it's just milder and deeply entrenched by convention as socially acceptable behavior.
I'm approaching my mid-30s and never had anyone "encourage" me to put the water down and suck on a beer. Nor do I think wheeling a keg into the office is the same as a manager encouraging you to drink.
You definitely stand out when you're in a drinking context and your hands are in your pockets. There's something that can feel distrustful about that in some scenarios. I'd encourage non-drinkers to at least learn to play along and have some beverage in their hand.
A lot of our creep-detector software seems to kick in when someone isn't playing along with social ritual, and complaining that you have to play along doesn't really serve you. They're just basic social skills.
If you have a glass of water in your hand, you are drinking. Maybe you're not drinking alcohol, but calling it "pretending to drink" is just silly.
We're talking about parts of human psycology like not having the same posture as the rest of the group. Of course it's prejudice, but it's also real and difficult to be aware of when it's happening to you.
Also, nobody is showering their drink on you if you don't participate, so blowing your blunt smoke in their face is a much bigger asshole move for me.
No, PCP is known to make users violent beyond what alcohol would do. And increased alcohol consumption correlates with less ability to act violently, because at some point the drinker is going to be unable to move, while PCP does not degrade one's motor skills.
I don't know about offering cigarettes, but I've definitely been in environments where smoke breaks were an effective way of building connections across the organization.
My last employer offered an on-site therapy benefit and I sometimes wondered whether we'd see a progression from therapy -> on-site psychiatry -> little nudges to take ADHD tests -> everyone is taking Adderall.
I think even your examples make clear there is a spectrum here and not absolute equivalence.
You can’t assess these things in a vacuum from their position in society. If adderall were over the counter and considered as safe as alcohol, the spectrum would change.
If alcohol were offered in a culture where it’s frowned upon it might be seen as worse than cigarettes.
Have you considered that some things are deeply entrenched because they work?
I think most people who aren't teetotalers and who have worked at a startup have brought beer or whiskey to the workplace for after a long day, and I don't think that it's that different when the boss brings the beer: if you are working with people you can't trust, you probably have other issues.
Nobody's saying you have to drink, but it's not a tragedy if that leaves you out of some of the benefits of social drinking.
If think your workplace is exclusive of people you can't trust, you're probably very naive.
It's like having a basketball game every Friday and expecting the guy in a wheelchair to show up and keep score. Sure, they can socialize a bit, but its inherently ostracizing and annoying especially if the person doesn't want to keep score.
Sure, voluntary social drinking among employees is fine whenever. And work sponsored drinking on occasion is fine, same as a work sponsored basketball game once in a while. Wheelchair guy won't have a problem with that. But every week? Ostracizing.
But having the sole, weekly, work-sponsored social event as something exclusionary is cult-like and creepy. It makes drinking integral to regular social bonding at work.
Sure, people can sip a sparkling water and play along. And they do. And sometimes it's fun, but it's almost never the context under which that individual prefers socializing. And once people have had a few drinks, it is ostracizing because they are not drunk. They cannot discuss their drinks, offer shots, or engage in drunken antics.
I understand the value of happy hour wholeheartedly, but encouraging your employees to drink at work at your workplace is downright creepy.