Drinking at Work: The Boredom of Boozeless Business
AMERICA has a proud history of drinking on the job. Craftsmen who built the first government buildings in the 17th century were sometimes paid in brandy. The 19th-century railroaders who laid the foundations of modern America were notoriously thirsty. And anyone who thinks that “Mad Men”, a TV drama in which 1960s advertising executives spend the working day sucking up Scotch, is a pastiche, would do well to talk to an account manager from the time—though his memory may be hazy.
America also has a long tradition of temperance. From the Washingtonian movement to Prohibition, there have been many attempts to sober up the workforce. Today, it seems that the battle is over and the killjoys have won.
A glass of something fizzy over lunch with an American executive now means sparkling water. The three-Martini lunch fell into decline in the 1970s, the victim of sober economic times that demanded clear-headed executives, and also of political pressure: Jimmy Carter made it an issue in the 1976 presidential campaign. Morgan Stanley’s New York bankers, for example, were instructed to avoid the drinks cabinet except when entertaining European clients (who could hardly be expected to make it through the day without a snifter). Many modern contracts expressly forbid the consumption of alcohol. Even famously booze-fuelled occupations such as journalism have felt the puritanical wind: hacks at Bloomberg Businessweek can be disciplined for so much as sipping a spritzer.