INTENSITY²
Start here => Free For ALL => Topic started by: Al Swearegen on December 16, 2017, 11:04:02 AM
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SO things have been more than a little rough (and no I do not want to go into that) BUT tonight we (my work) went to our Christmas do at Teppinyaki at a Japanese place.
We went to drinks before at a local tradies bar. I knocked off three bourbon and cola stubbies then went to the Japanese joint and knocked off two double vodkas and three or four sakes and a couple more bourbons and cokes.
On leaving to go back to the Tradies. A number of the work crew stated that they did not know how I was still sober and scurrilous work gossip about the state of a 6'3" guy there who was far from sober ensued. (which I did not enter into - each to their own) seemed the talking point.
Is having a few drinks warranted at work dos? If so how many? How drunk should I be? Does it even really matter?
By the time the hangers-on were at the tradies bar, it did not seem to matter. I won at the pokies and so even after drinks. I was about $30 dollars down for the night so it seemed like a reasonable exchange.
I do not want to cop shit on Monday and I was hoping for some kind of a measure as to how to tiptoe around this drinking at work dos thing (I was kind of hoping my double vodkas were mistaken for water but that did not happen either.
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Not sure I have any useful advice. I'm pretty much a lightweight and more likely to get shit for not drinking than for drinking.
I do hear about people on the team who are notorious for getting plastered at work Christmas parties and such. Some of them own it and freely laugh about it. The stories focus on crazy behavior though.
If it's drinking cause things have been rough, a passing mention that life has been shit might be enough to ward off jokes. It also depends on work culture. You might have to pace yourself to them more in order to attract less attention.
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Not sure I have any useful advice. I'm pretty much a lightweight and more likely to get shit for not drinking than for drinking.
I do hear about people on the team who are notorious for getting plastered at work Christmas parties and such. Some of them own it and freely laugh about it. The stories focus on crazy behavior though.
If it's drinking cause things have been rough, a passing mention that life has been shit might be enough to ward off jokes. It also depends on work culture. You might have to pace yourself to them more in order to attract less attention.
Yes, I was wondering if after I left their orbit whether the gossiping reserved for that other member will turn on me. I do not like that kind of thing an do not really engage in it myself. That other guy I was talking about is a big guy with obviously not a huge tolerance and that in itself is interesting but he was not falling down drunk or really doing much more than staggering a bit and slurring his words. Not a really big deal. Gossiping always feels a little petty and deceitful. I feel really awkward around it.
Yes, what you said is probably right too. Both with the "life being shit" thing and matching their pace. Because they were all for the most part, drinking. Hard to know where the line is or how "drunk" to act?I think maybe the point is to stay under the radar and no one will have to consider what someone has drunk? I dunno?
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I'd say it depends. A couple of drinks with work mates can be perfectly acceptable if your employer has that kind of culture and nothing bad happens--drinking too many and owning it the day after is fine and a source of more than a few sympathetic laughs in those cases--but if the night out results in bad things, that same culture might turn on you.
Some backstabbing environments will turn on you anyway, of course. The ones I have experience of were places where I avoided the drinks to begin with.
Guessing the acceptable number of drinks will differ from one place to the other and also depend on the country. The UK differs from Sweden that differs from Finland, etc.
I worked at a small company a couple of years ago where our boss--the company CEO--would organise drinks every few months and effectively set the pace. It was great fun. As we were a small and tight-knit group, we did this for years and continued to do this regularly even after most of us, including our boss, had left the company.
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If you are known for using a sensible number of words in sentences that people are easily able to determine the meaning of, and you start using enormous numbers of words in incomprehensible combinations, then people may be inclined to blame it on the alcohol.
If you happen to start from the latter position and revert to the former, then I'm not sure whether people would blame the alcohol. If you happen to start from the latter position and continue with the latter position after a couple of dozen alcoholic beverages, I can't see why there would be a problem.
The drinking culture in the typical modern workplace has changed enormously over the past 2 or 3 decades. Where I work we get emails before any event where alcohol may be consumed telling us that if we feel affected by alcohol then we should approach a designated person who will look after us. A friend of mine ended up in hospital after a work Xmas function about 25 years ago where he drank so much that he ended up with a blood alcohol content above 0.4%, and he was told that if his heart had stopped beating they wouldn't have been legally required to try to revive him (which, TBH, they likely said only to scare him).
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If you are known for using a sensible number of words in sentences that people are easily able to determine the meaning of, and you start using enormous numbers of words in incomprehensible combinations, then people may be inclined to blame it on the alcohol.
If you happen to start from the latter position and revert to the former, then I'm not sure whether people would blame the alcohol. If you happen to start from the latter position and continue with the latter position after a couple of dozen alcoholic beverages, I can't see why there would be a problem.
The drinking culture in the typical modern workplace has changed enormously over the past 2 or 3 decades. Where I work we get emails before any event where alcohol may be consumed telling us that if we feel affected by alcohol then we should approach a designated person who will look after us. A friend of mine ended up in hospital after a work Xmas function about 25 years ago where he drank so much that he ended up with a blood alcohol content above 0.4%, and he was told that if his heart had stopped beating they wouldn't have been legally required to try to revive him (which, TBH, they likely said only to scare him).
The guy in question even before the work do, had one of the ladies at work tell him he talks a lot of shit when he drinks, which he willingly owned. Me? I have a bit of a laugh and share and listen to anecdotes and have fun. My sense of humour comes to the fore and people around me have fun. Sloppy and maudlin drunk I am not, nor aggro.
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I'd say it depends. A couple of drinks with work mates can be perfectly acceptable if your employer has that kind of culture and nothing bad happens--drinking too many and owning it the day after is fine and a source of more than a few sympathetic laughs in those cases--but if the night out results in bad things, that same culture might turn on you.
Some backstabbing environments will turn on you anyway, of course. The ones I have experience of were places where I avoided the drinks to begin with.
Guessing the acceptable number of drinks will differ from one place to the other and also depend on the country. The UK differs from Sweden that differs from Finland, etc.
I worked at a small company a couple of years ago where our boss--the company CEO--would organise drinks every few months and effectively set the pace. It was great fun. As we were a small and tight-knit group, we did this for years and continued to do this regularly even after most of us, including our boss, had left the company.
I think to be honest, and I am going to sound a bit spazzy but I find it a bit difficult to gauge these kind of things. There was a lot of talk that we were all going to have drinks and it was embraced with enthusiasm. We were going to have drinks beforehand and a portion of our social club would pay for the meal with the balance going towards Sake and champagne. Most drank something.
So my understanding was it was big drinking thing and a send off for the year. That is why I was thrown a little by the gossiping afterwards and felt a little singled out by people having obviously observed the amount of drinks I threw down my throat and how sober I appeared. It seemed to run counter to the whole point of thing and once again I feel a bit without a point of context. I honestly do not know if that will be mentioned tomorrow and if so in what way or whether it will simply be, "What time did you get home?" kind of thing.
Don't get social rules or people. I also dislike being confused and having no point of reference. I am not so good at winging such things.
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Could it have been a compliment? Like maybe you earned yourself a reputation for being able to hold liquor, and as long as you acknowledge that's now part of people's impression of you, it'll be fine next time around?
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Could it have been a compliment? Like maybe you earned yourself a reputation for being able to hold liquor, and as long as you acknowledge that's now part of people's impression of you, it'll be fine next time around?
Had not thought of that. I will find out in a couple of hours I guess. It would be so much easier if people all thought what I think.
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It would be so much easier if people all thought what I think.
:lol1:
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Where I work we get emails before any event where alcohol may be consumed telling us that if we feel affected by alcohol then we should approach a designated person who will look after us.
Haven't worked anywhere that advanced. How do they pick these designated persons?
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Where I work we get emails before any event where alcohol may be consumed telling us that if we feel affected by alcohol then we should approach a designated person who will look after us.
Haven't worked anywhere that advanced. How do they pick these designated persons?
It's basically to cover the company's butt in case of some alcohol-related sh*t going down.
In my experience it tends to be someone from HR who doesn't drink, and perhaps another senior person (chosen by HR) who doesn't drink.
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Babysitters for adults. I love it.
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Have read more than two drinks puts most people's blood levels over the legal limit for driving so more than two would be noticed as a concern for someone driving, but it's difficult to put out there in conversation. They may not have really been asking if you were sober, but rather saying you weren't.
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Well, it appears the people making all the chatter and gossip were actually a little inebriated and complaining about how they felt yesterday and the only chatter about it today was someone who spilled food and what time everyone got home.
It seemed it was just them rambling after a few drinks. I could not really pick up on who had drunk what and am not a good judge on such things anyway. I am pretty happy with that. I had not experienced the gossipy side of things in the workplace and it is not something I am really comfortable with.
Much ado about nothing as it turns out. Happy with that.
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:2thumbsup:
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Babysitters for adults. I love it.
I've worked at companies with a culture of excessive drinking. Or maybe you just had to be drunk to think it was a good idea to work there.
More than once I had to try to stop brawls or carry a colleague out of harm's way. Which always seemed to happen when I was just as drunk as everyone else involved.
The world has changed, companies have realized how much productivity can be lost through substance abuse and related injuries. The job market is competitive and interconnected, employees can't afford to tarnish their reputation by being viewed as an unsavoury, alcohol-fueled incident just waiting to happen. When I started work the girls would joke about the guys at work who were members of the "wandering hands society". Nowadays that sort of sh*t ends up in court and costs everyone involved a lot of money.
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Babysitters for adults. I love it.
I've worked at companies with a culture of excessive drinking. Or maybe you just had to be drunk to think it was a good idea to work there.
More than once I had to try to stop brawls or carry a colleague out of harm's way. Which always seemed to happen when I was just as drunk as everyone else involved.
The world has changed, companies have realized how much productivity can be lost through substance abuse and related injuries. The job market is competitive and interconnected, employees can't afford to tarnish their reputation by being viewed as an unsavoury, alcohol-fueled incident just waiting to happen. When I started work the girls would joke about the guys at work who were members of the "wandering hands society". Nowadays that sort of sh*t ends up in court and costs everyone involved a lot of money.
One of the poor young girls in the party next to us was a very ill girl at the end of the night. Young thing, probably first Christmas since she was an adult. What did surprise me is that the ones looking after her were young girls her age and the older blokes whereas the older ladies treated her with dismissiveness and contempt and the young blokes laughed and had their iphones out recording her. Shame.
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One of the poor young girls in the party next to us was a very ill girl at the end of the night. Young thing, probably first Christmas since she was an adult. What did surprise me is that the ones looking after her were young girls her age and the older blokes whereas the older ladies treated her with dismissiveness and contempt and the young blokes laughed and had their iphones out recording her. Shame.
Jerks. >:(
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One of the poor young girls in the party next to us was a very ill girl at the end of the night. Young thing, probably first Christmas since she was an adult. What did surprise me is that the ones looking after her were young girls her age and the older blokes whereas the older ladies treated her with dismissiveness and contempt and the young blokes laughed and had their iphones out recording her. Shame.
Jerks. >:(
A couple of us went over to offer help and they said she was fine and no doubt will be highly embarrassed but live. But yeah, I would have thought the older women would Mother Hen her a little and the younger men would be trying to curry favour. Had that completely wrong.
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Babysitters for adults. I love it.
My department head was that person this year. Myself and a couple of other people from our department closed the place down with her. Thank god, nobody got too wasted.
You'd think, given what the company does, we'd be better, but no. The younger folks and paraprofessionals tend to be the ones who go nuts; every year we wonder which department will be badly-behaved and it's generally the same two or three departments. We've had people drunk driving at events where we were collecting for MADD. >_<
Apparently we got asked not to return to one venue we were at a few years back. I hadn't realized it was the hotel's decision rather than ours not to have us return. I think that was the one (or one of the times) we had legit problems with people getting super-wasted.
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You'd think, given what the company does, we'd be better, but no. The younger folks and paraprofessionals tend to be the ones who go nuts; every year we wonder which department will be badly-behaved and it's generally the same two or three departments. We've had people drunk driving at events where we were collecting for MADD. >_<
Most obnoxious and wildest drunks:
1. Teachers (normally 7th grade up to college professors)
2. Counselors (drug/alcohol rehab & troubled youth)
3. Local city council members
Seriously, I've seen some shit. :o :laugh:
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You'd think, given what the company does, we'd be better, but no. The younger folks and paraprofessionals tend to be the ones who go nuts; every year we wonder which department will be badly-behaved and it's generally the same two or three departments. We've had people drunk driving at events where we were collecting for MADD. >_<
Most obnoxious and wildest drunks:
1. Teachers (normally 7th grade up to college professors)
2. Counselors (drug/alcohol rehab & troubled youth)
3. Local city council members
Seriously, I've seen some shit. :o :laugh:
There's a couple of people who love to reminisce about that once time someone who was openly in recovery won a bottle of wine in the holiday party raffle. :laugh:
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I've worked at companies with a culture of excessive drinking.
Have heard a keg is to be installed in the office break room. Dumbest idea ever.
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You'd think, given what the company does, we'd be better, but no. The younger folks and paraprofessionals tend to be the ones who go nuts; every year we wonder which department will be badly-behaved and it's generally the same two or three departments. We've had people drunk driving at events where we were collecting for MADD. >_<
Most obnoxious and wildest drunks:
1. Teachers (normally 7th grade up to college professors)
2. Counselors (drug/alcohol rehab & troubled youth)
3. Local city council members
Seriously, I've seen some shit. :o :laugh:
Not specific to a profession, but expats (from countries like the UK, the US, Australia, NZ, Western Europe) tend to be pretty hardcore. Not necessarily in terms of being obnoxious and wild, but certainly in terms of heavy social drinking every night of the week.
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Never heard that one before.
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IMO the important thing is not the quantitative figure in numerical terms of how many drinks someone consumes, but their behavior after consuming the alcohol.
Fr.ex I've seen people come out of a bar and leg it after me screaming something about niggers and baying for blood (their words, and my blood, respectively) Hadn't drunk anything, or been in the bar myself. Yet I can sink a half pint of vodka easily, probably a pint, although I generally measure it by the coffee mug, rather than use a pint glass. So measurements are an estimate, without getting rowdy, bawdy, nasty. Yeah, it has some chance of perhaps making me slur my speech a bit, or if I go lie down in the dark afterwards, probably end up going to sleep, but thats the worst of anything I do under the influence of booze. Go to sleep, or slur speech if I'm really, really pissed.
If I was drinking shots, chances are people at a party if they were judging by the number of doubles rather than the state of drunkenness, or acts of the drunk person, most of them wouldn't be in a fit state to remember it afterwards by the time I got drunk. I don't drink very often, but (despite its interaction with alcohol) my use of chlormethiazole as an anticonvulsant has given me a preeeeety hefty ability to pack down the drinks if I were inclined to do so and use those measly pub measures. Shit I'd probably bankrupt myself if I had to get drunk on booze from a bar, its so damn expensive these days here, at least if you choose to pay taxes on the alcohol you drink, if you drink any at all. But it takes me a couple of coffee mugs full of vodka, dark rum etc. or the equivalent of about a quarter to a third of a teacup of ethanol, diluted down afterwards to a suitable concentration to be able to be consumed (although that much EtOH, that'll fuck me up pretty thoroughly and its right to sleep I go. Which is typically the only reason I'll drink. If I REALLY cannot sleep, and nitrazepam won't do the trick (as with most nitro-substituted benzodiazepines, nitrazepam is a pretty heavy hitter, long lasting and potent, 1 5mg tablet, probably half would put most down for the count, but I get occasional bouts of the most infernal insomnia where I've had my antiseizure meds, so don't drink huge amounts, and (knowing beforehand, after slowly working up doses to obtain said knowledge rather than jumping in at the deep end of course) even a fucking 70mg dose of nitrazepam won't down me, AFTER I've had the chlormethiazole. That shouldn't happen, indeed it'd kill most people), and I don't have enough of an opioid to sedate myself satisfactorily, AND I'm out of ether, then I'll resort to alcohol, as a once in a blue moon ghetto sedative, but generally i don't get drunk when I drink, nor do I seek to. I won't say no to a frosty pint on a hot summers day though, or if I'm thirsty. But I tend to view active levels of alcohol as more of a primitive, if fairly effective last resort when all else either fails or is unavailable, a tool to get a job done rather than a euphoriant. The job being to sleep for a few hours at least, when its just one of those total fucks of nights or days where sleep is impossible, and especially if I'm already shattered from say, working for ages in the lab, sometimes the only way to go is southwards. Rear end, meet sofa, sofa, meet my back, the rear end'll make the introductions for me, because in a few minutes, I'm not going to be here for a while :LOL:)
I've never been easy to put out, outside a surgical general anaesthesia context. Even before taking the anticonvulsant, its been hard as hell to actually get me to sleep at times. Opioids tend to be the most effective way to do it, outside a theater setting, and don't come with a filthy hangover like a large amount of booze. So for intractable insomnia nights, that tends to be my go-to. The standard GABAa-ergics like benzos take more than any doc would ever prescribe knowingly, to the point where an excessive sized script, intended for 10mg nitrazepam daily, although never, ever taken daily even for a week, will, if I am lucky, get me two nights of sleep if I divide the script in half, one half of it per night. (or day, depending on whether or not my squirrelyarsed autie sleep cycle (if the word 'cycle' applies at all, which is somewhat debatable at best), if I'm really lucky I can split it into thirds, but more often its either two days/nights of sleep, or one. IF it will do the job at all.
Some people seem to think being a hard-head in that respect is something to boast of. I, rather, being on the recipient end of it, see it as more of a curse, because it makes sedating myself both difficult to accomplish with traditional sleeping pills, and damnably uneconomical for a chronic pain patient to need to resort to an opioid in a one-shot significantly increased dosage. Just takes up resources. Its not a bloody blessing, or a source of pride. Its a bloody pain in the arse and a source of resource-drain on pain meds I need to damn walk, or lie down, sit down or anything else involving anything from the hips down that doesn't involve my dick or my arse.
When its not 'jesus how are you still sober' but 'how the blue furry chittering fuck on a hotdog bun have you managed to not only survive, but to remain conscious in the process' that gets really old, really damn quickly. I've given at least one anaesthetist a run for his money, too, getting decidedly funny looks when I asked him to stop poking me with the fucking needles and let me have a crack at it (he didn't, unfortunately, but they did manage, with a combination of alfentanil, some gaseous fluorinated ether anaesthetic via inhalation, sevoflurane, I'd guess going from the taste, and what, going from the color, might have been propofol. THAT did it.) But not before 20 minutes to a half hour at least of being made a fucking pincushion, to the point of starting to get pretty irate about being repeatedly stabbed with needles to the point that, were they left in me, I'd look like a fucking inside out hedgehog. Thats not fun at all, I can tolerate an injection, fine enough, and even stomach somebody else doing it if I have to, I'm not squeamish, not at all.
BUT...being repurposed as a dart-board, that on the other hand is something I am not prepared to tolerate. Wasn't particularly pleased about them sending me home with a cannula still in my vein either (I took it out myself, didn't feel it at the time, presumably they used a local on the area whilst I was under, although I did leave it in overnight, since afterall they already had done just that when I was in the hospital, since that way, with it already in place, no needle tip required, and a simple syringe, other than to draw up a solution of dipropionylmorphine and some 3-fluorophenmetrazine (never had phenmetrazine itself, but its a dopamine reuptake inhibitor type stimulant, used in the days of the (and very popular with, apparently) band The Beatles, before being withdrawn from the range of prescribable stimulant medications available in this, and many other countries, due to the reported staggeringly euphoric nature of preludin. Never tried it, before my time, at least unless I ever were to decide to make some myself I never will get to try it, but I have tried the 3-fluorinated derivative, and it blows (pun intended) even the finest, most carefully recrystallized and solvent-cleaned, intravenous cocaine hydrochloride, turned from street stuff to something that matches the melting point sharp in a microcapillary tube, and checks out, when one recovers whats left after removing all the cuts, even blow light that, gets blown outa the water, by 3-fluorophenmetrazine, and a mixture of that with the dipropionyl ester version of diamorphine, with most certainly never any cut to begin with through that cannula, lets just say, that proved an appetizer fit for a king wishing for his breakfast to be served on a solid 24-carat gold plate and marched to him down a red carpet by the finest culinary artists to be found within an empire. less of a dopaminergic shot to the head, but an IR laser and GPS-guided heatseeker surface-to-air smart-weapon hitting with sub-micrometer precision right to the tastiest places of the Nucleus Accumbens to have poked.
I was, needless to say, in a much better mood about the left-in cannula from the surgery after I woke up next morning at home, where I could get a decent bloody breakfast to eat in the morning rather than something that the cat might well have sicked up after being tube-fed with it due to resistance on the part of the feline in question to consume such a limp, soggy slab of unidentifiable effluent as had been presented me in hospital, ostensibly as, if not food, then something consumable to provide the body with nutriment. That, and of course the freedom to stick on a mudvayne album, set the track to 'death blooms' (I love that song, the guitar and bass kick arses) and crank it up until my eyeballs are fit to rattle in their sockets in time with the house walls vibrating, was immensely satisfying after being cooped up in that pest-riddled shit receptacle for the most part of a week with only a large selection of scientific literature, a laptop so as neither to pay extortion racket fees for internet access for a day which would buy you a month' broadband five or six times over if paid for more than one day; or to be expected to do so for censored bloody internet access that screened out my email, and my favourite clan.chem forum, as well as pretty much everything else that wasn't pre-chewed (and probably predigested by an infant, albeit reluctantly on the part of the unfortunate infant in question). So I at least made sure to bring my laptop, and crack the rudimentary parental controls, along with tapping into their wireless network for free. And bring a pair of good headphones with a built-in amplifier for music.
But, still, hospital food and internet looks even more sickly than your average prepubescent chemo patient with a nasty dose of the flu at the same time as their cisplatin and mustard gas (considered some of the rougher cancer therapies by a fairly wide margin as I have been led to believe, and yeah, they actually do sometimes use nitrogen mustards, including one of the HN1/2/3 series nitrogen mustards originally developed as battlefield blister agent chemical weapons. Albeit that particular drug is somewhat old these days, nitrogen mustards are still used in chemo, including some like modified oestrogen-mustard (estramustine, IIRC thats called) hybrid hormone/nitrogen mustard agent type stuff for treating some endocrine or oestrogen-sensitive cancers), and I can well believe being shot up with a measured dose of something originally intended for blinding, killing and horribly maiming on the battlefield in combination with well-known gutbusters amongst chemo meds would be pretty shitty for the recipient, even when used to do good)