Beer
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Beer
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Re: Beer
#2Probably not great in the office, but having a nice craft beer shouldn't be discouraged - it opens up the thoughts, creates an aura of relaxation and can promote conversation and creative collaboration pretty damn fast. Not everything must be productive, productive, productive all of the damn time. Creative thoughts are an important part of the ability to execute them. Just relax and have a beer every now and then.
Re: Beer
#3Buzzkill.
Re: Beer
#4I'm a student so take it with a grain of salt, but when I have precisely 1 beer, I tend to be a little more relaxed and program better. That being said, I wouldn't want to have beer constantly available, especially at work.
Re: Beer
#5I work at a place that doesn't have beer on tap, but people will frequently have beers in meetings on Friday afternoons. Which never really struck me as a "fratty" thing to do. It would be interesting if places switched to wine, then the frat angle would be a lot more incongruous. But probably other problems would result :)
Re: Beer
#6Amongst companies that keep beer on premesis what is the culture surrounding it?
If you come into work on monday morning and everyone is already onto their 3rd Carlsberg export by 12:30 then I can see why that might cause problems.
OTOH companies that I've worked at that have kept beer in the fridge it has always been something that might be enjoyed with lunch on a friday or at 7PM when one has stayed a little late finishing some milestone on a project before heading home (assuming they are not driving).
Re: Beer
#7Probably not great in the office, but having a nice craft beer shouldn't be discouraged - it opens up the thoughts, creates an aura of relaxation and can promote conversation and creative collaboration pretty damn fast. Not everything must be productive, productive, productive all of the damn time. Creative thoughts are an important part of the ability to execute them. Just relax and have a beer every now and then.
At my prior employer, there was a legend of two guys who wrote the companies email system (before commercial packages were available) in 6 weeks. There method was to hit a pub for 4 hour design sessions every few days, followed by a few days of marathon coding. As soon as they'd get stuck, back to the pub. This was an uber-conservative employer, so beer in the office would have been cause for celebration.
I'm with you that if you're going to have beer in the office, it should be good beer. A trend I've seen lately is scotch at work. It's more an end of the day relaxer than anything else.
I've seen both sides of the argument, and don't have a definitive opinion. If it works, keep doing it. If not, don't. If beer in the office costs you employees, don't have it. If beer in the office cuts your turnover, it's cheaper than hiring new people.
Re: Beer
#8FTFA: It’s a recipe for mixed signals, disagreements, misunderstandings.
So are endless meetings, endless emails, emergencies at 4:55p on a Friday, upper management, the phase of the moon, and tidal activity.
We get it. Your vision of "professional" explicitly doesn't allow for any kind of alcohol ever, but how about not dictating that for everyone else, eh?
Re: Beer
#9Is the subtext here about hostile frat culture, or, worse, about harassment? That's what I think it is.
Like a lot of things, I think beer is fine if you're adult about it. We've got quite a lot of beer in our Chicago office (we haul crates from Russian River and Three Floyds and Jolly Pumpkin). But nobody drinks while they work, and nobody drinks whole bottles; we open a bottle and a bunch of people taste. If it's Friday, we might open a couple bottles.
I can't imagine this creating a problem. For one thing, nobody's getting drunk. For another, nobody is OK with disrupting anyone else's work. And finally, I don't think many people here would be sanguine about seeing someone get harassed. On the other hand, maybe that's because so many of us are parents.
Maybe there's an argument that your culture needs to be mature enough to handle beer, and maybe there's an argument that if you've got kegs and people are drinking during the working afternoon, that's a sign that maybe the maturity isn't there.
Re: Beer
#10Amongst companies that keep beer on premesis what is the culture surrounding it? If you come into work on monday morning and everyone is already onto their 3rd Carlsberg export by 12:30 then I can see why that might cause problems. OTOH companies that I've worked at that have kept beer in the fridge it has always been something that might be enjoyed with lunch on a friday or at 7PM when one has stayed a little late f…
At my current employer, there's rarely a lot of beer in the fridge, and people won't grab one before 4:30 or 5:00 or early in the week. Outside of interns, the people most likely to grab 1 or 2 are the hardest workers in the office.