Sip a little sip

I recently had a temp worker who was injured and needed medical attention. Once he got to the hospital, there was a mandatory blood screening.  Alcohol was noted in his blood. (No idea what level, but there was absolutely no indication in his work patterns that he was intoxicated or under the influence of anything- he was a good worker, and very capable)

He was fired immediately, and the company did not pay for his medical care. 

I can't imagine how awkward this would have been if the company had served him the alcohol.

My second argument here, and I'm sure there's others (beer baron among them) it was quite literally my job to drink at work once. I was qa for a small brewery in minnesota. As I'm sure you can guess, there's only a couple real good ways to do quality checks on beer, and one of them is to drink them. Keep in mind, I've never been E36 M3hammered at work. Well, I have but I wasn't on the clock- I was drinking at the brewery on my day off. But it's happened, and my employer was definitely serving it. 

I've been in startup-ish environments where we'd open a bottle of wine if we were working late. I've been in the stodgiest old-man white bread industry (banking), and arguably the stodgiest company there was within the environment. There were a few lunches where we had beer or mixed drinks, and the boss put it on the card; there were quite a few company sponsored events after work that included booze. At least once every other month I'll have a beer or a drink while working from home during this pandemic. When I worked on a golf course, it was pretty common to, though that was because we were a bunch of degenerates. 

Manufacturing, construction, using heavy equipment, medical... No berkeleying way. But I'm not going to hurt my spreadsheet after having a beer or two. 

I guess I should have made more clear that if you are in an industrial or heavy equipment atmosphere than no.  But If you are just sitting at a desk for hours on end, a cold beer would be a refreshing break is all I was saying. 

SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:

The core issue really wouldn't be a moral one, or a morale one, or even a personal preference one. 
 

The core issue would be that the employer would be SERVING alcohol. There are so many issues created by this....

And ANY impaired judgement issues (even driving home from work) become the responsibility of the employer. 
 

For the record, sometimes I have a beer at lunch. My call. But if I was an employer, there is NO WAY  I would EVER serve alcohol to employees while they were at work. Regardless of whether they were on the clock or not. 

I'm very much in agreement, really.  I take a pretty hard-line approach to that here at the theater which ruffled a lot of feathers when I started.  I wasn't going to have a bunch of volunteers in my shop tearing down theater sets while drinking a brew, which was counter to the previous TD's policy.  His policy was evidently "here's a sawzall and a beer, have fun."

I will say, however, that Europe has mostly mastered it.  Studies (in many of their countries' cultures) have shown that one or two glasses of wine or beer at lunch has such a minimal effect on intoxication that the socially-accepted benefits to having a drink far outweigh the risks   It is also common in Europe for businesses to completely close for a couple hours in the afternoon for lunch.

The US has a long way to go before it is as civilized as Europe.

Keith Tanner said:

The US has a long way to go before it is as civilized as Europe.

which part? The part that has seen civil war and ethnic cleansing? I'd like to think we are at least ahead of that part. 

More like checked off the list, Europe was doing that forever ago.

I mean Bosnia was what, 25 years ago?

So... yeah... Brewmaster. Drinking at work is often required of my job.

Having beer with lunch isn't uncommon. Although it's much less common than you'd think. With the ability to drink as much as we want at any time, it's actually most common for someone to just grab like 4-8ozs of beer. Drinking a full pint is generally limited to when we're having meetings, not days where we're getting physical work done. It's a nice sociable thing with business partners, and it's good for brainstorming when we're working on creative things.

We're also small enough that we can monitor how much people are actually drinking. Mostly we're self limiting. The brewing industry actually tends to weed out alcoholics pretty quickly.

We talked about drinking on the job when I was studying in Germany. Apparently liability laws in Germany changed and many places that had allowed drinking before were forced to stop. The result was lower productivity and *more* workplace accidents.

As I gather, it's one of those things that for 95%+ of the population, it's beneficial. The problem is that for another portion, it makes things *much* worse. Liability laws are just easier to apply universally to account for the group that has a problem.

In reply to Beer Baron :

I agree. 
 

And I could make similar cases for safety requirements in Construction. For example, there are tons of studies showing more injuries for people wearing hard hats than not wearing them (and I know of several major industrial plants who FORBID the use of hard hats because they have 50+ years of injury records that prove they have more injuries with hard hats than without them).

We still have to wear hard hats.  Lol!   

In reply to SVreX (Forum Supporter) :

I'd take those studies with a grain of salt. They can actually be flaws in methodology or assumptions.

Apparenlty when helmets were introduced in WW1, they found the incidence of head injuries increased. At first they thought that people soldiers were being stupid and taking more risks. The reality was, people were merely injured when they would have otherwise been killed.

May or may not be a similar thing. Maybe the careless people who account for major head injuries keep getting lots of minor injuries instead of being put out of commission by a single bad one.

In the brewery, I don't work any less carefully when I'm wearing safety glasses and gloves. But in the gym, I am more careful moving weights in bare feet than shoes. Even though a workout shoe is not going to protect my feet any if I drop 45lbs on it.

SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Beer Baron :

I agree. 
 

And I could make similar cases for safety requirements in Construction. For example, there are tons of studies showing more injuries for people wearing hard hats than not wearing them (and I know of several major industrial plants who FORBID the use of hard hats because they have 50+ years of injury records that prove they have more injuries with hard hats than without them).

We still have to wear hard hats.  Lol!   

That is really, really interesting. Any root cause analysis done on the "why"? 

Beer Baron said:

In reply to SVreX (Forum Supporter) :

I'd take those studies with a grain of salt. They can actually be flaws in methodology or assumptions.

Apparenlty when helmets were introduced in WW1, they found the incidence of head injuries increased. At first they thought that people soldiers were being stupid and taking more risks. The reality was, people were merely injured when they would have otherwise been killed.

May or may not be a similar thing. Maybe the careless people who account for major head injuries keep getting lots of minor injuries instead of being put out of commission by a single bad one.

In the brewery, I don't work any less carefully when I'm wearing safety glasses and gloves. But in the gym, I am more careful moving weights in bare feet than shoes. Even though a workout shoe is not going to protect my feet any if I drop 45lbs on it.

This reminds me of the case where a statistician (Wald?) flew in the face of military policy in WWII and recommended they add armor to where returning bombers didn't have bullet holes.  

In reply to mtn (Forum Supporter) :

Yep. 
 

Lower risk of head injuries (but they are kinda rare). Much higher risk of neck injuries (those things weigh much more that it seems, and add neck strain all day through normal movements)

Also, the front visor on hard hats limits  peripheral vision up, and it's very common to come up under an obstruction which is not seen, and have a whiplash effect. 
 

Additionally, pretty much all hard hats use a suspension system that only offers protection when something is a direct downward force.  Zero side impact or bias protection. 
 

The next generation of hard hats will be common place within 5 years. I have one. They will eliminate the front visor, and eliminate the suspension system in favor of a molded foam system (similar to a bicycle helmet, but a little lower on the head). They are expensive (about 10X current ones), and look like RoboCop. 

In reply to Beer Baron :

There are very legit major issues with current hard hats. Not a methodology issue. 

In reply to SVreX (Forum Supporter) :

Lots of good advice with his comment.

Current generation Type 1 and Type 2 hard hats are ONLY rated to survive an 8 lb weight falling from a height of 5', but even that is deceptive. They are only rated for a 3" diameter area at the apex of the helmet.  They offer ZERO protection anywhere else, and they don't protect your neck.
 

That's a pretty narrow set of parameters to rely on when on a construction site.

Sorry for the thread jack.

SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:

 

Sorry for the thread jack.

 

I wouldn't mind a thread on this stuff. Not that I need it, as the only helmets I wear are either for autocross/4wheeling, or hockey helmets. But its really interesting to me. Are they incorporating MIPS, or similar into them? The first hockey helmet with it came out (well, depending on how you want to read the lawsuits maybe the second) and I was disappointed with it. 

I know hockey helmets, and have put far too many hours researching them.  They stop you from getting killed, stop cuts and skull fractures, but they don't stop concussions. We've made them more comfortable, but are really just now getting into improvements for head injuries after 50 years that actually are measurable with them - and those are $$$$. 

Next generation hard hat, for anyone interested:

In reply to mtn (Forum Supporter) :

Yes. MIPS, integrated eye visor shield that can be worn over prescription lenses in various tints, chin strap, no visor, and available integrated hearing protection. 
 

Yes, it's much more like a hockey helmet

In reply to mtn (Forum Supporter) :

Interesting. Makes sense.

I mean, although I expect there are more head injury risks in construction than brewing, I wouldn't expect them to be like an order of magnitude greater or anything. I wouldn't want to wear a hard hat while trying to move around the brewery, and most of the things that could cause head injury, are either superficial enough to not be worth the hassle (minor bruises or bandaid-level cuts) or too big for a hardhat to protect against.

SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:

Next generation hard hat, for anyone interested:

Looks JUST like my bmx helmet. 

I dunno.

The only time I bang my head on things is when I'm wearing a hard hat.

In reply to SVreX (Forum Supporter) :

How is that to wear all day?

It looks heavy but also light at the same time.