Is that your Black Berry or you just happy to see me?

Reuters:
NEW YORK - One in five U.S. workers regularly attends after-work drinks with co-workers, where the most common mishaps range from bad-mouthing another worker to kissing a colleague and drinking too much, according to a study released on Tuesday.

Most workers attend so-called happy hours to bond with colleagues, although 15 percent go to hear the latest office gossip and 13 percent go because they feel obligated, said the survey conducted for CareerBuilder.com, an online job site.

As to what happens when the after-work drinks flow, 16 percent reported bad-mouthing a colleague, 10 percent shared a secret about a colleague, 8 percent kissed a colleague and 8 percent said they drank too much and acted unprofessionally.

Five percent said they had shared a secret about the company, and 4 percent confessed to singing karaoke.

While 21 percent of those who attend say happy hours are good for networking, 85 percent said attending had not helped them get closer to someone higher up or get a better position.

An equal number of men and women said they attend happy hours with co-workers, with younger workers age 25 to 34 most likely and workers over 55 least likely to attend.




One of the most deadly mistakes you can make is making out with a co-worker at a drunken happy hour. But it is a mistake every 20 something should makes so you learn not to shit where you eat. In our salad days in the '80's when Wall St was booming every day happy hour started at 4pm and went on into the night. We would hang out at the South St Seaport and drink big Foster "Oil Can" Beers out of a tub from in front of the North Star Pub. You could always find a bunch of other people from other firms who were hanging out. Of course lots of drunken hi-jinks ensued. The way we always got in trouble was with the pranks that we pulled.

The most memorable was at the old Quiet Man on 45th Street. What was cool about that place was that everyone who hung out there was a stone alcoholic. The owner was a crazy ex-cop who thought he was John Wayne. He was a gentleman when he was sober but when he got his load on he was a lunatic. They used to have this full suit of Armor hanging from the wall next to the fireplace. When Eddie got drunk he would go down to the office to sleep. He would strip down to his underwear and collapse on the couch. But he would wake up strap his gun over his boxers, put on his wingtips and come upstairs. Sometimes this was at 3 or 4 o'clock when people were still in the bar. But when he was roaring drunk most people knew that discretion was the better part of valor and went home early. So he would stagger upstairs wobbling and lurching. The cat was scared shit less of him because when it would run away, Eddie in a drunken stupor would pull his piece and blast away. He got five or six mirrors, a chandelier, several paintings and of course the Armor which he called the Tin Man. You would come in at lunch time and he would say "Ah shit, the Tin man took another bullet last night."

Anyway we were drinking one night with a bunch of accountants and one of them was this new Chinese kid let's call him David Wong. He weighed all of 98 lbs soaking wet. Anyway we proceed to get him drunk to the point where he was comatose. I think it took about three shots. Anyway we though a great prank would be to carry him over and hang him on the wall in the armor. This way we could final see a chink in the armor.

Luckily we remembered to take him out when we left.

It would have been a great headline for the NY Post. We really dodged a bullet with that one. Well at least David did.