 |
| This stuff was awful - do not recommend |
The new guy did not drink.
During a company dinner in Beijing on Thursday, his boss at Xiamen International Bank demanded that he order an alcoholic beverage. When he refused, he said, another executive slapped him. It was the slap heard around the country, prompting broad reflection on a professional drinking culture in China that rewards excessive drinking and alienates those who do not imbibe.
But the lawyer, who is abstinent, said he had never been coerced into drinking against his will. Many social crowds are formed based on drinking habits, he noted, and dinner banquets can be divided into two tables: one for those who love to drink and another for those who do so moderately or not at all.
“If you can drink and make professional connections, that will help,” he wrote. “But if you don’t have this ability, you can still make a good lawyer.”
...Banquets can be an especially intimidating environment for young working women in China, who are often seated next to older executives and are expected to laugh at their jokes while being plied with alcohol, experts say. Some employees have dealt with the pressure to drink by resorting to discreet tricks, like pouring one’s drink on the floor.A story I once heard was that Frank Sinatra would keep up his reputation for heavy drinking by taking a sip from any drink he was given, and then he would set it down. Probably won't work for these salarymen.
Thankfully, I have never worked in an organization that valued heavy drinking. I'd like to think that I could put up with the peer pressure, but I've never been subjected to it. If my paycheck (and my future paycheck) depended on it, it's hard to say. It's worth noting that Chinese corporate culture is probably a lot more gotta-hang-with-the-team-and-the-boss than the United States. There just really isn't anything like one of these banquets in American culture.*
Happily, the drinking culture in the American chemical industry seems to be at a dull roar. If you were a non-drinker by contrast, I imagine that it would be a little more difficult. Readers, what do you think?
*maybe there is? but banquets (even in non-COVID times) seem like once a year events...
In grad school, my lab mates never deliberately excluded me because I was a non-drinker but I definitely missed out on some of the social aspects because the things my colleagues did while drinking were just embarrassing and I didn't enjoy being around them. I'm still ashamed that I was associated with them at one particular banquet but I think that is more a commentary about the maturity level of grad students. Now, as a professor, there are events that I don't get invited to because my colleagues know I don't generally enjoy the atmosphere of bars, pubs, etc. However, I don't think that I miss out professionally because of it. Perhaps I miss out on networking opportunities at conferences but it hasn't felt like a problem to me.
ReplyDeleteI have spoken with friends at other universities that feel like some departmental decisions get settled informally over drinks after hours and the non-drinkers just aren't included in those decisions. As the article above said, this problem is especially pronounced for female professors, who don't always get invited for drinks with "the boys".
For first-time/poor drinkers, especially for female counterparts, this is extremely risky for their safety with few real/practical choices available. Hush-hush tendencies and repercusssions of complaining about wrongdoings will make this a toxic cycle that keeps perpetuating – to begin with, coercion into drinking (or smoking) is not very far from intimidation or bullying, or perhaps harassment depending on how you want to argue it. Actions performed under the influence of alcohol... there are many cans of worms that lead from there and many more thereafter.
ReplyDeleteIf you categorize this sort of pressured-into-drinking behaviour as another type of workplace misbehaviour, then the west is not very different from the east and merely the types of stuff showing up that differ.
For many of these reasons, I don't drink and I don't make people drink or go pubs/meals, but I go to pubs with my colleagues and friends every week or so where I order coke or tonic water. Where I've been in UK, I've not had to deal with this sort of drinking pressure. One must decide what lines are still ok to blur and what lines absolutely not to cross at all cost. Drinking is the one that I absolutely do not cross.
I spent seven years in Japan, and the work-related drinking culture there can be pretty extreme. For the most part I just learned how to roll with it while staying within my personal limits, but I am sure my liver was happy when I returned to the US! And yes, the "females have to sit next to the bosses and/or guests and play cute" thing was absurd, even when I was on the receiving end of it.
ReplyDelete