On Mon, Dec 18, 2000 at 08:56:54PM -0500, John Saylor wrote:
> And these are supposed to be *NEWSPAPER* people? Our litigious society
> has just gone too freakin' far!
As I said, there seems to be a great distinction between the rules as
they are written, and the rules as enforced. I've seen company
directors mixing margaritas with electric drills. (Now if this was the
unionized Boston Globe rather than the non-union Boston.com, the use
of a power tool by a non-union employee would probably be a bigger
deal than the alchohol)
> What about if non employees bring the beer in and drink it [gleefully]
> in front of you? While it's not essential, I would say that beer does
> add a certain 'je ne sais quoi' to the meetings and I'd be happy to pick
> up a 6 pack on my way in.
Well, if I wanted to get around the rules, I'd simply ignore them like
many others do. Unfortunately, I see the beer as an extreme employment
liability. It doesn't matter wheter I drink or not at the tech
meetings. If someone somewhere in the company is upset with me, they
could simply point to the tech meetings, claim that I'm drinking on
work property, (possibly with a few empties as evidence), and
potentially I'm out on my ass.
Not that there is anyone in the company that is out to get me. (Not
that I know of) I've probably got a little bit of political capitol
saved up, being generally considered a nice, agreeable, hard working,
and helpful guy, but I don't want to spend that political capitol on
Perl Mongers beer. (I'd rather spend it on slipped deadlines)
I know technical types tend to try to find the boundry conditions, but
lets just treat this as my own personal margin of error.
--
Andrew Langmead
