Every Friday afternoon I get an email from a mailing list I subscribed to some time ago. I must admi, when it appears in my email list, I smile and look forward to whatever joys it may bring. Most of the content would be completely unsuitable for this forum (and sometimes offends even me!)... but I share it with you guys occasionally. The recent political faux-pahs I've posted came from there too.
If anyone is interested, then the website is www.b3ta.com
Anyway - here's a gem from this week!Back in about 2001, I was working for a smallish software company. It was one of those, 'we started in a garage with 7 people and now we've got 400 people all round the world, and in just two more years we'll be as big as Microsoft' type companies. What they really meant was, 'in two years we'll be bought by someone and retire on the proceeds and feel as rich as Microsoft', but at the time, we lowly types didn't know that. It was also one of those companies that was peopled by real passionate types, who bled the mission statement, and quoted the core values to themselves if they couldn't sleep. Plus the big boss was teetotal, into emotional learning, and 'sharing' quite a lot. It really strove to be inclusive, matey, and one big ole' family.
So, scene set. In July 2001 I think it was, they shipped all staff to their US headquarters. Put us up in a hotel, a suite each, transferred us to the offices every day in a limo... We thought we'd died and gone to dot com heaven. If it wasn't for the fact that the HQ was in the ar*e end of nowhere and there was precisely zip to do, the free bar might not have been such a draw.*
And so to the bar... as we often said. From 5 pm to 7 pm every day, there was a free bar. You drop a dollar down, and take as many drinks as you can carry.. and as many shots per drink as you're brave enough to ask for. There was also free food - deep fried stuff, crudites, crisps... The hotel was liberally stuffed with Yanks, Brits, Germans, Spaniards, Russians and a few Netherlandish types. Now, I'm not sure which bit of brain development has shifted as people crossed the Atlantic, but there is a clear difference in drinking habits. The Yanks would sit, maudlin and morose, at the pay bar (not the free one) and have one beer and one cigarette, in two hours... while the European lot, unable to believe our luck, would squeeze gleefully into the chairs within dollar throwing distance of the free bar and proceed to drink their own body volume in free booze while wreathing themselves in blue smoke and generally having a riotous good time. After the first night of this, the shell shocked bar keep didn't return. A larger fellow was put in his place. But he didn't say no either. As you may imagine, we were quite pleased with this situation, and no harm was done as we tended to end up horizontal rather than violent.
Remember the teetotal boss mentioned above? Yes.. He'd organised a big BBQ at a local restaurant complex, everything paid for, except the booze, for the last Saturday. We weren't sure if that meant it was a dry party, or that we had to pay for our hooch. Indecision and uncertainty prevailing, a frantic two hour preparation session was decided upon. Whereas before we'd ended up moderately pi**ed, this was a stonker, Desperation, determination and a fear of being accosted by earnest fellows in sandals and socks drove us all to the brink and we drank the bar pretty much dry.
Imagine, if you will, a restaurant full of perhaps 200 these earnest teetotal god fearing septics, company people through and through, all in Bermuda shorts and cotton shirts. They're mingling, having a civilised evening, chatting about work, light hearted banter exchanged.. And then, the invasion, Think Vikings. Think marauders. Think people who can hold their drink but choose to really enjoy it. In groups of twenty or thirty, we troop up the rickety wooden stairs, stumbling, supporting one another, singing, laughing wildly and, I seem to recall, gesticulating with hands full of pitchers, 'smuggled' out of the hotel.
And then, see the stage. See the Karaoke machine. See the burliest German sales person and a Spanish techie grab the microphone. See the face of the boss turn grey....
And then understand why the company never invited the Europeans over the the States ever, ever again.
