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Office happy hours, client dinners and other after-hours work gatherings lose their luster as more people feel the pull of home
Patience for after-hours work socializing is wearing thin.
After an initial burst of postpandemic happy hours, rubber chicken dinners and mandatory office merriment, many employees are adopting a stricter 5:01-and-I’m-done attitude to their work schedules. More U.S. workers say they’re trying to draw thicker lines between work and the rest of life, and that often means clocking out and eschewing invites to socialize with co-workers. Corporate event planners say they’re already facing pushback for fall activities and any work-related functions that take place on weekends.
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Honestly I never did this in the past 20 years of work. Maybe a few office parties outside of work hours. But the whole “Have your boss or subordinate over for dinner” BS was never my thing.
TBH I truly think it was a boomer invention that died in the 80s, because nobody I know ever did anything like this willingly.
This is about happy hours and networking events. Lots of people did that.
Ah that’s fair.
Yeah had a few of those. They were always carefully written as “optional” but it was definitely a Convo piece of you didn’t show up.
I typically showed face for an hour or two, had one beer, sucked up and left. Which is what I’m assuming everyone else did too
I fought my boss over one of those voluntary gatherings. I had shit to do. He said it’s optional but if I want to get ahead I should go.
I did not get ahead.
But the whole “Have your boss or subordinate over for dinner” BS was never my thing.
TBH I truly think it was a boomer invention that died in the 80s, because nobody I know ever did anything like this willingly.
That was for a different time and era when company loyalty was a thing. When you intended to work for a company for decades, forming relationships with your boss actually meant something.
Nowadays employees are just disposable assets, so why bother forming deep bonds with your coworkers?
And back when your boss might actually also be the owner of the company - especially through the 50s and 60s, the person you worked for in the factory very likely could OWN that factory, and so having a decent relationship with them made it easier to approach them with modifications that might make a worker’s day easier, without the hostility of a strike.
Now, since every company is basically owned by some conglomerate, looking to sell to some conglomerate, or is about to get swallowed by some conglomerate, things like “labor relations” are dead. You can’t talk directly to your boss about maybe making sure the factory line has proper guards in place, because the guy who he has to talk to in order to make that decision is having brunch in Paris or meeting with some world leader today. Even if they could, the company bean counters already ran a cost-benefit analysis that showed that the loss of limbs and the payouts and fines they’d deal with for having no guards in place would only be 34% of the profit they’d make from increased production capability or whatever.
The day I was hired at my current job, my boss’s boss “made” me promise I’d work there for a decade lol
Not every job sees you as disposable. Leave those jobs until you find one that appreciates you. I’ve found 2 (out of my last 4) in a decade, but they’re out there.
I wouldn’t even consider a job that expects me do this shit.
I like how everyone they interview for this is someone no one really wants to hang out with. They sound nice but come on. If a fat dude who wears an LSU jersey to work every Friday is ever like, “I’m gonna be cooking some shit up in the park next Wednesday after work. Got a keg. Come on by on your way home.” we’d all go get a plate.
So let me get this right….
It’s newsworthy that people don’t want to hang around their office and/or coworkers after work? People who get ally have seen the last few years shred their savings, who face continuous increases in the cost of living, and in America, no meaningful social protections, and very little vacation or freedom with their time and agency….don’t want to spend more time at their office?
Shocking, I say! Harrumph harrumph I’ve dropped my manacle, I’m so angry.
Mandatory office happy hours or team dinners should be paid time. If not, events should be held during work day hours.
NLRB would likely agree. If your employer compels you to be present, they need to pay you.
Are they gonna pay me for the time I spend at these "social events? No? Eat a bag o’ dicks then.
On one hand, I’m a bit bummed out that my generally positive workplace culture has all but completely evaporated in the wake of the pandemic and nobody wants to even come in to the office anymore, let alone mingle or hang out after work. I genuinely enjoyed the company of a few of my co-workers and even though I was definitely a 5:01-and-done kind of guy, I would still make an effort to be friends with the ones that I liked outside of a professional setting.
On the other hand, I absolutely cannot blame anybody for not wanting to put in the social effort. For a long time I was a “fuck it, it’s quittin’ time, I’m out of here!” person and I would blow out of the office after flatly rejecting my co-workers requests to hang after work because I just didn’t like to socialize that much back then, and I would resent people who were pushy about going out for drinks or staying out really late at night. Despite the fact that I do enjoy doing those things now that I’m older, I don’t want to be “that guy” to anyone else, and I refrain from judging anybody for declining to socialize after work. Maybe they are introverted and shy? Maybe they don’t want to catch COVID? Maybe they have a kid to go home to? Maybe they just don’t like my company and they want to go home and read a book or something? Whatever it is, it’s none of my business, so more power to those people.
I kind of have similar vibes. I joined a company months after acquisition with a long 2 year migration to joining the mothership standards. During that time beers were opened at 4pm on Thursdays for team knowledge share sessions that carried over into happy hours that had a company tab for the first round. In this environment ive made lifelong friends, served as groomsmen and pallbearers for colleagues that I befriended, but also accelerated my career by making professional relationships with folks beyond the sphere of my immediate work duty relationships.I do think there was a “terroir” of conditions that made it work. I don’t think it can easily be replicated. But it kind of bums me out that the current work culture described in the post basically blocks this from ever happening again. I don’t think I’ll be able to informally provide the mentorship and guidance that I so greatly benefited from when I was young and new to the now new generation, or cultivate friendships like I used to.
My company is similar (although there’s still people trying to organise things) but while things changed over the pandemic, they were already planning on full hot desking and reduced floor space (lucky for them they’d just implemented the infrastructure for large scale WFH as the lockdown began). The sense of a “Team” has completely gone, the majority of people I work with are based in other parts of the country or even overseas, going to a social event at my local office would just be mingling with people I don’t know, don’t work with, and only have the name at the top of our paychecks in common. So I don’t bother, and they wonder why.
I clock out at 5 because I’ve gotta get to my other job.
I hate bars, like really really hate them. I don’t understand how to behave there. Everyone else seems to innately know how to be appropriately inappropriate, just the right level of rowdy. I like lounges, and the occasional club. But I never got the hang of bar social etiquette. So I CERTAINLY don’t want to add the extra layer of complexity by putting my colleagues and bosses right the fuck there next to me. It’s just awful for me and I know I’m not the only one. Especially since I cut out 99% of my drinking. Fuck that, I just want to go home.
These events are a way for the employer to get free labour out of their employees as you’ll most likely be talking about your similar interest which is work.
Ehhh i don’t think that’s it
My work does a decent job of doing the event during working hours or at the very least starting within work hours. So a work event starts at 3PM, people can bail at 5PM or stay longer if they want.
Fuck work. They gotta bribe me to be there, I’m putting in minimal time and effort. Fuck all that bullshit.
It really depends on the work you’re doing I guess. Can you imagine if a neurosurgeon who gonna operate on you (hypothetically) think like that?
I’d rather be cut into by a neurosurgeon who does it because he’s paid than one who does it because it’s fun…
By putting minimal time and effort? Good luck coming out of the surgery intact…
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It’s a serious fucking challenge. Which is why I’ll switch jobs if my employer starts demanding that I come in more than my current 2 days/week.
I absolutely loathe expressions like “days off” and “personal time.” It just has a connotation that your life is by default your employer’s. That kind of subliminal messaging can get fucked.
In the same vein, ‘long weekend’ is another that can drop dead as well.
To the point where I’ve started calling a ‘normal’ weekend a ‘short weekend’.
I’ve started suspecting that a lot of people get through it by just avoiding their family… which, why get married then?
Rent
Peak boomer humor is “take my wife…please!” Cue laugh track.
Some, definitely. Others don’t have hobbies. Others don’t sleep much and try to pack everything in.
I’ve been considering adding massive amounts of amphetamines to my life so I can accomplish all I need to and do all I want to.
Honestly we need to move back towards making friends in our communities and not our workplace. I don’t know how it happened but the way we’ve managed to only have friends from work while not knowing the name of our neighbor should never have been the norm. Of course this works out perfect for the nolifers who always get the promotions, and the bosses who need their asses kissed to function.
This is one of the most sadest and poignant things I’ve read in a long time. Spot on.
I’ve been talking with a friend about this after he pointed out the nuclear family really is fairly recent as a post WW2 thing. We’ve seen multigenerational households increase in the wake of the pandemic. Part of me thinks we’re going to see a movement back to that.
If people stay closer to home, that means friends from growing up are closer. They aren’t spread out across the whole country.
Because “3rd places” have been hollowed out, especially non monetized ones, there’s fewer places to just meet people
3rd places were always monetized.
With 3rd places needing to be profitable, it puts a really big stress on them getting throughput. So then that turns them into bars, restaurants, pool halls, or arcades. If they don’t they don’t make money and they can’t keep the space they are renting.
Yeah, it’s overwhelmingly clear that too many people who can make decisions have this idea that “not revenue generating” = worthless.
But muh passive incooooommmeeee
I like my coworkers but work already doesn’t leave me enough time at home for projects and hobbies and relaxing. No way I am spending extra time away after work.
precisely this.
I get along well enough with my coworker, but even if I were the socialising type, he’s not the sort of person I’d typically hang out with. I’d much rather go home to my fiance, my cats, and my hobbies.
