When I started working with this company some years ago I honestly had no clue what to expect in terms of work environment, people, level of intelligence, etc… well I was pleasantly surprised to find out that in my first week of employment, a co-worker brought in a few case of beer one early afternoon, apparently this group was known for its drinking. I raised an eyebrow wondering what was the occasion, turns out an employee in our group was leaving, and it was our group’s tradition to see that person off with some beer, a lot of beer.  Funny thing was, the guy who was leaving didn’t attend his going away party.  Good planning (note the sarcasm).  Fortunately the so-called party organizer had brought snacks too… so he redeemed himself in the eyes of co-workers.  The team that I was in definitely had the term “work hard, play hard” down to an art, although I’m thinking it would be more accurate if it were “work, and drink when the opportunity arises.”  Already I was thinking this was a great team of people, until inevitably people from groups caught the smell of beer and came to the party.  There was plenty of beer to go around, and believe you me, people took advantage of it.  

The conversation began as dead silence (cue the tumbleweed). People in this group never actually really… talked much apparently.  So… standing in this awkward silence, the frequent sip from a beer bottle could be heard.  As it became more frequent, the occasional comment would be issued forth and idle nervous laughter resulted, even if nothing funny was said (weird I tell you).  As people drank more, their tongues loosened up and bam, conversation was there. Granted it was mostly work related, but at least we had volume!   I couldn’t for the life of me remember what the hell was being said specifically, it was like my 3rd day on the job and here I was drinking at work. This was kick ass.

As the party drew to a close (roughly 2 hrs of drinking, or was it 3?), people actually went back to work… now this is a group of developers. Drinking… drinking… and now comes the programming. Riiiiight, that ain’t gonna happen, at least not the right way.  Some people were slurring a few words, some people just didn’t even try to work (that would be me) and then some tried to solve bugs. The bug solvers were the funny ones.  The results were that that we had more bugs to solve the next day, grrreeat.