A manager offering an employee amphetamines to improve their performance is unethical, and extremely creepy.
A manager encouraging employees to take up smoking to fit in better with their coworkers is unethical, and extremely creepy.
A manager encouraging employees to consume alcohol at work in order to foster team building is not fundamentally different than either of the above, it's just milder and deeply entrenched by convention as socially acceptable behavior.
I drink in general, yet at work gatherings with alcohol I stick to sparkling water.
I'm approaching my mid-30s and never had anyone "encourage" me to put the water down and suck on a beer. Nor do I think wheeling a keg into the office is the same as a manager encouraging you to drink.
You definitely stand out when you're in a drinking context and your hands are in your pockets. There's something that can feel distrustful about that in some scenarios. I'd encourage non-drinkers to at least learn to play along and have some beverage in their hand.
A lot of our creep-detector software seems to kick in when someone isn't playing along with social ritual, and complaining that you have to play along doesn't really serve you. They're just basic social skills.
To recap: there's nothing creepy about bullying people into drinking -- pretending to drink if they must! -- to prove their loyalty to the group, and despite the fact that should be common knowledge for everyone, you've never seen it happen?
Dude, a "beverage" can just mean a glass of water.
We're talking about parts of human psycology like not having the same posture as the rest of the group. Of course it's prejudice, but it's also real and difficult to be aware of when it's happening to you.
Also, nobody is showering their drink on you if you don't participate, so blowing your blunt smoke in their face is a much bigger asshole move for me.
> Alcohol makes people violent and out of control, more so than any other drug.
No, PCP is known to make users violent beyond what alcohol would do. And increased alcohol consumption correlates with less ability to act violently, because at some point the drinker is going to be unable to move, while PCP does not degrade one's motor skills.
Presumably it's entrenched by convention because it's a successful practice; organizations that do it are in some small way more successful than ones that don't. I doubt that is true for amphetamines.
I don't know about offering cigarettes, but I've definitely been in environments where smoke breaks were an effective way of building connections across the organization.
Would you feel the same way about "successful practices" which discriminate against employees on the basis of race, sex, or religious preferences? There are plenty of commonplace social practices which do not benefit employees or society. The mere presence of a feature does not prove that it is adaptive.
But they do benefit employees. I am not a smoker but a number of people in a former company were and they shared a camaraderie that if you didn't hang out with them you wouldn't get. It also cut across levels, so you could be an intern and it was an easy time to hang out with some mid level manager and get noticed.
Of course it's successful to intentionally manipulate you with alcohol. Just because you can explain a phenomenon does not justify it; that's just giving up on the concept of "values" altogether.
For sure, but I'm not so sure they would be net-positive for an organization. Plenty of people can't take them in a sustainable way, and if they were given out like beer at happy hour I think a lot of folks would go off the rails.
My last employer offered an on-site therapy benefit and I sometimes wondered whether we'd see a progression from therapy -> on-site psychiatry -> little nudges to take ADHD tests -> everyone is taking Adderall.
And coffee? What about sugary sodas? Energy drinks with supplements?
I think even your examples make clear there is a spectrum here and not absolute equivalence.
You can’t assess these things in a vacuum from their position in society. If adderall were over the counter and considered as safe as alcohol, the spectrum would change.
If alcohol were offered in a culture where it’s frowned upon it might be seen as worse than cigarettes.
> ...deeply entrenched by convention as socially acceptable behavior.
Have you considered that some things are deeply entrenched because they work?
I think most people who aren't teetotalers and who have worked at a startup have brought beer or whiskey to the workplace for after a long day, and I don't think that it's that different when the boss brings the beer: if you are working with people you can't trust, you probably have other issues.
Nobody's saying you have to drink, but it's not a tragedy if that leaves you out of some of the benefits of social drinking.
A manager encouraging employees to take up smoking to fit in better with their coworkers is unethical, and extremely creepy.
A manager encouraging employees to consume alcohol at work in order to foster team building is not fundamentally different than either of the above, it's just milder and deeply entrenched by convention as socially acceptable behavior.