Holiday Cheer?

It's the time of year when many employers hold holiday parties for their employees. Some of these parties will be held in venues that serve alcohol, despite the fact that approximately 10 percent of people are alcoholics or have the disposition to become alcoholic.

I've had at least one patient who was fired from a job due to alcohol-related behavior at an office party. Why would employers create situations that facilitate problematic behavior and raise liability risk for the company? Because often managers are people without common sense.

Even without alcohol, office parties may be problematic, because co-workers aren't necessarily friends. People choose their friends, but they rarely choose their co-workers.

The office party may be an attempt by the management to create an image of bonhomie among workers, an image that may  not correspond to reality.

If employers choose to hold holiday parties, they should be optional events and in no circumstance should alcohol be served.

 Increased diversity in the workplace in recent decades has not always meant increased harmony in the workplace. Many male or white employees have not made the mental transition to a diverse workplace.

Free-form banter among persons who have nothing in common except their place of employment is likely to lead to disharmony. In what may go down in history as the worst possible outcome of this type of disharmony, the recent San Bernardino shooter may have been involved in a heated  conversation with co-workers prior to the attack. (Although the couple was planning a terrorist attack for some time, it's not clear that the office party was the original intended target). One newspaper report I read indicated the conversation may have been about "Israel." Why on earth would someone initiate or continue a conversation about a controversial foreign policy subject with a co-worker he or she isn't friends with and especially, if it's likely the co-worker will disagree? In fact it looks like a deliberate attempt at provocation. I've observed, over the course of my life, that many people enjoy provoking others with whom they disagree. This isn't smart behavior, but many people do not use good judgment in social situations.


Having lived and traveled around the world, I've observed that many issues that are life-or-death to persons in foreign countries are viewed as abstractions and appropriate topics for social conversations among Americans. There used to be a commonly-repeated dictum in American social etiquette,  "don't discuss religion or politics," but this dictum has fallen by the wayside.

If you don't know your co-workers well, it's best to avoid any controversial topics of conversation.