Thirteen years ago we shared an office building with a large international bank. A common lift connected both businesses to the underground car park. Here I once overheard one of the bank employees describing our offices: ‘And you know what else they have up there…’ He spoke in the kind of wide-eyed, aghast tone you might have expected if he were about to reveal an opium den or a branch of Stringfellows: ‘They’ve got a bar.’
This was true. In the evenings after work, while the bankers downstairs were soberly hard at work destroying the world economy, there were people only yards above them shamelessly chatting over a beer.
If some nurses or doctors got a bit sloshed together after work, good luck to them
Some people drink at work. It’s a fact. And the presence of alcohol in a workplace does not necessarily denote a party. I bring you this astonishing and exclusive scoop because for some reason the entire cast of British political journalists seem bent on denying it.
For people to be disgusted by the presence of booze in an office is understandable. Drinking norms vary enormously from one business to another, as the banker’s horror shows. But journalists? Seriously? Are we really to believe that nobody working in media had an office drink for six months under lockdown? Whatever you think about partygate, you would have to be suffering from a severe case of long Covid not to notice the stench of confected media outrage around it.
For instance, the photograph of people in the Downing Street garden does not show a party. Obviously it does not look like a work meeting because, duh, most offices don’t have gardens. If your office does have a garden — the White House, Buckingham Palace, the Playboy Mansion — then holding meetings outside is hardly a crazy thing to do.
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