Last orders for the boozy lunch

Introduction

How working lunches are becoming alcohol-free.

Long, boozy lunches to butter up bosses, schmooze clients and seal deals were the norm for many professionals in the 70s and 80s. It wouldn’t be uncommon to see bankers, journalists and PRs taking their lunchtime way into the afternoon, with a bottle of bubbly.

So far, so Absolutely Fabulous, but the era of the long boozy lunch is now coming to an end. Company expense budgets have been cut, people are generally more health conscious and there’s the fact that many of us are too busy to fit in anything more than a sandwich at our desks. These days it seems that you’re more likely to find your colleagues down the gym at lunch rather than the pub.

There are two reasons for this growing social trend. The first is that alcohol impairs your judgement, meaning you risk making bad decisions at work. It’s also simply far less acceptable for people to return to the office intoxicated.

How boozy lunches affect your afternoon

Alcohol is a depressant, so it slows down the brain and affects the body’s responses. Drinking alcohol affects our judgement and reasoning while slowing down our reactions. It can upset our sense of balance and coordination, impair our vision and hearing and make us lose concentration and feel drowsy.

So, a couple of drinks with lunch can mean you’re more likely to wipe that presentation, miss the important parts of a meeting and generally feel sluggish during the afternoon.

In the long term, work-related drinking can increase the amount of alcohol you consume significantly, putting you at greater risk of alcohol-related health problems.

The consequences of a boozy lunch

Nowadays, many big companies have policies in place that prohibit work time drinking. “It is the norm now for employers not to allow drinking during working hours,” says Sheffield-based HR Advisor Jennifer Marsden. “It’s either in their company policy or individual employee contracts. It’s come about because of inappropriate behaviour affecting the reputation of a company resulting from alcohol consumed during working hours.”

There is plenty of evidence illustrating the need for this kind of policy. In 2009, for example, the Financial Services Authority banned a trader for two years after a three-hour boozy lunch. He returned to work to make a series of moves which could have cost the bank $10 million. (1)

Jane Murrow, who worked in advertising in the 1980s, reports similar consequences of boozy lunches on working life. “The afternoon was virtually written off. I’d make phone calls and then forget who I was talking to,” she says. “I remember coming in hungover the next day and realising I had to meet a client. I stunk of booze and was virtually shaking when I met them. Terrible when I look back at it.”

Lunchtime drinking has become inappropriate in many sectors for good reason. Business Coach Megan Thomas believes that boozy working lunches can severely damage the rapport you may have spent many months building, the deal you're trying to make, and above all, your reputation. “As a general rule, it's safe practice to leave business lunches exclusively for that – doing business,” she says.

The alternative working lunch

The age of the alternative alcohol-free working lunch is here. So, if colleagues or clients want to meet for lunch, suggest going to a coffee shop or a snack bar for your meeting instead of a restaurant. If you want the pub environment for a lunchtime meeting, stick to soft drinks. If you do meet in a restaurant and your client or colleague has a drink, it doesn’t mean you have to. Booze free, you are more likely to clinch that deal, cement that relationship and further your career.

“When I used to have boozy lunches, people would think you were weird if you weren’t drinking,” concludes Murrow. “I think now the opposite is true.”

Top tips for alcohol-free working lunches from business coach Megan Thomas

1. Set clear expectations beforehand.

2. Keep track of time and stick to it.

3. Have an agenda to help keep you focused and know what you want to walk away with. It's easy to get casual and go off-topic.

4. Identify a few restaurants/cafes with different prices and locations so you can adapt the venue to your client.

5. Ask your client questions to get them talking. Successful marketing and sales efforts rely on having a rapport with your customers. A boozy lunch could break that relationship. The more you understand about what they want, need and desire, the more you can better serve them and build that rapport!