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Spring · Guest

The new person I share the office with is an alcoholic! I moved in this office around one week ago and have found out about this during the course of the week!
I pity the guy but truly and really I do not care about him I have a career to pursue and I want to go up the corporate ladder.

Are there any experts on the forum who know anything about legal disciplinary actions for alcoholics in the workplace?

The problem is we have no boss! We are both independent experts working of this company

cs · Guest

I am having the same problem, but have not discussed it

cs · Guest

I believe a guy I work with is an acoholic, he drinks beer at work, blames people, lies, disappears,does not work, but covers all of it up good.

I think if I got to management since I have no proof they may think I am makiing it up. This guy made up that I swore at him, so we have already had a negative interaction.

7days · Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 5:22 am Post subject: Alcohol in the workplace

Gosh sakes, what a problem you have. There's always some sort of problems with co-workers, although that's a serious one. Try to get along with them okay and try to see them as a co-worker and not as an alcoholic. As long as they do their job and you do your job, you can't do a thing about it. If you start telling on them, they'll start telling on you, and they wouldn't like you and you wouldn't like them. So don't be a tattle tale. Think of them as a person with a chemical addiction, a person with a family, a person, a co-worker, do not think of them as bad or no-good. Treat them nicely and with respect and they will treat you the same.

I can't stand alcohol and it would be hard for me to put up with what you are putting up with. However, I can think of one office where would you believe here in the USA, alcohol/drinking was allowed! Yep, someone even asked me to go buy a six pack of beer for them (during work hours), and he wasn't a boss, and he wasn't above me, and so I said "NO"!! He said WHAT?? I said NO!! I said it was against my religion and I didn't drink. Then he let me be. They had previously asked me to go buy them a bottle of wine. That time I was stupid and said okay and I went to the store and looked around and here I don't drink, I asked the person where the wine was, wine all over. I picked some cheap wine and brought it back, they didn't like it, so they took it back and got another bottle. I felt I had to go buy their wine, as it was the person who had interviewed/trained/hired me that asked me to do this, and it was for some office party. The same gal used to drink beer sitting at the desk and gosh did that make me mad, but I couldn't do a thing about it. Except once I did smell it real bad and I told her I could really smell alcohol and then I saw how it was leaking out of the wastebasket and onto the carpet! I told her how I could smell alcohol real fast as I didn't drink and she already of course knew that. She quickly took care of the alcohol in the wastebasket.

I don't think this was the answer you were looking for, but oh well.

ResumeCoachDeb · Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 10:43 am Post subject: RE: Purchasing Alcohol

I would go to HR. Many businesses have an Employee Assistance division that will actually help the individual with his / her problem. Their intention is NOT to fire them, but rather get then professional assistance / counseling.

Resume Coach Deb

Camilla · Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2005 11:54 am Post subject:

What you do about this must surely depend on how his drinking is affecting either of you. Are you unable to work properly because of his drinking? Is he unable to work properly?

If the answer to either question is 'yes' then I'd definitely do as Debs advised and speak to somebody in HR. Being as he isn't employed, they won't actually be able to send him for help but they'll be able to advise him and sometimes, just the fact that they've been "caught" can be enough to get them to re-think their attitude to alchohol.

Funnily enough, I've also worked in an office where drinking was allowed. What's more, so was smoking marijuana and that's illegal!I never saw anybody get drunk, though and the smoking was kept to a 'chilling' level rather than totally 'mashed'! I think if anybody had got drunk or 'mashed', they would have been spoken to as they'd have been incapable of doing their jobs. I'm not quite sure why they had this policy but I'm guessing it was to lighten up the mood. It was, to say the least, a very laid back enviornment. As long as you did your job, you could more or less do as you wished. I wasn't there very long - it was a long time ago and at a point in time when I had to have a job and took the first one offered.

I think drinking is probably accepted in certain types of workplace. There's a blacksmith near where I live and when I walk past (which is every evening whilst out walking my dog), there are always workers with cans of beer in there (the front is open during summer). I can't really see that they're doing any harm as long as they're not getting blind drunk and are capable of doing their jobs.

Expecting you to run out and buy wine and beer for them when you're a non-drinking is wrong. As long as you made it clear that you disagree with drinking they should respect that.

~Camilla

Cameron · Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2005 3:28 am Post subject:

It's not illegal to be an alcholic in the workplace, so there's no legal action per se that I can imagine you being able to take.

Deb is right: what you have is a personnel or human resources problem. Now we find ourselves in a decision tree:

If you don't have an HR department, then you need to consider whether the alcoholism affects your work.
If it does, can you talk to the alcoholic about it?
If it does not affect your work, then ask yourself if it affects the employer's work.
If it does not, then you may have run out of anything that's your concern.
If it does, then you have an additional point to raise with your colleague prior to going to the employer. Then you may consider talking to the employer.

Just make sure you have your facts straight, and that you are not acting out of an inappropriate sense of moralism. Drinking is legal and socially accepted, so an overreaction could reflect poorly on you. Your interest is purely productivity. The rest is not your concern.

Good luck!

Steveroo · Guest

What I see between the lines, perhaps, is the same experience in the workplace. In my case, a college campus where our "director" created a toxic workplace with his drunkedness and his hangovers. Two things happen: (1) staff members had to tip-toe around the office avoiding which ever mood the boss was in; this creates a lot of fear. (2) Over a period of five years, our personal growth was blocked by our inability to advance our programs. Research shows such power- position persons prefer increased isolation, and hold on to the status quo. Where do the rest of us go from there? No where. We cannot grow; we resort to being children again.

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