Drinks after work?

Drinks after work on Fridays as a way of saving those small places in the CBD from going under????

I read that...and then had to read it again. Did so many people really go off to "have a drink" on a Friday evening? Did they really do it before going home for the weekend?

I know "working from home" because of Covid19 has almost certainly changed the way some people work. They will never go back to a 9-5 type regime in the office. Others will return part time.

A neighbour across the road now goes to work one day a week. On the other four he takes  his children to school and he picks them up at the end of the school day. He tells me his boss is happy with that. He also tells me that he can join in a Zoom meeting and go on working at the same time. As he works in tax compliance and no doubt spends his days reading documents and checking things and filling out forms this is quite possible. 

It saves the family a lot of money. There is no need for before or after school care and, to date, his children don't have the multitude of other after school activities many families seem to believe are essential. Is his boss concerned he might not be at home and in front of the computer for a short time in the afternoon? Apparently not. 

I wonder about all this. I wonder how long these things are going to last. I also wonder if this man ever went to the "Friday night drinks with my workmates" event which is apparently the saving of small bars in the city.

I never had that sort of job. There was no bar at my teacher training college - no point as you had to be twenty-one to legally get a drink and most of us were much younger. At my first university it took me two years to find the bar - and only then because someone took me by the paw, guided me there and bought me a lemon squash. The experience of a smoke filled noisy room was enough to make me want to crawl away, put my paw over my ears and eyes and never experience it again. I have avoided university bars ever since.  I know. I am not a sociable cat.

Recently I was talking to a friend, one half of  a male couple who are very sociable. His partner has cut back his working week from five to four days. I thought he might take Fridays off but the R.... told me, "G... decided to take Tuesdays off. Mondays and he misses out on holidays. If he does Fridays he misses out on drinks after work."

Oh. I really do wonder about this. G... is looking at retirement. I know other people who go to drinks after work because they are "networking", "looking for promotion" or "team building". They are worried about not doing it and being considered  to be "not team players" or "not able to mix" or something else which might affect the way they keep their job or obtain promotion or another job somewhere else. 

Should your job, workplace relations, or promotion really depend on such things? When I was teaching and working in a school library we were generally just glad to be away at the end of Friday. It wasn't the end of the working week of course. There was marking to do, lessons to prepare, and activities to organise. We didn't simply leave it all behind us. 

I suppose there are people who do that - people who don't work shifts, who don't have preparation to do for the following day, and people who don't have paperwork to do. Perhaps it is fun for some people but I wonder how many would prefer to just go home.

And all those people who depend on people doing that for an income themselves? Surely we can find something else for them to do? I don't think it would really think it would be much fun as a job. Tell me if I am wrong.