The grind resumes. Not too much of a grind, though. It’s a good life. But the days of writing outside in the gazebo slammed to a halt with the sudden cold weather – 95 last week at this time, 55 today. It’s like being kicked out of your office, or forced to move to another one. I suppose I’ll have to spend more time at the office office now, as I did during the long hectic jumped-up Time of Being Ted, last year and earlier this year. (I mean Ted Baxter, of course. Remember when I was a TV newsreader on the web? A thousand years ago.) I still have my desk; I was there today, in fact. It’s spare. I prefer a spare cubicle, but well-appointed: a tasteful lamp that speaks of aesthetic ideas that set me apart (I am totally different than that person over there; gaze upon our lamps, which came from the same Target aisle but intimate different opinions and personalities), a few family pictures to indicate I am not a lone molecule circling the guttering flame of my own solipsistic existence, something kitschy for desk flair to indicate that my middle-aged demographic stature does not prevent me from being “with-it” and “in tune” with the culture of the moment, and a big plastic jug of cheap scotch to lay the groundwork for claiming an alcoholic-related disability in case anyone wants to make me work harder. You can’t! I have a problem!
Well, no, but I do miss the days when there was an office bottle. Not that I ever knew those days. Not that I would have had one. I’m not thinking Mad-Men style drinking, where people take naps at 11 AM to sleep off the previous night’s drinking, then take a 2 PM nap to ride out the lunchtime cocktails, then rouse themselves at five to get a good start on the evening drinking to come. The reality of the Office Bottle is headaches and late mornings and nothing getting done; it’s being the person who drinks coffee and works hard and stays late and worries about the checkbook balance, and walking past someone’s office and seeing them pull out the Office Bottle, and feeling another hot stab of anger.
Although it depends. Depends on the profession. I’ve told this story before, here, but when I got to DC the office culture hadn’t yet been changed by the new boss. The new boss was not the same as the old boss. The new boss was a hard case, if the situation required. She was not an abolitionist prune-faced prude who’d cut you dead if you liked your tipple – she was old friends with Molly Ivins, for heaven’s sake – but she’d also sat down someone I knew and said “you’re drinking too much” and packed said person off to a stint in a drying-out house. More or less. The new boss came into a shop that had some noontime drinkers. This was DC, after all: long lunches on the tab, steak and whiskey, noon to two, schmooze, gossip, policy ideas floated, journalists courted, messages shaped. Before the web there were the innumerable dark smoky nooks with red velvet on the walls and maitre d’s and heavy menus and the idea that one is entitled to this, really; you have to play the game, and this is where the game is played, and my readers will benefit from the things I learn. Cheers. Clink. Waiter? We’re ready.
One of the old reporters took me downstairs to give me a primer on DC. I liked him; he was friendly, sardonic, witty, and knew all the angles on the town. I remember that he called his first tumbler of scotch “The appetizer.” There was a first course, and a second course, and towards the end of the meal he held up his glass and said to the waiter: “And now dessert.”
Then he’s go back and write.
Those days came to an end, though. Lunchtime drinkers were people who juuuust might have a problem. I never had so much as a beer at lunch, because I get irritated at being schmozzled and tired at 2 PM. Just don’t drink enough to drink that much, if you know what I mean. So: what’s the romance of the office bottle?
Lou Grant, that’s what. Or who. I always wanted to work for Lou Grant. For one thing, the show made it clear that Lou could hold his liquor. Two, there was a certain manly bonding element – even if you were named Mary – when Lou sat you down and pulled out the office bottle and laid out wisdom in the form of a war anecdote. It was ceremonial. In Mad Men the drinking is compulsive, habitual, rote – and the beauty of the show, among its other pleasures, is to show over the course of four years how something that seemed so bracing and outre to modern eyes is really quite sad. Unless you’re Roger. He’s probably the only character who can still pull off the character of the romantic alcoholic, without the tiresome Fitzgerald tragedy. The two great archetypes of the show are Don, the striving cipher, and Roger, who knows what he is, and knows he isn’t much – but it doesn’t really matter, because there’s money enough, the securities of class, and the hard-fought knowledge that the hangover eventually lifts and a good stiff drink will still do its work. The romantic alcoholic, after all, is an optimist.
Anyway, there’s a can of Diet Coke in my drawer. When I went back to office hours I laid in a supply of Diet Cokes and microwavable shelf-stable meals. There’s lots of stuff in the drawer, and I looked at it today, and thought: everything must go. In my head or on my machine, that’s all I’m going to carry here. A clean desk and empty drawers, and I’m happy.
As I said: cold. Stupid cold. But after I worked out I went outside and wrote a Joe Ohio story. The last episode seemed to suggest a mystery, and as it turned out, there is a mystery. It’s difficult within the limits of the form to develop plots and arcs, because as you know the matchbooks determine the stories. It’s so I Ching. But it can be done without forcing matters, the latest installment came as a wonderful surprise. I have to follow the rules: no preselecting the matchbooks, no viewing of the matchbook before I start, 30 minutes to write, one revision. But I had to break one rule tonight, and it’s worth it.
Pricing will be about 50 cents a chapter, with 50 chapters total in Volume 2. If you doubt the appeal of this project, consider this comment I found in the pending:
shalom I unquestionably ardor this blog post on The Return of Joe Ohio – The Bleat.. My name is Gia Tri, can we swap links?
Yeah, I think the market’s huge.
Anyway: that was the day. It began with madness: we were walking through the living room this morning to head to the bus, and I thought I’d be cruel and say BUS! as I looked through the window, but no, you can’t cry wolf. Then I looked through the window and saw it: BUS! EARLY! I ran down the hill shouting and waving my hands, and as my daughter said later “the kids on the bus must have thought you looked like a total idiot.”
But did they say anything?
Well, no, because they’re all kindergarteners.
These are the new foes: the bus is infested with kindergarteners who do not know they have no right to occupy the back of the bus. She’s too old for this. When she came home at the end of the day and was tired and complaining about the bus, I asked if she’d like some hot chocolate. She did. I reached in the cabinet, and brought out the office bottle. In powder form. It’s all ceremony.
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Your daily updates – two, in fact – can be found over at Flotsam! Or, if you object to this whole back-up-blog-with-update-updates idea, hang on, and I’ll post them here around noon. Tumblr should be up around noon as well, and of course PopCrush and the noon video and blah, blah, FARGIN’ BLAH, and so on. Have a grand day. Hope it’s warmer than mine.
Pass it along, if you wish
41 Responses to Ah, there you are
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When I started working in 1986 many of the older staff (older – like in their 40′s!) had a bottle in the desk drawer – at 5:00, they’d put that bottle on the desk, pour themselves a wee dram, and keep on working late into the evening. Seems way more civilized than popping a Red Bull.
They’d also light up a cigarette INSIDE THE BUILDING! The beginning of the end was the distribution of those ashtrays with the battery-powered fan that supposedly sucked the smoke down into a charcoal filter but actually did nothing but make an annoying hum. Soon after that, no more smoking and no more boozing.
Still hot here in DC. Hit 90 yesterday. But a Cold Front is Coming.
As long as it stays reasonably warm through this weekend in Ocean City, for the last Beach Weekend of the year. One more day of surfing followed by laying out in the sun, then Dumser’s Ice Cream (I’m such a Rebel!) in the evening.
Sunday we clean the house and shut it down for the winter. Except for occasional weekend getaways with the Significant Other. But that’s not Going to the Beach.
And later today, closing on the new condo. Which is why I’m here instead of at work.
Good day to you, Mr. Lileks! I am loving the Flotsam thing- the Institute can be like a riddle inside a puzzle wrapped in an enigma when it comes to updates(to bastardize something Oliver Stonish) so I Like. Per the blog, I agree with your take on the “office bottle” and have struggled myself with maintaining said lifestyle with similar effects. The thing you don’t emphasize is that it is in no way a 9-5 operation, it doesn’t work at all that way. It is more similar to some So-Cal hippy programmer job when you could be just as easily be working hard at 7am as 7pm, though the day might be punctuated by the occasional bong-hit. Like you and Flotsam, it also has my full support. Cheers from the 80 something degreed EU!
Waiting impatiently for cooler weather. It DOES finally get into the 70′s overnight…but heats up again, with miserable humidity, by 9. Ick. This interminable summer that gets advertised to those who are about to retire? It’s for the birds. I spend 4 months of the year here waiting for it NOT to be summer.
Then again, if that’s the only thing really ‘wrong’ with my life, I’d say I’ve got it pretty good!
When I joined the PR department of a major NYC bank in 1973, the head of the department would always come back from lunch, go into his office and lock the door for an hour. Nap time! (Luckily for him, his was not a glass-walled office.) When he retired, his successor (his former deputy) took over the office — and the locked-door practice. Both guys were former newspapermen, if that makes any difference.
Strictly caffeine fueled here, as it has ever been. However, I do consume it in Mad Men-esque fashion. Caffeine-ahollic? Most likely.
Welcome back Joe Ohio!
76 degrees and isolated thunder storms here today. It really is like someone threw a switch.
It seems to me that the Office Bottle summons up Hammet and Chandler most of all. When you’ve been beaten up by a couple of goons and shot at by a crooked cop, and stumbled into through the foyer at last, an office bottle provides both spiritual solace and a handy source of disinfectant.
So I think a Joe Ohio mystery will suit me just fine.
RE: NoDak towns.
There are a ton of old buildings in the cities and towns in my area with the second story windows bricked up, and I have never understood it. When I was younger, I thought it was a bizarre architectural trend that must have been invented by a crazy person. Now I just wonder what is up there that is so special that it must be protected (or imprisoned, perhaps?) by bricks rather than glass.
@Dean: I started my work life in NYC in 1983, in a small in-house creative agency for a large magazine publishing company. I was a happy participant in the steak-and-booze, 2-hour lunch hour. In fact, we would be told by the boss that we weren’t spending enough on our expense accounts, and that we needed to take our co-workers out to lunch more often.
Seems like we were able to get a lot more done back then, and it was more creative. We were able to keep it up until the late 90s, which is (I suppose) when most of the Mad Men generation retired to their country homes. Then it was no more smoking, no more booze.
I miss those days. Even though I’m not a smoker.
Drinking at work sounds seems like another tool to separate the men from the boys.
where I grew up, the office bottle made for a way sucky newscast. those newscasts fed 60+ families all on their own. the other 40 were paid on all the other business at the station.
there were indeed a few dismissals over it. in the 50s and 60s.
in present circumstances, we have had the occasional fellow who would come in dragging and by 10 am would be slack-jawed backwards in his chair, smelling like midnight in the hollers. two trips to PeeCity and out. generally recidivists.
so I haven’t seen too many office bottles. other than Dew. and of course, the empties a quarter full of spent chaw.
-0-
cross-silo: cooking the pasta 14 minutes for the toothless. this invokes the blind fear of that murderous gangster, Al Dente. only thing worse is the Tong butcher Li Sing.
Yeah, well maybe drinking does kill brain cells, but only the WEAK ones.
This may border on the risky, but the Lou Grant reference with the bottle and the war story reminded me of something. I first heard it in a radio interview and then later thought back over what I knew from my own experiences with veteran co-workers, which was about 70% of them, and my Dad. The author being interviewed put forth the premise that drinking was a way of dealing with PTSD among many veterans. He went so far as to say that it was why the VFW’s all have bars in them to facilitate a safe haven for those struggling without benefit or desire to seek professional help, but rather self medication. I seem to recall also that this was mentioned once in passing by Capt. Dale Dye USMC-Ret. during one of his interviews.
It makes me wonder how much of the drinking seen in Mad Men (and the entire era) is part of the same phenomenon. I do know that men in WW II seldom talked of it, buttoned it up tight, and buried it deep. Sooner or later that can build up and manifest itself in some less desirable activities.
I worked with a middle aged man that everyone loved. We all knew that he drank like a fish the minute he got home from work (and he lived a short walk from work).
He retired early at age 55 and drank himself to death within 6 months.
I wonder how long he would have lived if he got to drink at work?
I amour the Ohio of Joe.
I’d gladly trade a decade or so of my threescore-and-ten for drinking at work, were there a way to make such a trade.
@Mr_Hat, actually you are on to something, I think my late colleague did die happy or, at least had no clue that it was coming.
Maybe I missed something, but how does one subscribe to the new and improved “Joe Ohio”?
@ Renee V You don’t yet, I believe. It’s going to be some sort of eBook format, as mentioned a couple weeks ago.
@Mark E Hurling: sir, you are on to something here. very seldom did Dad talk about the war, but he would occasionally come home and start working the phones for somebody who needed, desperately needed, dental work 5 years ago. or needed a doctor. or needed counselling.
tonight.
these connections were made at the Legion or the VFW when he occasionally stopped in. one trick of the wired newsman is to keep working the crowd, asking how things are going.
and these calls were invariably prompted when a guy finally opened up about how it all started south after combat.
you pulled it together and ran a wild liberty, because the alternative was “unfit for duty, psychological.”
something lower than shooting yourself in the leg. hell, there were lots of folks to do that for you.
“A clean desk and empty drawers, and I’m happy.”
When you get to a certain age, you appreciate those things even more.
@MEH: oh, the bars. they also kept the clubs open. the revenue was vital.
A small dot-com firm I worked at two years ago had a company fridge filled with a variety of beers, available to all after 5pm. The locked cupboard in the break room, filled with hard liquor, was oppened for company parties. A number of workers had drunk driving arrests and one of my team was serving 60 days for a third drunk & disorderly conviction. I didn’t stay there long.
@hal, sounds a great way to reduce staff with out messy layoffs
@swschrad, I hadn’t thought about the economic angle for funding the VFW. Dad didn’t go to the VFW often, I don’t know why. He preferred the Papineau Coliseum, a bar right in town. I don’t believe this phenomenon was unique to the Greatest Generation. Books on the Napoleonic Wars by both Cornwell (the land war) and O’Brian (the naval war) talk constantly about the drinking by the soldiers and sailors of the era even to the point of liquoring up right before and even during battles when they could. It’s easy to dismiss their works as mere historical fiction, but both of them cite extensive research among the letters of the era for insights into how things actually were. The French Foreign Legion has no disciplinary charge for drunk on duty, merely one for unfit for duty that does not cover intoxication, so it appears to not be confined to anglophones.
@Mark E. Hurling: you and the author are spot on about one of the functions of VFWs, etc. There’s nothing like being among your own in order to maintain some semblance of sanity. I never had a job where it was routine to drink on the Man’s time (nutz). When climbing telephone poles, operating machines, etc, it’s best to be in control of one’s faculties, heh.
An uncle of mine was a Naval Aviator in the PTO. He never talked about his experiences, certainly not to his kids. His civilian job was very much like the Mad Men show.
Ah, Cap’n Dye, I really like what he put Carlie Sheen through for Platoon
I worked a lot of DWI enforcement (so many stories, so little time) in the ’70s-’80s (all time and a half, woo hoo) and it’s interesting that toward the late ’70s, attitudes toward alcohol consumption started to change to the negative. This coincided with the beginning of retirements of WW 2 vets. First Responders know all too well the horror alcohol abuse causes, so the rejection of the Mad Men life-style is a good thing.
Dookie, now I’m hungry for filet mignon and copious amounts of Canadian Mist
@Mark E Hurling: they don’t call that warm brew “John Courage” for nothing in ol’ Blighty.
I suspect being three sheets to the wind doesn’t matter much when it’s cutlasses and daggers, if you’re slicing each others beards, you’re accurate enough. probably good enough for broadsides, too, there’s no aiming needed.
modern weaponry, not so much. it’s useful to have your lock-on laser steady on the right target. drunk and stoned is no way to pilot a Predator.
which of course brings up the history of the assassins. again, the ancient version of the semi-guided missle, without the availiability of Cheetos as a distraction.
@Hal: “A small dot-com firm I worked at two years ago had a company fridge filled with a variety of beers, available to all after 5pm.”
Back in the early 90s, my boss actually assigned me to keep a fridge filled with sodas, iced tea, and beer. After 5:00, we’d crack open a cold one and keep working.
Of course, when you’re in Manhattan, either you take a subway or cab home or get on a bus or train back to the suburbs. No risk of DWI, really.
@swschard: aaaaah, in Da Big Nam we would have KILLED for Cheetos!!!! Oh, wait, we did…but we never did get our Cheetos
@fizzbin, I actually pulled over a member of the royal family of Qatar for DWI. He was driving a Firebird (of course) and was really hammered. He had an international driver’s license to boot that had no validity at all in the good ole’ U.S. of A. Oh and did I mention diplomatic immunity? I really got blistered by the watch commander for not releasing him in a timely enough manner, even though he was still so drunk he had to drive; he was too drunk to walk.
@MEH: Sophocles’ Ajax deals with PTSD. It seems the price of war ’twas ever thus.
@MEH: so, it was YOU who caused us all the trouble!
I know, my time on The Thin Blue Line was before yours. Toward the end of my LEO time I was an FTO. The Feds sent us training material on “How To Kiss Diplomatic A**”, er, I mean, “How To Play Nice With Diplomats” or some such crep. It was a big hit at the shop, heh.
I never had contact with any of the Anointed Ones. My curse seemed to be Canadians. I was a veritable Kanuck magnet
The really dark side of drinking on the job. I known some retired (and a couple of current) railroaders. Drinking on the job was very commonplace in the 60s and 70s. They said the best thing to ever happen was a very nasty Amtrak accident in the NE. A drunk and high Conrail engineer ran a red light and killed a large number of Amtrak passengers when he hit their train. This prompted a crackdown and the rails have been much safer since.
@fizzbin, I was a LEO (although I’m actually a Virgo) in the 70′s, so pretty close in time frame with you. They let me do the field training officer thing in terms of unarmed tactics for a while, until I got my photo taken putting a knee into someone’s wedding tackle. They moved me to assist the sergeant in charge of the officer friendly program as punishment for getting caught. I got to carry his boxes of baloons and suckers for all those little F’ers for a few weeks while the bad publicity died down. I got bounced from that detail for reciting that little rhyming ditty mentioned above while loading boxes in the parking lot one hot afternoon. The school’s principal caught me at it and when I reported in for work the next day, the desk sgt. said; “Uh Hurling, Capt. Hogan wants to see you in his office upstairs.”
Which ironically lead me to my next gig, special agent for the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railroad, known affectionately to it’s employees as CRIP. It may have been different on the East coast railroads, but in the Midwest they were sudden death on drinking on the job even in the 70′s. The agents in Kansas City actually showed up at shift change with a breathalyzer. The legend goes that several brakemen and engineers suddenly called in sick from a phone booth across the street from the railyard when they saw and heard what was going on in the crew call room.
Working in London was a bit of a shock for this US trained manager. My staff would often pop out for “a few pints” over a pub lunch and “quite a few” on Fridays. In the 90′s it was the norm and many staff would drag through the afternoon at 50% effectiveness. The Aussies I managed were worse often citing a “powerful boozer” as a valid reason for being late and taking off at lunch on Fridays to get started on a pub crawl.
The culture was such that none of this was cause for dicipline. My staff in Amsterdam could even keep porn on thier work PC with impunity. Strange world.
About 10 years ago a contact at a distributor of my company’s products informed me that the donuts I brought them on my quarterly visits were nice, but quite frankly, everyone brought them donuts. What they wanted was BEER. So according to instruction, I showed up at 4:58PM (two minutes before they closed) at the back dock with two cases of the stuff that made Milwaukee famous and put it in the refridgerator in the warehouse (that was already about half full of beer). After 5, they buzzed me through the then locked front door as the salespeople (men and women but mostly men), managers, dock clerks, etc. enjoyed the beer that was rolled out on a stock picking cart. This went on each quarter for about six or so years. These days my company won’t allow us to buy booze for customers as there is too great a liability risk in buying people alcohol with company money.
Chuck (other Chuck) was this the accident at Gunpowder, MD (just northeast of Baltimore)?
I think you have a way of making us all think you’re inside our brain. But really: Yesterday my kindergartener came off the bus complaining that he’d tried to ride in the back and some older girls said he couldn’t. I told him they weren’t in charge and that he could sit anywhere he wanted. Today he reported he told the girls that his mom said he could ride in the back of the bus (!), but the girls again said he could not. I said, “What are you gonna do. Bossy girls.” And I gave him a nice, cold glass of whole milk, his favorite.
Apparently from Minnesota to Tennessee, kindergarteners cannot ride in the back of the bus.
@ DryOwlTacos – Even more appreciated will be an empty desk and clean drawers…
Jenny: “Bossy [older] girls” Are there ‘any other kind’?
“And I gave him a nice, cold glass of whole milk, his favorite.”
When he’s little older, it’ll be a Glass Of Kentucky Bourbon. And he’ll be totally justified…
I can’t hear (or read) “Ah, there you are” without hearing the voice of Paul Frees as the Haunted Mansion’s Ghost Host finishing the speech: “…And just in time. There’s a little matter I forgot to mention: BEWARE OF HITCHHIKING GHOSTS!”
Joe Ohio, YES. Don’t care if the chapters cost a firstborn per, I WANT.