your coworker is cool and your boss is a buzzkill

I think it was a bit of both, to be honest. I'm pretty sure they've cooled down quite a bit in recent years, but from about 2003-2012 they had a pretty solid stretch of batshit crazy holiday parties.

One year I just happened to finally bone the receptionist the night before the Christmas party.

During the Christmas Party the next night I walked up to her table and asked the woman sitting next to her to dance. I don't think the receptionist liked that. I ended up dating that other woman I danced with for 5 years.

You had a 4-way??

Those of us 60+ had great parties with no regrets.

It's such a different culture these days. Everyone is afraid to say how they really feel. Most of us WFH now so there's less pressure. Putting us together for a function is harder than going to work.

It’s a very Boomer opinion to think a company function is the appropriate time and place to “say how you really feel”.

You sound like someone I would avoid at the party. Us boomers have just had a better, more interesting life. It would really suck to be a young person today.

"More interesting" is debatable, but better for sure. Not just better than younger people, but also better than older people. Better than any other generation in American history, generally speaking, and not because it was deserved.

In Japan, it is understood by employers that intoxicated employees are going to happen at those type of social functions, and they give a lot of leeway in terms of their behavior in those situations. Basically, an employee can say just about anything about their employers/peers/etc. while drunk at a work social function and it's forgiven.

But in the US these days, it's become kind of fashionable to exploit any faux pas by anyone, regardless of where they are or what the situation might be. Doesn't even have to be a work-related function anymore. Get drunk and post something on FB negative about your boss/something remotely politically incorrect; "YOU'RE FIRED!!!"


This new world is so soft and over-sensitive it's fatiguing just to read about it.

How about we stop using alcohol as a crutch to say whatever we want?

These days? In the USA it's always been a bad idea to talk shit to your boss, or on the company that employs you. It isn't because society is "soft", it's common sense and something most people learn before they even enter the workforce.

I just ran the numbers, and that means that 60 percent of the women had bicurious hookups. That's amazing.

Women are tramps

Its really sweet that you find that amazing.
Unless you mean like amazingly good job.

My wife mentioned an article to me (Wall Street Journal or New York Times) that set forth the proposition that the best time to be born in modern American history was during World War II. Those people came of age in the post-war boom while wages were high and prices were low and employers were offering pensions. They also enjoyed a couple of decades of work before wage stagnation hit in the 1980s.

I want to do my own research on this, but I found it interesting.