Carlsberg Limits Beer Drinking at Work

I always cringe when I hear someone complaining how America should provide some new entitlement to its citizens, using the argument that some other industrialized country does it. [Cue the patriotic music.] This is America, damn it, and we should be taking our own path. In our first 200 years we put a man on the moon.** What did this other great country you are using as an example do during its first 200 years? Why would we want to emulate the ways of some underachieving country like, say, Denmark?

Funny you should ask.

Carlsberg workers in Denmark went on strike today to protest the company’s new policy, limiting when (not even how much) their workers can drink beer on the job. You see, being a brewery, Carlsberg stocks all the company refrigerators with water, soft drinks and beer. The lunch room is also stocked with all the beer the employees want to drink. And drink they did. The workers drank beer in the morning, at lunch, and in the afternoon.

Yes, I know, it sounds like a dream job. But the company decided there was a bit too much beer drinking going on during work hours (they already had to put alcohol locks on the company trucks to prevent drunk driving), so management decided that the employees would be limited to only drinking beer during lunch.

The workers would have none of that, and went on strike, including the warehouse staff (you know, the ones who operate heavy machinery, forklifts and the like). Most vocal were the drivers who claim a “very old right” to have three beers per day on top of whatever they consume at lunch.

I like beer as much as the next guy . . . ok, I may like beer more than the next guy . . . but come on. On the rare occasions that I have a beer at lunch, I feel the impact in the afternoon. These guys were probably consuming at least six beers during an eight hour shift. You can’t tell me that would not have some impact on the ol’ productivity.

To its credit, the union has declared that the strike is illegal and intends to fine the workers.　

Thanks to @SexCigarsBooze for the heads up on this breaking news story. I’m recalling the resume I sent to Carlsberg.

(** Although we’ve now forgotten how we got to the moon. Now that there is talk of returning to the moon, did you know NASA is going around buying up the stuff they sold as scrap decades ago so they can reverse engineer the equipment and figure out how they did it the first time? NASA confirms it here.)

Posted on April 8th, 2010 by Aaron Morris
Filed under: Beer, Beer Facts, Beer History