This is one aspect of my job I am struggling with.

Hi guys, I have been thinking of doing a follow up to three posts I have done earlier this year about how things have been going in my new job - my regular readers will know that I started a new job in July this year and well, I don't want to do the social media thing where I try to portray this image that everything is wonderful and that I'm so happy there. Every job has their up and downs but compared to some of the crap that my sisters have to put up with in their jobs in Singapore, I have little to complain. I guess everything is relative when it comes to comparisons like that - I know I am better off than a lot of people who have to put up with far more crap than I do but then again, things aren't perfect either where I am and I hesitated to do this post because I don't want to come across as a very ungrateful person who is splitting hairs over one aspect of work that I am struggling to deal with. But on the other hand, I did think that by speaking up quite honestly about it, there may well be others who have had to deal with this aspect in their work as well and there's nothing wrong with saying, "I'm struggling with this aspect of my job and please can I speak about this with others, let's support each other and share the empathy, love and goodwill." So with that in mind, I am going to speak about one aspect of my job that I don't like but will have to find a way to deal with it and so really, I just want to have an honest conversation about it.

For those of you who aren't familiar with my blog, my name is Alex, I'm 45 and I work in investment banking in London. The aspect of my work which I am uncomfortable with is the drinking culture - there is a lot of drinking in my industry and I'm completely teetotal. I have not touched a molecule of alcohol out of choice for well over 22 years. If I may be honest, I don't even recall when I stopped drinking, it wasn't a conscious decision that I made one day - actually, I did drink quite a lot when I was in my late teens when I was in the army and into my university days, but one day I just decided not to drink any more. I remember how I really enjoyed drinking when I was not old enough to drink yet; you have to be 18 years old to be served alcohol in Singapore though technically speaking, there's no legal age per se for drinking - so I wasn't technically breaking the law when I was buying a beer when I was 16 and 17 in Singapore and it was the person selling me the beer who was breaking the law. The forbidden fruit was always sweeter and I suppose it was an act of rebellion to do something I wasn't old enough to do, that I was not supposed to do not only prove that I was grown up but I was a law breaking criminal. Then one day, I realized I was an adult in my 20s - I could get hopelessly drunk and it was considered completely normal, it wasn't illegal, it wasn't even an act of defiance or anything like that given how people drank so heavily in London (I had moved here in 1997). In sharp contrast to my teenage years (oh gosh I even smoked back then, for the same reason), when drinking (and getting drunk) was no longer consider a criminal act of rebellion; so suddenly it had lost its appeal to me altogether and therefore I just stopped drinking - just like that around the age of 23. 

Heavy drinking certainly isn't unique to British culture - this is an issue from America to South Korea to Russia to China to Argentina. Even in countries where alcohol is supposed to be banned like Iran and Saudi Arabia, there is a huge underground network of illegal alcohol being bought, sold and consumed by the locals - if they were anything like me as a teenager, the illegal nature of it probably formed part of the appeal. Even my sister in Singapore once worked in a company where she was under a lot of peer pressure to join in her colleagues when they went drinking and boy, they did drink very heavily much to my parents' displeasure and disapproval. I spoke to a close friend and work associate John (his real name actually and he's a really nice guy I have the privilege of working with) about the topic, he explained it this way to me. "Many people in these jobs are under a lot of stress and alcohol is their one way to deal with that stress. When people consume alcohol, it has an immediate physiological effect on them and thus for a moment, whilst they are intoxicated, they forget whatever problems they have. Is this a healthy way to handle your stress? Of course it isn't, but a lot of people do it anyway. I choose to consume alcohol in moderation because I don't believe in using alcohol to forget my problems but I have worked with a lot of people who actually do that and I can certainly understand how challenging it is to have to deal with people like that. I even know of doctors who drink so heavily and their medical understanding of the damage they are doing to their bodies doesn't stop them from drinking like that because they are reacting to the stress they face at work in the hospital - that's what drives them to that kind of very heavy drinking. They just wanna get drunk once they come off the long shift; this is something that happens across different industries, in different countries." 

I am already so different from the people I work with and have to deal with on a daily basis: I'm Asian in an industry where there are hardly any non-white people, I'm an immigrant who didn't grow up in the UK, I have working class roots in an industry dominated by people from more privileged backgrounds and on top of that, I'm openly gay, so at this point, I have lost count of the ways I'm already so different from everyone else around me so I never ever went down the route of "I'm so British, I'm so totally assimilated you can't tell I'm different." No, rather my selling point has always been, "I'm so brilliant at what I do you're never going to find someone like me." My good friend John (the same guy I quoted above) pointed out to me, "I've dealt with a big investment bank before and they had one Spanish-speaking guy dealing with the Spanish speaking markets, one French-speaking guy dealing with the French-speaking markets, one Chinese speaking guy dealing with the greater China region, etc. You speak 25 languages and you're head of global business development - you're doing the job of a whole team of people and there's certainly no one else who has that unique combinations of technical skills and languages. When you're that highly skilled, you don't need to fit in because you're so unique in your abilities that you naturally stand out anyway - think about people who work in an environment like a factory where they manufacture cars, you have hundreds of workers doing the same kind of job. That's where they have a far greater degree of conformity, a culture of fitting in, that is not what you do Alex. You're never going to fit in, as Oscar Wild said: be yourself, everyone else is taken - just focus on what you do best and put aside those things that you cannot change." 

So you may think, Alex what is the problem then if you nobody is forcing you to drink? Well let me explain that in my old job, I was pretty much a lone wolf consultant who didn't have a team to work with, so I was pretty much left on my own to work hard when I wanted to and relax when I wanted to. But now in my current position, not only do I have colleagues, I have clients and associates to deal with and there is a lot of drinking during office hours. Now I can understand and appreciate that in British business culture, there is a lot of relationships that get established over social drinking and certainly, this is the case in other countries like Japan as well. However, given that I am dealing with clients in countries from Cote d'Ivoire to Peru to Malaysia, I'm not even in the same time zone as them so there's no social drinking. We may make casual conversation when we have our Zoom calls but that's it - there's no element of socializing that involves alcohol. So for me, I just want to get my work done and then go do other stuff like my gymnastics training or even just having an hour to sit down and blog. But when I am dealing with people who are drinking during office hours, deadlines get missed - people literally get too drunk to be able to remember that they have promised me to do certain things and that does frustrate me. I believe in working hard and playing hard, I frown upon people who get drunk during office hours to the point where they are unable to do work. Yet there seems to be this 'oh boys will be boys' culture here where drunken escapades are told as funny stories and those involved seem to experience little or no shame for what they have done - whilst I personally feel that people who drink during office hours are being irresponsible and unprofessional. 

All this is nothing new for me having been in the UK for 24 years and none of this shocks me but the only difference in this case is that I've never really found myself in a position where I've been stood up because the client got so hopelessly drunk he could not pick up the phone at 3 pm in the afternoon even to say, "I'm too drunk now, let's reschedule." Part of the explanation is that when you're lower down the food chain, you wouldn't dare to get away with becoming hopelessly drunk that early in the afternoon. But if you're quite senior and people want to do business with you, then you get a lot more leeway when it comes to what you can get away with in terms of your drunken escapades. Thus the kind of people I deal with tend to be senior industry figures and ironically, the more senior they are, the more badly behaved they are in this aspect. Oh I have too many stories about their drunken escapades but I won't tell them here as I don't want to condone that kind of behaviour by repeating those stories. In sharp contrast, there is the receptionist in the office building where I work - let's call her Ava (not her real name). She is always stone cold sober and she always looks immaculate, but then again, someone like her is admittedly at the bottom of the food chain working as a receptionist, earning very little compared to some of the people who work in that office building. Clearly, people like Ava would never get away with getting drunk at work during her shift, but I'm not dealing with people like her for my work. Admittedly, I think I would enjoy working with someone like Ava a lot more than some of my clients, but obviously, I don't get a choice in the matter. 

So here's where I feel quite conflicted: I work in sales, I pride myself in having good social skills and this is just the kind of thing that I ought to know how to deal with. There's a part of me knows that I left my old job on bad terms earlier this summer, I managed to get a good job within a short period of time and thus I should be grateful for the opportunity - by that token, I should just use my social skills to deal with the challenges of dealing with this aspect of drinking within British business culture. On the other hand, sometimes I feel mentally exhausted in having to deal with clients who are like that. For me, it feels like a total lack of respect when they can't be asked to stay sober enough to deal with me; but for them, attending a meeting whilst under the influence of alcohol is totally normal. So there's a part of me that thinks, Alex don't be the poorly assimilated immigrant, this is just the way things are in London so even if you don't like it, nobody is going to change just to please you. Furthermore, I'm 45 - I'm not young anymore and I think there's an element of people expecting someone as old as me to simply know how to deal with things like that without wobbling. Thankfully I have friends like John who tell me that I'm never too old to ask for help when I need some empathy and understanding; there are times when I just need to sit down with someone like him and just vent my frustration about some of the crap I have to deal with. John would know exactly what to say and then I would go back to my work after that - nothing has changed, but John would give me more confidence about being able to overcome those many challenges I have to face.

You know I talk a lot about the importance of social skills in my blog, but sometimes when I am in a situation whereby I'm not the one causing the problems, I'm not the one with the poor social skills and I'm certainly not the one getting hopelessly drunk at 3 pm in the afternoon, then no amount of social skills on my part is going to make that situation any less messy to deal with. Sometimes when I feel nostalgic, I would watch Youtube videos about Singaporean hawker culture and there's a part of me that feels envious about one aspect of the hawker's job - there is a certain beauty to the simplicity in their business model. So let's say they specialize in a dish like Laksa, well every customer turns up wishing to taste their famous Laksa so they simply serve every customer the same thing. Once they have mastered the art of making delicious Laksa and have established a name for themselves, they simply just repeat that same process day after day. There's a part of me that longs for that level of simplicity because the Laksa hawker is in full control of the entire process, they decide what time they wish to open the stall, how many bowls of Laksa they aim to sell per working day and the customer cannot turn up at the stall asking for a beef steak or chocolate ice cream - they can either have a Laksa or they have to go somewhere else to find what they want. I don't have that luxury in my job, I do have to deal with difficult people and I went into this with both my eyes opened; I know the job hazards that do come with the territory but I just want a safe space to be able to get some empathy on the issue with others (such as John) who understand exactly what I have to deal with and what I'm going through. I know I must solve my own problems but I need emotional support. 

Allow me to share with you the key thing that John gave me that made a lot of sense: he told me about this man whom I shall refer to as Mr Gin because of the fact that he liked gin. Mr Gin was was an alcoholic - he had a terrible job, he was miserable and stressed from work, family life wasn't good and so he took to the bottle. He drank was too much and it affected his work, his marriage and so both fell apart: he lost his job then his wife took the kids and left Mr Gin. What did he do to deal with being unemployed and divorced? He literally drank himself to death: it is called alcoholic poisoning. The human body can only handle so much alcohol and if you drink too much in a short pace of time, you will poison your body to the point where you can die. Mr Gin's corpse was literally found in a gutter next to the train station by the police - nobody was sure how long he had lay there dead or how he had ended up there. But the moral of the story is this: whilst Mr Gin was a failure at his job, in sharp contrast, the people whom I work with, they happen to drink very heavily but are great at what they do at the same time. I work in an industry that doesn't suffer fools gladly, employers in my industry doesn't tolerate failures. It is a double edged sword: nobody cares if I am gay or Asian as long as I am great at what I do, by the same token, nobody cares if you are drink a lot or if you smoke or do drugs, as long as you can make a lot of money for the company. So these people at work who have irked me are nothing like Mr Gin at all, John told me to at least recognize that in spite of the drinking culture which they are a part of, they are still really successful at what they do within financial services and that even if all that drinking hasn't contributed to that success it hasn't hindered them either. 

I suppose this is quite similar to what my nephew has just gone through - he has just finished his A levels and undoubtedly, he is a model student in many ways: he studies extremely hard, his conduct is impeccable. In sharp contrast, when I was his age, I was actually the bad boy who sneaked into clubs and drinking, rolling home drunk at three in the morning whilst my nephew would never do something like that to upset his parents. If conduct or good behaviour was an A level subject, he would get the top grade of course but instead, he is having to do conventional subjects like economics, physics, mathematics and chemistry - so despite working so hard and having such good conduct, there doesn't seem to be much correlation between his grades and his behaviour. This is so similar to what I am going through at work, I don't touch a drop of alcohol at work and everyone knows I have a great work ethic, yet I am frustrated when I see people who drink a lot at work perform better than me and like my nephew, I simply have to accept that I'm never going to be rewarded for my good conduct or work ethic, but purely on my results on what I can do for the company, how much money I can make for the company. Such are the realities of the working world, there's no doting parent to reward you for good behaviour, only very demanding bosses who prioritize results over behaviour or work ethic. Ironically, I did react to this whole situation in a very Singaporean way - in a way I would have expected someone like my nephew to react and that's part of my frustration, I really ought to know better by now. You can take the man out of Singapore but you can't take Singapore out of the man. So by that token I recognize I'm far more like my nephew than I'd care to admit. 

So no, I'm not going to give up and quit just because there's one aspect of my job which I happen to find quite frustrating and unpleasant to deal with - but on the other hand, I don't want to end up like those doctors who are so stressed by their work they end up drinking heavily. This is an issue that is causing me stress at work and I have been dealing with it by talking to my friend John about it. Oh he has been so understanding, he has been incredibly kind and helpful, I can't tell you just how grateful I am to him - this leads me to wonder, all those people who are getting hopelessly drunk because of stress at work, well why can't they just do what I do and talk to a friend about their problems at work rather than drink themselves to an early grave? Am I somewhat naive to think that it is really that simple then? Well, I feel like it is in my case, I simply give John a call but what if these people didn't have someone whom they could count on like that in their lives then? So at this stage, I'm going to turn this over to you: so what do you think? Have you ever encountered people who drink very heavily because of stress at work? Do they allow their drinking habits to affect their work by either getting so drunk during office hours or turning up at work nursing a terrible hangover which prevents them from performing well at work? How does all this affect their work performance then? How could we work with people who come from a very different culture and may have a totally different attitude when it comes to issues like alcohol? How could we reconcile that difference without letting it affect us too much? Do you have a good friend in your life like my buddy John whom you can run to whenever you need someone to talk to or do you simply turn to something like alcohol to try to forget your problems? Why do some people end up like Mr Gin then?! Please leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.