Some time after you start your new job there comes a test. It's not the first and won't be the last, but it might just be the most important. It's your inaugural work drinks.
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Now, by work drinks I don't mean a lemon, lime and bitters followed by a sobering glass of water with Doreen from Accounts down at the local before you pop home to watch Family Feud. I mean your first serious work function in which alcohol will be imbibed. Frequently. By many. Well into the night.
You can abstain, of course, but once you're in, you hoist yourself up onto a tightrope of sorts. What ensues is a period of precarious balancing; on the line is your in-office reputation.
Leave too early, tutt too loudly at others' antics, comment too primly on the decor of the venue and you tumble off the tightrope and into the twisted netting of No Fun below, unlikely to ever fully untangle yourself.
Stay on too late, consistently turn mirth into mayhem, wake up the next morning incomprehensibly slumped over the branch of a tree in the Royal Botanical Gardens in a different state and you fall off the other side, forever tarred with the Untrustworthy Ne'er-Do-Well brush.
But find the sweet spot and your colleagues will spend the night amused by your anecdotes, your just-daggy-enough dancing and your mischievous (but never disrespectful) double entendres.
On Monday you'll have come down from the tightrope, but your co-workers might never come down from the natural high of a whole night spent basking in the glow of your lightly-lubricated charisma. You've passed the test.
Jonathan Rivett dedicates this column to the Long Island ice tea. He blogs at www.haught.com.au
