[MKSixer]

Originally Posted by pennsiveguy

We're really de-railing the thread now, but...

I hired on at a lumber yard in 1985. It was union yard, whose members were Teamsters. These weren't flight attendant Teamsters, mind you; these were old-school hard-ass gear-jamming knee-capping Teamsters.

Me and 2 other "greenhorns" were invited to a "welcome" party at the shop steward's house which unbeknownst to us was also a test to see if we could run with the big dogs when it came to drinking. The host sat us down for poker, 4 guys to a table. He prepared the "fixins" for each table, starting by opening a 1.75-liter bottle of Jim Bean and unceremoniously pitching the cap in the trash. The rest of the fixins were a 2-liter bottle of Coke, a 2-liter bottle of 7-Up, and a big bag of some vile sort of cheesy popcorn which was a very bright orange in color. And then the poker and the revelry commenced.

We all made it through the night and finished our bottles of Beam. The popcorn made it home un-puked, though in my case by only about 10 feet. I lost most of the $100 I brought as poker stakes. We were all deemed worthy.

I don't think such things are done any more, at least not as common. That's too bad. It's a wonderful, if painful and dangerous, way of testing the mettle and character of someone. We did dangerous work, and you wanted to know if you could count on someone.

That's the old-school rite of passage. When I first started in pharma something similar was done...keep you out all night and see if you could make it to the meeting bright and shiny at 8:00 AM, unruffled and ready to work. Not everyone made it. At one of the companies I worked at, we lost 10% of the class to this, rite of passage over 25 people. Doors to the meeting room locked and HR representatives ready to escort the hapless fools off the property.

Work hard, play hard. Operative word, work.