Liquid lunch

Ad man Ed. Miller remembers those boozy days of the liquid lunch.

“People used to always have drinks at lunch,” says Miller, managing partner at Spokane’s WhiteRunkle advertising agency, who has been in the business almost 30 years.

But, now, he says, “We’re working more and more hours. We don’t have time for that. We barely have time for lunch.”

Oh, sure, you’ll still get handed a wine list at upscale lunch spots in the Inland Northwest. But very few business people, it seems, are opting to partake.

“We usually sell a glass or two a day,” says Ian Wingate, owner of downtown lunch hot spot Moxie.

“It’s usually pretty restrained, if anybody is drinking,” says William Webster, who owns the Herbal Essence Cafe in Spokane.

Mary Joan Hahn, a senior account supervisor with Spokane public relations firm Rockey Hill & Knowlton, says she’d be surprised to see anyone sipping anything stronger than a Diet Coke at lunch.

“I can’t remember the last time I had or I saw anybody have alcohol at lunch,” Hahn says. “Maybe at a conference or something.”

Drinking on the job at Avista (and at The Spokesman-Review and an increasing number of companies) could lead to a pink slip.

“We have a zero-tolerance policy around alcohol and any kind of drug substance during the hours of employment,” says Karen Feltes, vice president of human resources for Avista. “It’s consistently enforced.”

Feltes herself as been called down a couple of times as part of the company’s random drug-testing program.

Avista also has a 6-year-old policy of not hiring smokers.

“Our employees really appreciate our organization’s dedication to creating and maintaining a safe work environment,” Feltes says.

Nobody’s quite sure exactly when the three-martini lunch went the way of wide ties, smoking at your desk, and free-wheeling, in-office sexual harassment.

“It made have started changing in the late ‘80s or mid-‘80s,” Miller recalls. “Then surely it was gone in the ‘90s.”

A Gallup poll from 1996, the most-recent numbers available, found that only one-quarter of Americans found it acceptable to imbibe during a business lunch.

Maybe the drinking lunch’s extinction was due to shifting thoughts about alcohol and drug use in general. (Remember Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” crusade and the rise of MADD?)

Maybe it’s a product of a buttoned-up work ethic that leaves no time to snooze off a heavy lunch under your desk.

Maybe it’s due to the fear of losing ones’ job as companies increasingly enforce “zero-tolerance” drug and alcohol policies.

Or maybe those martini-soaked lunches went down the drain after people realized – contrary to President Ford’s pithy statement – they just weren’t good for business.

“Anyone who lived through that era would tell you some mistakes were made as a result of the three-martini era,” says Dana May Casperson, a Santa Rosa, Calif.-based expert in business etiquette. “I’ve heard just really horror stories about people rescinding what they said.”

Casperson wrote “Power Etiquette: What You Don’t Know Can Kill Your Career.” She makes her living speaking to corporations and associations about “how you can more easily do business by making people feel more comfortable around you,” she says.

And one way to quickly make people feel uncomfortable in a business setting, she says, is to start ordering drinks.

“I always opt to the conservative,” Casperson says. “My option is always to avoid any alcohol. Period. No questions.”

Casperson has many reasons for her black-and-white take on the alcohol issue.

First, she says, “One drink can lead to another because you get relaxed and social. It dulls your really clear, precise, professional thinking.”

And then there’s the very-real chance of offending your lunch-mate, who may choose not to drink for medical or other personal reasons.

If that’s the case, you may find your business meeting veering into unnecessary and socially uncomfortable territory.

“You find out stuff you don’t need to know,” Casperson says.

So, what do you do if the host orders a glass of wine and you don’t want one?

“You have something comparable, but not alcoholic,” she says. “You want to match your host in terms of the number of courses that are ordered and types of drinks.”

When that happens, don’t just sit there with plain tap water. Ask for an iced tea or a lemonade or another non-alcoholic option.

At WhiteRunkle, there’s no corporate dictum barring a drink or two at lunch, Miller says.

“It wouldn’t be unacceptable to us at all,” he says. “It just doesn’t happen. If someone was to order something at lunch, it wouldn’t be like, ‘Gosh, that’s wrong.’ I would just think, ‘Hmmm, that’s unusual.’ “

(You hear that, WhiteRunkle employees? Here’s your chance to revive tradition.)

Or, maybe, like those bad suits and wide ties of a generation ago, three-martini lunches are another relic that deserve to remain mothballed.