Beer

Michael Nelson’s item on alcohol in the German Reuters office reminds me that Manfred Pagel touched on this subject when visiting me at the Copenhagen office in the mid-1980s. He said that when confronted by the alcohol ban, German employees had responded: “But beer is not alcohol!” I think in their eyes the term was reserved for spirits.

Drinking a beer in the office was quite common throughout Denmark in the 1980s, and when one new manager was appointed for Reuters Copenhagen there was much scrambling by technical staff the day before his arrival to get the crates of empties out in the yard as they had heard on the grapevine that he was tough on the drinking ban. ■