On Having Fun after Work

Hey white collar worker, what do you do for fun?

The foremost looked-forward-to fun for corporate workers - at all the firms I have worked till date - involves abuse of the body.


There must be a reason for this, and the reason is this:

For knowledge workers, during the week, the body is sedate while the mind is stressed, anxious and confused. During the weekend, the aim is to do the opposite: the body is abused in immersive and addictive fun, while the mind is thereby sedated.

What this does to health, both mental and physical, is anybody's guess.

Drinking, staying up till early hours of the morning, eating junk food, listening to and dancing to remixed bass-heavy loud music in a dark dingy expensive place (called a nightclub), smoking (cigarettes, cigars, chemical hookahs), sleeping during the day, ...

Can't they read a book? You must be kidding. The mental capacity has been exhausted during the week. And let us not even start about A.D.D. "I wanna unwind."

On Monday morning, the mind has been somewhat distracted for a while but it has to unpleasantly get back to work, while the body is shaking off the toxins and the effects of over-sleeping or under-sleeping. It's the worst time of the week for most.

Is it any wonder "Monday morning blues" is assuming epidemic proportions?

I can bet you that less than 1% of corporate workers in metro areas go to sleep before 11pm on any given day.

Someone who sleeps early, wakes up early, has a glass of milk (!) at breakfast, doesn't go to nightclubs, reads books, is soon an outcast, is not "fun" to be with. There is peer pressure to drink, to smoke, to stay up late, to dress nattily at a party and shake a leg at the remixed bass-heavy music. How many times will you say "No"? Do this a few times and you will not be welcome. And after a while, you as well wouldn't like to be known as a party pooper.

So two distinct groups are formed in white collar setups: the conservatives, and the "party hard" types. They usually don't mix much. The conservatives celebrate birthdays and anniversaries by cutting cakes, signing greeting cards, going to mainstream film screenings; whereas the "party hard" types are looking for happy hours, ladies' nights, free booze, drugs, places to crash, ...

Given that most knowledge workers don't stay with their families, there is little oversight of this self-abuse. I think parents would be concerned if they knew that their sensible son whom they wax eloquent about to their neighbors was puking on the dance floor and that their daughter who is the pride of the family was being groped at by drunk dancers who got into a fight with the bouncers, but they don't know, and nobody tells them.

And I also think this culture of "unwinding" and "hard partying" starts right in college for some, when for the first time they are separated from their families.

What do you think?