I went to happy hour last night. I mentioned a couple of days ago that when I was in grad school I started hosting happy hour in my office on Friday afternoons. Our offices were shared space but quite large and easily accommodated hosting a few people for drinks at the end of the week.

A lot of planning went into the first week. I wanted the gathering to be more like a bar and less like a frat party so I took steps to make that the case. I bought several types of beer and there was no Budweiser in the can. I bought name brand alcohol. If you want a gin and tonic do you really want Kroger brand gin or do you want Bombay Sapphire? Also there were no plastic cups. I hit every thrift store in San Diego and bought a huge collection of "drink" glasses. Of course they didn't all match but there was a fun assortment. I bought an ice bucket to keep the ice in. I bought a drink shaker and cork screw. I got little umbrellas to put in the drinks. And straws to stir them with. Once I had decided to do this I went all out to make it a true event.

Some of the initial ideas didn't work but they evolved with time. I originally had a donation system. Make a donation get a drink. Or bring a bottle of what you wanted to drink and I would provide the mixers. This didn't work so well. No one brought alcohol so it was up to me to provide it. And then there were the people who donated two bucks and drank all night. At the end of the first quarter I was losing money.

Eventually I went to a pay system. I'll provide all the food and drink, you provide the money. I started charging two dollars a drink. It didn't matter what you wanted. You could get it for two dollars. This seemed to work okay and surprisingly no one complained about being charged after basically drinking for free before. My favorites though were the people who assumed I was making money off the endeavor. Let's just say at two bucks a drink there is almost no way to break even. I made money on the beer but lost it on the hard stuff. And the food was free. I was typically in the hole somewhere around $150. Sometimes more, sometimes less. It was all based on how many people showed up and what they were drinking that week.

The nicest part of happy hour was that people did show up. By 5:00 my office and the seating area outside my office would be packed. There were sometimes as many as 30 or 40 people there. Of course there were also weeks where only 10 people showed. It was all based on our schedules, how busy we were, if we had money and how tired we were. After particularly stressful weeks we always did better.

I was known for happy hour. I was a fixture now in the department. Everyone loved that I had created this little party every Friday afternoon. We spent many Friday afternoons laughing, arguing, yelling and teasing. For 3 or 4 hours we were all a family. Practically every picture taken while I was in grad school shows me sitting behind my desk, and it's covered with booze. There is a slide show that's presented at graduation and the first photo of me was in that pose. Smile on my face, serving a drink or drinking a Corona. In fact, at graduation each of the graduating students when presented gets to come to the podium and make a speech. Think Oscar's without the fancy gowns. When my name was called, I had my two friends A.N. and T.O. hand out beers to all of my graduating classmates. Then in my speech I toasted them, our professors and all of the people that were special to them and to me.

In case you can't tell I took happy hour very seriously. It was something that I created and it had a reputation that I wanted to maintain. I remember my last one very well. It was a big deal. I sent out an email invite to the entire department and put up posters to come celebrate/share in my last happy hour. It was one of the most attended events since I had been doing it.

So when I left I was worried about who would carry on the tradition. I was nervous. What if it just went away. What if no one cared for it the way I had. I was assured by T.O. that it was in good hands. He would run it with the help of A.N. and M.W. And so I left.

So when I got to the office on Friday I had high hopes that my "baby" was being taken care of. Boy have they ever let me down. There was a nice crowd there, not huge but okay. I walked into the office with a big grin on my face and asked for a beer from T.O. the bartender. His reply, "We don't have any. Well there might be one left." it was 5:15. If you were going to run out of beer in the first 45 minutes there would have to be a million people there. And if you did, then send someone to get more. It also turned out that there was no ice, no gin, no Maker's, they were using plastic cups and were serving organic chips with some sort of gross looking dip. I was annoyed and let down. I was told by A.N. that they'll drink what we have and like it or they can go elsewhere.

These people don't understand. You don't do happy hour because you have to. You do it because it's fun and people like it. It should be something you enjoy doing or you shouldn't do it. It shouldn't feel like work. It should make you happy to be around other people and watch them having a good time. So I got a bourbon and diet coke and I sat there and tried not to mind what they had done to my creation. At one point T.O. said to me that I looked angry. I passed it off as being tired from working too much but I think he knew. But I couldn't say anything. My time had passed. I was no longer the fixture. It was no longer my "baby" to protect. I was moving on knowing that this little event wouldn't last too much longer. It took too much work and too much effort for those that weren't committed to the idea.