I've just ruined my career haven't I?

[hopesndrrm]

Student social worker, on placement since end of august. Most of my days I have worked from home but have had the odd day in the office where I've worked with loads of the team including team leader.

Tonight went on Xmas night out with them all. Initially I said I wasn't drinking as wanted to stay professional. However, a load of them kept saying 'come on have a drink, let us see the real you, we are all wild etc' so I ended up drinking.

Totally blacked out, have woke up in my living room, fully clothed thank gos but no idea how I got home. I remember we kept switching chairs at the dinner table and at one point me and my team leader touching legs under the table and eye fucking.

I genuinely want to die. This is my career. This is why I didn't want to drink. It's fine if you've already got the job but what about when you are still trying to impress the boss?

I am affronted and 90 percent positive I was feeling the team leader up under the table. I'm meant to be In the office on Monday but there's no way

She’s been feeling up her boss under the table and he’s got two young children and a wife.

I have more caustic terms I’d use to describe this person than pathetic but it absolutely is pathetic at any age to behave like this.

If it was YOUR husband she was feeling up under the table what would you have to say about it?

Why does alcohol give people a pass to behave like dicks? Literally?

I can’t believe the leniency OP is being shown.

Get a life OP and stop messing with other people’s lives. Sort yourself out once and for all.

YABU but only for use of the term 'eye fucking', which I've never heard before and never want to again. Gross. You are also massively overreacting.
Agree there's no need for the agest comments from others; shock horror professional person over 50 drinks too much & has inappropriate sexual desires, wow!?!

I'm 38 and work with 50 years olds and have never once seen them as old women what a weird comment!

I'm a social worker, this night out sounds standard really. Please dont worry. Your team leader is as much in the wrong - even more so tbh as he is in a position of authority. We've all done things we shouldn't (I did something far more risky on a Xmas night out when I was a student on placement)

As for how can a student work from home - most sw teams do hybrid working, so when you have reports etc to write you can do it from home, or virtual meetings can be done from home. All visits will be done face to face still as well as some meetings.

Two things jump out here for me.

1. you felt peer pressured into drinking. By qualified social work staff who wanted you to also 'be wild'.
2. your boss who is in a powerful place in terms of you passing or not, took advantage of you being drunk. Neither of these is remotely okay. Your behaviour was also inappropriate but you know that and I think you were right in initially not wanting to drink. It's a lesson learned for the future. If you really can't face going back to placement on Monday, you need to speak with your university today and see what options you have to do an alternative placement. There will be options. And you know now that this team is perhaps one that you wouldn't want to apply for a job with.

I think someone in their 30s is a little bit too old to be playing the "young and naïve" card, even if the TL is in his 50s.

I humiliated myself at an office Christmas party once. It was really bad. I've never forgotten it. I still blush about it twenty years later.

However...I was 19 at the time and I sure as hell haven't behaved that way at a work Christmas party since. Maybe I was just lucky that I learnt my lesson early.

Did you have to drink that much? Isn’t there somewher between not drinking and getting totally shit faced and going after your older, married with kid boss?
If you can’t just have one or two drinks then you’ve got issues.

Student SW on placement who works mainly from home? How does that work in any universe? How can you possibly get practical experience/mentoring working from home?

I'm so pleased people are challenging this, as taxpayers you are absolutely right to.

Social work like many professions saw a shift towards remote working during the pandemic. It is plainly not in the best interests of the communities we serve to stay so, but from my peripatetic/ quite senior position I can see that our workforce is really struggling with hitting a healthy balance between remote working and being the visible, community based profession that we used to be.

It's hard because remote working can be really restorative for people who do intense, emotionally challenging work, there is absolutely a place for it - but there are too few places that also offer a thriving physical environment where staff and students can connect and learn from one another. It's particularly damaging for early career professionals.

OP I don't know whether what happened was career limiting because all work places are different and the key thing here is your memory is totally unreliable so how can you know what the worst thing which happened was unless a reliable and totally sober observer told you?
That said, and having been in similar (but maybe not quite so bad in a professional context) situation, if I was you I would take massive comfort from the fact that you woke up

• fully clothed
• alone
• in your own property
• presumably with items which suggest you let yourself in or were able to let yourself in (i.e. keys phone purse)

So the above mitigates a lot of what might have been which in my view would mean no way back where the above means yes there is a way back (unless you come back and tell me the police were involved in some way infront of your colleagues).

I agree with this. Your colleagues shouldn't have pressured you to drink (I hate when people do that) but going from just one to blackout drunk so quickly is a little concerning. I think it would be wise to take a look at your relationship with alcohol and if you cannot just have one or two then there's an issue there that needs addressing.

I say that completely non judgementally because I have been there myself and this kind of post party anxiety is horrible and you don't have to suffer this ever again if you don't want to but it will involve making a change on your part.

@lattemerde eye patchy?!

I can’t drink alcohol at all as I get ill, I have that phenomena known as Asian Blush, it’s why quite a few Chinese people don’t drink. Have a Google of it if you want but it is lack of an enzyme in the body. But I was born in England so was raised here and know all about UK drinking culture. The pressure that is put on people to drink is ridiculous.

You can’t do anything about it now, I doubt it’s career ending but if you know you can’t drink just don’t drink. Plus shame on adults going on at a person who says they don’t want to drink and forcing them to. I would imagine as a junior staff member the pressure felt immense.

Both the manager and the poster behaved terribly because as she writes it was consensual. If she had come on saying he did it to her and she said no it would be an assault. So the colleagues were bad for putting on pressure but the under table groping was down to them the manager and then poster.

Lots of people make tits of themselves during the works Christmas party - it's a British tradition unfortunately. Like socks, sandals and sunburn abroad 🤷‍♀️ It's the strange dichotomy of being formal / arms length most of the time, then suddenly REALLY REALLY DRUNK and overly-familiar.

There was a thread on here a little while ago "things that were commonplace in the 90s at work, that would never happen today". Not that it makes it okay, but sounds like touching someone's knee under the table and making eyes at them would have been barely worth noticing, vanilla behaviour not so long ago. The older people on your night out (including your boss) most likely remember these days well.

Listen to "Wheel of Misfortune" by Alyson Spittle today - it will make you feel loads better.

Walking into the office Monday will be tough, but once it's done, and your brain chemistry has settled down, you'll feel much better.

I wouldn't laugh it off. That suggests you think this is OK

I'd be quietly embarrassed, not wanting to discuss it

Your TL should be ashamed of himself

Learn from this, but it's not career ending

Am genuinely shocked that student social workers on placement are ‘working from home’ and cannot see how this is possibly considered acceptable in a profession which was already in crisis BEFORE covid.

I once had a colleague who got so drunk she was making out with a senior partner on the dance floor. It was after the main party and there were about 20 of us in a night club who were quite far gone. None of us ever mentioned it after that night. There was always two or three people who got a bit too drunk each year and if they did something mild we'd have a laugh for a few minutes the next day. If they did something they might find mortifying, we never spoke about it.

Every one that I know of, and I know a few student social workers.

What exactly is your point?

This was me at pretty much every big social event, and why I eventually admitted I was an alcoholic to myself and gave up drinking (although I was already 40 by then). I still get a lot of people coming up to me at social events saying they miss my antics and parties just aren't the same! I, however, am very glad to wake up hangover free with no blackouts in the morning now.

50 is not old HTH

What the hell are you talking about?😂

I mean - I’ve literally carried out research that says yes it does matter. Wfh works for qualified and experienced SWs, that’s all good, but for students, ASYEs and SWs in their first few years it’s appalling. Who do they decompress with after a difficult visit? Who do they joke with if they’re not in office? How does a manager place a hand on a crying SW’s shoulder to comfort her?

Those with more experience have the responsibility to physically be there, and social work is an in-person role. Those SWs who continue to primarily wfh are (in my view) damaging the profession.

Lesson learnt we've all been there . Never let people pressure you into drinking again . Don't people please.

Another oldie (50s) here, gotta say I think "eye fucking" is the most ridiculous saying I have heard yet.

My advice is to brazen it out. Go in on Monday and tell them you don't remember a thing and act like nothing has happened. Talk to everyone, including this bloke, as if the evening did not happen. You might be dying inside but if you come off as bright and breezy, they'll never know.

If you want to stop drinking at events like these, always find a way to get your own drinks if you can. A glass of sparking water with a slide of lemon could be a G&T for all anyone else knows.

@Aintnosupermum "Career ending is you did anal with the TL and sharted all over them."

Spat my coffee out reading that, thanks for the morning laugh