things you once thought socially acceptable which now horrify you to remember

Smoking indoors is one that I still can't believe I was militant about... like I'd get angry if people told me i couldn't smoke inside.

you could do a whole thread about how this idea intersects with SEINFELD episode plots

First office job I ever had was open plan and you could smoke at your desk, and people did. It must have been hell to be a non-smoker in those days. I remember you could even smoke in cinemas in London - allowing people to light up in the pitch black, amazing there weren't more cinemas burning to the ground.

My local cinema in London had smoking and non-smoking sections, I was always amazed that people thought the actual smoke would go along with this instead of drifting across the entire auditorium. In fact this must have been in place even for kids' films, thinking about it. Nowadays nothing - nothing! - gives me more pleasure than seeing tobacco addicts hunched outside in the rain, sucking on their death sticks and looking embarrassed. Probably churlish of me I know.

It's still fairly common to see people smoking inside Romanian hospitals but weed is a one-way ticket to jail. Wearing a seatbelt is eccentric behaviour. Sexist, homophobic and antisemitic jokes are part and parcel of informal discourse. Almost none of the things cited itt apply in Eastern Europe (and across most of the world, I assume).

going to church every sunday....amirite??

Paedo priests seem to have gone out of fashion. I used to go a church that was an old converted ww2 cinema. The parish priest at the time, Father Crowley, ended up doing a long stretch for paedophile offences in Bradford, Portsmouth and Hudds. One of his sermons once was TLDR version: it's none of your fucking business what I do outside of this church!

>First office job I ever had was open plan and you could smoke at your desk, and people did.

One of my first jobs post uni (mid 1990s) was data-entry for a big insurance company. First day I went for a piss and saw a senior underwriter draining a hip-flask in the toilet at 9am. Lunchtime, the entire office decamped to the pub where most people would have at least three pints. The office was no smoking until 4pm, at which point ashtrays came out of desk drawers and cigarettes, cigars and pipes were lit in unison.

I'm still not convinced that lunchtime office drinking is socially unacceptable, at least in the UK and depending on your profession. Three pints a day at lunchtime probably is though, even if you're not working in I dunno a hospital.

When I used to go for liquid lunches we'd be downing strawberry alcopops, the idea was the site manager wouldn't smell the booze on your breath with pop. Obv getting fresh at lunchtime is very big and clever when you are working at heights on tower scaffolds, but it was considered completely socially acceptable amongst the degens I worked with.

ha in France lunchtime work drinking is certainly not socially unacceptable. not exactly obligatory but completely normal.

if it wasn't for the camaraderie and fun in pubs spilling over into working hours at times, then our working lives would be just utter misery and hard graft!

it very much depends on the company - I worked at a property portal website company in Soho for several years and 3 pint lunches were fine there, sometimes had more, and some people did it every day

if I did that at my current company it wouldn't go down well. I can drink at lunchtime but 3+ pints, no

It's still fairly common to see people smoking inside Romanian hospitals but weed is a one-way ticket to jail.

Back when I smoked I actually once found myself surrounded by armed police in Romania for daring to make a (tabacco) rollie in public. It took them an excruciating ten minutes to establish there were no drugs involved.

I'm guessing that in the US it would be considered degeneracy and cause for an intervention but especially at this time of year with all the sport on you see people doing it all the time. (xpost)

Hum in France, business lunches mostly include wine.
Over the years it has become acceptable NOT to drink but it's still almost putting yourself aside...
That said, I talk about government business lunch. It might be different in the private sector and especially in IT companies, start-ups etc.

at my university cantine most people generally don't drink wine with lunch, though it is available, but that's because lunches there tend to be short (like, only 45 minutes instead of 2 hours).

And organizing a private dinner at your place and have no wine is borderline social suicide !

i worked as a researcher for a tabloid reporter for exactly one day, and that day included a three-pint pub lunch with sausage and mash. it defeated me. i was not asked back. (thank god! speaking of looking back in horror..)

Back when I smoked I actually once found myself surrounded by armed police in Romania for daring to make a (tabacco) rollie in public. It took them an excruciating ten minutes to establish there were no drugs involved.

There's a pretty good film from 2009, Police, Adjective, that points out the absurdity of Romanian laws (and attitudes) towards weed. Sadly, not much has changed since.

As a side note, why is there no ILX en français?

I remember going to a restaurant in Manhattan with my father once where the smoking section was the first floor, and the non-smoking section was upstairs. It was one of the most passive-aggressively dickish things I've ever experienced.

I've always thought it was because French people prefer hating things tbh

xpost

lol, touché.

Let's just assume the 'L' stands for 'loathe'.

Speaking of France my French uncle (age 90) told me at the school cantine in the 1930s the kids would be served a carafe of wine - vive La France!

I also remember seeing an old street photo of 1930s Paris that featured a bus sporting a public health announcement that said:"Doctors recommend no more than two bottles of wine a day!" Autres temps, autres moeurs!

Dipsomania begins at five bottles.

I went to Bordeaux on a French Exchange trip for 3 weeks when I was 13. the family I was staying with used to give me watered-down wine with meals, at one point I mentioned that I'd never had watered-down wine before, because whenever I'd had wine at home it was just straight wine - but this was only really at weddings or occasionally at my dad's house he would give us a small glass of wine (or Babycham more often). they took it to mean I was a hardened wine drinker and from then on I got non-watered wine and more of it. that trip was my real introduction to boozing, first time I ever got properly drunk

(Of absinthe.)

xp

I also remember seeing an old street photo of 1930s Paris that featured a bus sporting a public health announcement that said:"Doctors recommend no more than two bottles of wine a day!" Autres temps, autres moeurs!

― Zelda Zonk

did the doctors also say wine was good for your "t-zone"?

Yeah, wine consumption in France has reduced a lot, even in my lifetime : when I was born, in the mid 70s, it was over 100litre/year/person. Now it's around 40litre/year/person.
And people still think a little glass of wine everyday is good for your health.
Even the government says so !

Je lirais un babillard d'ilx en français.

France still boasts one of the highest life expectancies in the world, so I'd say it's worth it.

And regarding smoking, when I was a teenager, it was still possible to smoke in the metro/trains !

Mods, can we get our own 'I Loathe Everything (en français)' board?

my dad still talks of a time when you could get a beer in a drive-thru, but only one per person

obviously makes sense why that's no longer allowed but I definitely had a "you should be allowed to drink while driving if you're not over the limit" phase lmao

J'ai posé la question aux modérateurs: French Board?

Merci !

Shit, frogs. You can go through a drive-thru here, order a pint of Evan Williams and a can of coke, and they'll throw in the plastic cup filled with ice for free.

But not on Sundays!

Growing up evangelical in a rural, isolated geography means I have 100 things for this thread--all of them pretty boring.

It's more interesting to me to contemplate how many years after leaving that environment it took me to "deconstruct," as they say--to un-internalize the hateful norms and be able to feel surprised by them, or to realize that the basic injustice of them. They were just air and water to me for so long.

French soldiers during WWII (and maybe I) got a ration of wine a day (like a bottle). It was very nice even though it may have been watered down.

"Meet Me at the Flagpole"

a pint of Evan Williams and a can of coke

now that's a ratio

Watching hours and hours of sitcoms with the family, or comedy panel shows, repeats of Simpsons etc

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Saturday, July 13, 2019 12:11 PM (two days ago)

isn't this just rebranded as "binge watching"?

just plopping down and watching whatever is on tv, or making plans to watch a block of sitcom shows on a specific night is kind of dead

Yeah during WWI, wine was necessary to get the poilus going... basically the equivalent of speed for the germans during WWII !

i remember sitting down for that Thursday night NBC block as a kid, Cosby and A Different World and Family Ties and Wings and Dear John(!) and Cheers and Night Court and Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law, I think those were the shows that ran during that period of time.

i don't have the patience for watching more than one episode of TV per night now, usually once per week. it's not even a "i don't even watch TV thing", it's just overwhelming. everyone's saying "you have to watch this show!!!" and everyone saying this is talking about a different show.

I was very much an asshole to my mom when she kept trying to guilt me into visiting home and I would say "why, so we can sit around at night watching shitty tv while not speaking to each other?"