Most of the entries in the big book of fake holidays are terrible: Best Friends Day, Raccoon Appreciation Day, Green Day, Father’s Day, to name just a few. Tomorrow, however, is National Duck Out for a Drink Day, a holiday Alex Balk at The Awl created six years ago because it’s the rotting corpse part of the dead of August and you deserve to slip out of the office for a shot or a beer, or a shot and beer (note that he created this holiday five years ago, which I think was when the first republican debate was being held, I can’t be sure as I can’t remember a time when this campaign was not happening.) So take advantage of it, why not? You do truly deserve it, we all deserve it, let’s keep drinking until we feel like we don’t deserve it any more.
As Balk writes today: “That’s right, it’s America’s favorite holiday, the one where you slip away from work for a drink (or a few). Talk to your co-workers now and figure out when you go and where you’ll be: ‘NDOFADD Meeting’ looks totally innocuous on a shared calendar, so feel free to coordinate that way if you like.”
This is a rational holiday, not to be confused with The Awl’s irrational and hateful campaign against shorts, which we will never stop speaking against. If you’re gonna make a real go of it, don’t forget our expert guide to day drinking.
In the spirit of the holiday, here is a list of my best times I ducked out for a drink from work, ranked:
-I got dumped in the morning and the Chipotle line was too long at lunch (the Chipotle line is always too long) so I drank at a midtown bar on an empty stomach and took a nap on a concrete wall.
-Depression about my newspaper job prospects in South Carolina led me to drink two large blue cocktails at Wild Wing cafe. They were not good.
-The World Cup was on and I was suddenly into soccer as an excuse for ducking out of work.
-It was election day, my last day at my South Carolina newspaper job and I was about to go interview some Hilton Head Republicans, about watching a black man become president.
-Matt Harvey and Zack Wheeler were pitching a double header (this one might not count since I actually brought my laptop and did work, which it turns out you can do anywhere).
-It was Christmas Eve and there were so few people in the newsroom we had to keep jumping around to keep the lights on, so I took a long lunch and drank at Rudy’s which is a tremendous place to day drink on Christmas Eve.
Yours? Best story in the comments gets a letter of recommendation that you not be fired, hand-written by me. It may be hard to read, on account of the drinking.