When Michelle Marks went out for drinks with her co-workers one weeknight in late May, the group, giddy at finally gathering together, celebrated for about four hours.

“We closed out the place,” says the 32-year-old plant pathologist from Columbia, Md. “We ended up just chatting and we ordered pizza, played a few board games…It was just really, really nice.”

As excited as Ms. Marks, who started her current job a month before Covid-19 lockdowns, was to take part in this office-life fixture and just be out with others again socially, she didn’t plunge in with abandon. She stuck to her pre-pandemic office drinks rule of just one or two beverages. “I would never get drunk in the presence of co-workers,” she says.

As society emerges from lockdowns and people reconnect with co-workers at in-person happy hours, many may have to remind themselves just how to do work drinks. More than a year away from this kind of setting means social skills may have gotten rusty. Introverts and others who were already anxious about after-work mixers might feel more anxious now that these functions are resuming.

Working from home put on hold some of the professional code-switching that people engage in when in person with others. The return of work socials and networking requires some refreshers on appropriate behavior and imbibing, especially with alcohol present.

This post first appeared on wsj.com

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