An easy career mistake to avoid

Commentary:

(MoneyWatch) Some career-limiting factors are outside our control. Negative economic winds doom a product launch. Your mentor loses his job in a reshuffling and you have to scramble to find a new champion in the upper ranks.

But here's a career mistake that is entirely avoidable: Drinking too much at a work function.

While hearing yet another story the other day of someone doing something entirely inappropriate in front of colleagues -- which the designated drivers in the group were sober enough to remember -- I started pondering why people would succumb to this kind of self-inflicted wound.

I think the first issue is that at work functions, unless you own the company, someone else is usually picking up the tab. People have a tendency to over-consume free things.

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Second, the presence of alcohol makes any situation seem social. With work functions, this is by design -- someone wants you to bond and become closer with your colleagues. Sometimes spouses are invited too for just this reason. But the net result is that the rules get confused. If you drink too much at your cousin's wedding, your family members can't really kick you out of the family. After a few drinks, it's easy to forget that your employer doesn't have anything approaching that same loyalty.

Regardless, it's hard to imagine a work situation that wouldn't be improved by staying a bit more to the sober side than everyone else. That way you can monitor any situations that are developing -- a colleague becoming overly affectionate, for instance, or someone telling stories that don't paint him in nearly the positive light he seems to think they do -- and manage your reaction.

And hey, it makes the next morning a lot less painful, too.