Working Girl Wednesdays: “Cluck-Clucking with Strange Dreamboats”

Welcome to Working Girl Wednesdays! Need advice on handling the complexities of the modern workplace? Well, fret no more! Whether it’s a senior partner making a move or a catty co-worker plotting for your plum position, Helen Gurley Brown’s 1964 book Sex and the Office has a solution. Every Wednesday on Glossed Over, I’ll present a new tip from the legendary editor of Cosmopolitan. Is her advice utterly ridiculous or startlingly prescient? You decide!

Educational! Apparently, in the sixties when this book was written, employers granted lunch breaks. I can only surmise that the midday meal was an important part of the work day, since there are three—yes, three—chapters devoted to lunch. Here’s a tip from “Lunchland I: Lunch with the Girls”:

On certain fiendish days you and your girl friends need to be soothed by icy martinis, of course, and waited on hand and foot for morale purposes. In that case go to the restaurant, but make it a good one while you’re at it—for man-reasons as well as moral reasons. And take one—not five—dashing girlfriends with you. You may find the foyer so crowded you’ll get to cluck-clucking with strange dreamboats about the service. You may get seated in an alcove next to some of them or one may drop his overcoat on you in passing. Anything can happen, but not with five other girls.

If you opt to dine at your desk, should you imbibe? Why, yes!

You may work in an office where consumption of an alcoholic beverage is strictly forbidden, at least on the premises. (No telling how many Manhattans and Gibsons are brought into the office in people containers after lunch.)…

Should any of your co-workers discover your fine, boozy secret and giggle it up, smile sweetly and say, “I like a glass of wine with my lunch. It is a very civilized custom.”

A younger girl might explain, “We’ve always had wine with meals at home. Daddy knew how good for us it is.”

Next week: how to have “sex at high noon”!