[Note: This was written on Saturday, June 26th.)

Greetings from Ditch Plains! I took the train out with my stepmom and I’m writing this by the beach. If I ever complain about anything again, you have the liberty to punch me in the face.

I was working on a post about experiential learning and how its value had decreased over the years. I was citing a conversation I had recently with Alex Sherker, an outstanding tattoo artist in New York, and I was going to tie it in with patience in this age of immediacy, how technology robs us of experiences, blah blah blah.

This morning I rode a rusted beach cruiser to the health food store in town. I’d run eight miles when I got up and I wanted something to eat, and drink. Being sober means that I get my liquid jollies from stuff like coconut water and frozen banana smoothies. Last night my dad was even conscientious enough to provide me with some fancy organic French soda to drink, in lieu of the wine he and his dinner guests consumed with gusto. I’m not only a recovering alcoholic, I’m also a vegan who doesn’t eat sugar or artificial sweeteners. One of the things I like to drink that fits my stringent requirements is GT’s Kombucha. Last year this health food store had the stuff, so I precariously pedaled my way into the heart of Ditch. It was there that I learned that GT’s Kombucha had been recalled due to discrepancies over the alcohol content. They pulled my favorite overpriced drink because it could be booze. Jesus Christ. Does this mean I have to recalculate my sobriety date? Has my wagon been toppled by some hippie whose homespun hooch hid behind the guise of homeopathy? Did Lindsay Lohan actually tell the truth about her SCRAM bracelet? Well, at least I saved four dollars.

I looked it up online, and here are the facts, some of which I’d already known:

Lindsay Lohan was fitted with a SCRAM bracelet as part of her probation agreement stemming from drunk driving and misdemeanor drug charges. The bracelet (or is it ankelet?) is meant to monitor Lohan’s blood alcohol content, along with random drug testing.

The hot mess can’t drink, do blow, or spray tan, but she can get her wisdom teeth out and drink kombucha at the MTV Movie Awards. Wait, wait, sorry. Scratch that last one.

The SCRAM device detected alcohol on the night in of the awards. Lindsay blamed the alarm on kombucha, and she reportedly took a urine test immediately afterward to prove that there was no alcohol in her system. But the attention that Lohan brought to the drink and its sloshtastic qualities had nothing to do with the recent Whole Foods recall.  It seems that Whole Foods beat Lindsay to the punch, so to speak, by pulling kombucha until GT can prove that its alcohol content is under the .05% that the label claims. Otherwise it may have to be labeled as an alcoholic beverage, and be subject to the same taxes as the hard stuff. That would at least justify a $4 price tag on tea. Anyway, it seems that GT has broadened the recall beyond the scope of the yuppies: it’s now nationwide, and it’s posted on their website.The excuse that’s presented is that it may continue to ferment after bottling. Right now, no one knows for sure. Even though Lohan posted the grammatically questionable response to the situation on Twitter, "the truth, is refreshing."

I discovered kombucha about a year ago when I had a craving for spirulina. It looked like bottled pond scum, but I liked it. If I drank two per day it cost roughly as much as the magnums of wine I had been putting away every night during the downslide of my alcoholism. I understood that handing over Abe Lincoln every time I wanted something other than water was ridiculous, but the stuff made me feel good. I say that with all of the honesty of an alcoholic who has been sober for over two years. The stuff made me tingle. Did it feel like getting drunk? No. Did it happen every time? No. But I know that I drank it in voracious gulps (the same way I drink, or eat, everything) and I looked at it as my special treat to myself. Not unlike the way I looked at wine, whiskey, and women in my heyday.

What I’m trying to say is that the stuff wasn’t water. A lot of people have attributed kombucha’s punch to caffeine, even though the GT site claims that it only contains trace amounts. I only drink green tea, and not that much of it, so it’s possible that the snap-crackle-pop that kombucha caused was simply a coffee-like buzz. But I doubt it. Still, I didn’t think that it was anything like being tipsy and I didn’t see it as a direct threat to my sobriety. I didn’t want to drink a bathtub full of the stuff, and I easily subbed in coconut water on days where it wasn’t available or when I was trying to figure out what was making my stomach upset. If it had been booze, I would have drank seven or eight in rapid succession, walked across New York to find a store where it was in stock, and shit myself stupid if it caused intestinal distress. I also would have stolen your girlfriend. I may not know the alcohol content of a soda, but I know the alcohol content of me. When I contain alcohol, I am a mess. An addicted, sloppy, ugly mess. Kombucha didn’t make me a mess. But.

Why am I documenting this on a blog that’s dedicated to work? Because if I weren’t sober, I wouldn’t be working. If I started drinking again – drinking stuff with more of a kick than kombucha – I wouldn’t be doing very much. My apartment? Gone. I wouldn’t be able to cover the maintenance. Simon? Poof! I’m sure he could stick around for a while, but he knew me when I was out, and that whole making-out-with-his-friends thing got old to him pretty fast. Snack? Not as if I can specifically correlate the two, but my dog seems a lot happier since I kicked the habit and she hasn’t run away. My job would be the first to wither and disappear as my relentless pursuit to get out of my skin took over. There would be no motivation for much more than destroying myself, and I would wind up in worse shape than last time, which was penniless, lonely, listless, and not writing. I have my fair share of drinking-related horror stories a la Lindsay Lohan, those telltale clues that pop up as you start to veer in the direction of dependency. I’m not proud of them, but they’re there, and they’re a-plenty. I don’t need any more. And while other alcoholics I’ve spoken to have insisted that kombucha isn’t a problem, that was before today’s recall. Perhaps they’ll still be at peace with drinking it after the recall, so long as it isn’t labeled as an alcoholic beverage. Maybe they don’t see it as a threat. But to this alcoholic, I think I’ve come too far and achieved too much to give it all up for the green stuff, even if it doesn’t necessarily lead to a slip. And maybe that’s how this post is about experiential learning after all.

Sigmund Freud believed that people were lazy, that no one works unless they’re threatened, and that human beings, as a general rule, are like your sister’s ex-boyfriend: devoid of ambition, sickened by responsibility, and only out for themselves. Whether or not they’re all unemployed guitarists doesn’t matter.

Psychologist Abraham Maslow and professor Douglas McGregor had different published theories that seem to agree that people actually enjoy working, and that it’s our nature to seek out knowledge and productive activity. I’m a destitute writer and I don’t like theories. I have some scratch-off tickets and opinions, though. People are often jerks. I like to work alone, and I use a steady stream of English Breakfast tea and talk radio to get me through my day. I don’t need an employee motivation strategist to tie a carrot to my stick, but I work for myself, so the point here is moot.

Perks are just that, perks. They pick you up, they keep you going, and if you have to give up a life of leisure for a cubicle-sized enterprise, well, there’d best be a reason to keep you coming back day after day, five days a week, nearly all year round.

One could argue that simply having a job in this day and age is a perk.

Employee motivation isn’t some woo-woo thing reserved for California tech companies, it’s been proven across the board that if you want to make the dog fetch the stick, you have to offer a piece of bacon. Workers need incentives, otherwise they don’t work well, they burn out, they shit-talk your company on their blog. Deprive an employee of coffee and sunlight and the next thing you know morale drops, Xerox machines are kicked, and coworkers start sleeping with one another after they clock out. It never amounts to good.

Performance-based motivational techniques are favored in large companies, but I don’t know if that’s fair. I think that every employee needs a daily motivator, even if it’s something as simple as a comfortable chair, a free burrito, a fun lamp on their desk. The lamp one might strike you as cheesy, but that job I was fired from took both myself and the other primary office-based employee to Ikea . We were told to pick out some stuff for the office, and that the CEO would pick up the tab. I had an awesome lamp that made me feel very proud of my desk. I plead the fifth on whether or not I took it when I packed up and left the building.

Starbucks, for example, is known for calling their baristas “partners.” They have notoriously awesome benefits that include domestic partnership, the profits from the hokey “coffee gear” are put into accounts dedicated to employee services, and there are even charities for employees that provide grants to fellow employees going through difficulties. (The one that comes to mind is CUP, aka the “Caring Unites Partners” Fund.)

The company philosophy may be “Leave no one behind,” but the real reason why I’d ever want to work for the green machine is because they leave no one uncaffeinated . Sure, there’s a nice 30% discount for workers, and you get a free bag of coffee per week, but if you strap on that apron you’re able to funnel nearly every concoction you make. This has led more than one employee to speculate that the complimentary coffee is “Starbucks’ plot to make their employees work very quickly.”  Maybe it’s just the jitters that make a good number of these employees seem like they’re actually having fun in situations that would drive me fucking insane. A single declaration of “Vente skinny soy mocha latte, no whip!” would drive me to run face-first into the nearest wall. But the partners are motivated, even if it’s just that they’re stimulated.