I'm a strong proponent of drinking together and I say that both lightly and seriously. When we don't know anything about each other outside of work, it's too easy to put our frustrations with a DBA or developer into a box labeled as such and allow them to collect and ripen.

When we spend a little bit of time together outside the office, these coworkers pretty rapidly outgrow the boxes we've been using to identify them and soon we tend to give this DBA or developer *person* a little benefit of the doubt, a little leeway for being human. We find it's harder to criticize so harshly someone who shares a similar family situation, hobby, struggle, dream.

As long as this nonsense discontinues before we start enjoying our work together, I think we'll be OK.