I was at an interview yesterday and the hours are 8:30 - 5 with 1/2 hour for lunch. Half an hour? That's bullshit. That's not even enough time to run out and grab something. That's not enough time to run errands. That's enough time to run to the kitchen, prepare your lunch and scarf it down, hoping that you don't get indigestion from eating too quickly.
Ugh.
IMO - half an hour for lunch is your employer's way of ensuring you don't leave the building and that you are always available.
Of course it is. Another way to subtley control employees. The office I work at gives one hour for lunch, but that hardly impacts me, but 90+% of the time, my work day is done at noon. At the retail store, I get no break but just eat between customers when I work through dinner or all days on weekends.
OK - so I'm not the only one who thinks that.
I like to be able to get away from the office for an hour when I need to. If you're having a shitty day, getting out for a while can make a huge difference for the rest of your day.
We get half hour and it's unpaid. I hate it.
Half an hour for lunch is quite common now, even in office work. At some of the places I worked at, there was the option of half an hour or a full hour for lunch. But if you opted for the hour, you had stay half an hour later because they wanted a full eight hours of actual work time per day. I found most people opted for the half hour lunch rather than staying at work an extra half hour.
Another thing I found that disappeared in office work is official coffee breaks. The line that management uses is you can take a coffee break when there's a break in your work flow, but the problem is if you're seen doing nothing for 15 minutes because you decided to take a break, you give management the impression that you're lazy and not into your work. It's a good stradegy by management to guilt people into working without a break. The only people who can get away with taking breaks are the smokers. They can go outside or to a smoke room and puff away without getting any dirty looks by managers.
(06-10-2010 09:46 AM)Dog Holliday Wrote: [ -> ]The only people who can get away with taking breaks are the smokers. They can go outside or to a smoke room and puff away without getting any dirty looks by managers.
I will NEVER understand this mentality.
I worked with a guy who smoked and one day I counted how many times he left to go for a smoke - 15! And it's not like he stepped out of the door and he was there. No. He had to take an elevator to the ground floor and walk through the lobby which in and of itself could take about three or four minutes - depending on how long he had to wait for the elevator.
On the other hand, the rest of us were not allowed to take a 15 minute break and lunch was only half an hour.
I wonder what management would say if an employee who didn't smoke accompanied one who did and just stood there and talked with the smoker. Do you think they would appreciate that? I think not but it's still a break on company time. Why should smokers get them but non smokers don't?
(06-10-2010 11:06 AM)NKBurlington Wrote: [ -> ]I wonder what management would say if an employee who didn't smoke accompanied one who did and just stood there and talked with the smoker. Do you think they would appreciate that? I think not but it's still a break on company time. Why should smokers get them but non smokers don't?
I used to do that at a place I worked at, as well as a few other non-smokers. I had the same feeling about smokers getting smoke breaks whenever they wanted to and non-smokers not getting breaks. There was a designated smoke room and I would go in there and chit-chat with the others there. But management got wind of it because occasionally a manager would walk by and peek in to see who is in the smoke room and saw us non-smokers in there. Shortly after, there was a memo sent out saying non-smokers weren't allowed to go in the smoke room. The excuse they used for that is saying they were concerned about the effects of second hand smoke on the non-smokers. What a crock of shit-they were only concerned about lost productivity from the non-smokers. So many managers are total idiots. They don't realized that if you get the chance to walk away from your work once in a while for a few minutes, you'll make less mistakes and therefore be more productive.
NKB -- that totally sucks. I hated jobs where I had only half an hour for lunch.
As to what I have? -- I have the duration of a class period from 11-12:30 to eat. It's a bit too early for me, but if I don't eat, then I don't have time (but the 15 minutes between classes) to eat later until I get home at 5:15pm.
There was one semester they scheduled me back-to-back classes from 8am to 3:30pm, so I had nothing but the 15 min breaks between classes, if I wanted to eat. I'll admit, some days I canceled a class, or let them out early. That was dirty dealing, making me work a no-break schedule!
I put an hour, because when I worked that is what I got - if I worked a full day.
I would get less if I was working say, 6 hours or less. Sometimes if I worked maybe 6 or 7 and was offered an hour, I would not take it as I wanted the pay (I was temping) if I had nothing to do on a lunch break, I'd bring my own sandwich and eat it at the workplace. Sometimes even my desk. Sometimes I might do 30 minutes or none, but that was my choice. If I was going to be stuck somewhere for the day might as well get as much pay, because if I had nothing to do on my lunch break - sitting at the desk eating would pay more than sitting in a break room table eating.
(06-10-2010 12:07 PM)Dog Holliday Wrote: [ -> ]So many managers are total idiots. They don't realized that if you get the chance to walk away from your work once in a while for a few minutes, you'll make less mistakes and therefore be more productive.
No one in my office takes any breaks - I'm the only one who even takes lunch. ALL the rest sit at their desks all day. When we go to get coffee my boss rolls her eyes and makes comments about how long we'll be gone!
Like PG, between classes or during office hours. We have a tiny fridge and a microwave, and one of my office-mates, who teaches full time, is always concocting something. I just stick my soda in the fridge. I don't like my sandwich cold.
Wow. I get 1 hour, and I stay until 5:30. I like having the time in the middle of the day to get out and run an errand. I don't mind staying late.
If I have an appointment or something, I shorten my lunch accordingly. No way in HELL I'm using vacation or sick leave when I don't have to!
Jen M.
I'm going to be the lone dissenter, again and say that I prefer a shorter lunch break and I've even asked supervisors if I could just work straight through and leave earlier. I am not a foodie to begin with and I'm used to eating once a day so it doesn't bother me and frankly, I hate eating at work for many reasons. List time!
Eating out is expensive and when you work at crap wages you notice how quickly it adds up. It's also unhealthy as hell.
Taking a brown bag is a pain, especially if you ride the bus. You have to remember to make it the night before or wake up early, then take it in and hope that there is room in the fridge, hope that somebody doesn't steal it (major pet peeve of mine), and if you need to use microwave then god help you since everyone else is there using it.
If you are lucky enough to be able to have a cafeteria you still inevitably have the idiots who don't understand the concept of lunch being your time. I remember an incident which made my attitude this way from my first job fifteen years ago. I brought a tuna sub in for my half hour lunch and I was really looking forward to it. I hadn't even taken my first bite when the receptionist came in and said I had a call on line one. I looked at her incredulously while holding the hoagie up and exclaiming that I had food in hand one. The looks I got were amazing with people glaring at me. That was the last time I ever ate at work.
Now, when I have a job where I must take a lunch (which I loathe) I'll leave the building even if it's just to walk around it for the time. I resent this because I'm wasting my time. I'd rather go straight through and have half an hour extra in the evening where I could do something I actually enjoy instead of just avoiding coworkers.
Well the way I figure it is if I'm not being paid for my lunch, I'll take the full hour given to me. I don't work for free.
Oh, I'm the last to argue that point, but my point is that if you stay there then you are wasting your time and potentially being asked work questions on your personal time because people don't get the idea that if it is unpaid time it is your time.
I had to vote "Other" as I have not worked in about 23 years.
So My lunch time is any damn time I want it to be.
Ahhhh The good life.. No Kids, no work, & No Hubby
Just me & my pussy, lol Cat that is, LOL.
I worked at one place (for about a week before I found another job) that didn't have a lunch room. Let me rephrase that; they had a lunch room but it was used as a smoking room therefore, if you didn't smoke, going in there was pure hell.
Lunch was half an hour and with no where to eat, I was forced to eat at my desk which means you-know-what - no time off for lunch at all because they assumed that if you were at your desk, you were working.
Ugh. Slave labour at it's best. And this was at Maple Leaf Foods. I would have thought they'd tread their employees better than that.
Ugh, sounds dreadful. I had one temp job that was thankfully only three weeks that was exactly like that. The building was on the side of a highway in an undeveloped area so you couldn't walk anywhere so I'd park my car in the back 40 and listen to music for the half hour.
Back in the days when I worked full time for a company, I seem to remember "officially" having an hour, and I worked 10am-6pm. I didn't eat very well then, so I'd run out and get some fast food crap and bring it back and eat and work at the same time. My job was doing video graphics for technical training videos, so I worked in a studio with two men and that was it. I didn't mind sitting at the computer working and eating at the same time because our job was deadlined based and if we didn't finish something by 6pm, we'd have to stay until we did--no extra pay. It sounds crappy, but it wasn't, it's the nature of video work and graphic design and it was a lot of fun anyway. I still think about that job, I loved it.
When I worked in TV, that was the best meal break ever. I did graphics for live TV news, 5, 6, and 11pm, so after the 6pm news was over and we recorded some short teasers for the 11pm, we'd get to leave for dinner. I didn't have to be back until 9pm, so I'd go home and have a proper dinner or I'd go out with friends to a restaurant. This job was also a lot of fun, but the stress of live TV nearly killed me.
Since then I've owned my own businesses and worked as a freelancer/contractor, so I'm no longer tied to a schedule or desk or company policies. I make very little money, but I'm free.
It's completely loosey goosey where I work. I think Union rules stipulate we work 8:30 to 4:30 with a one hour lunch, but most people adjust that to fit their own schedule. Lots of people take a half hour lunch and leave a half an hour earlier or come in a half an hour later. Our workday is seven hours, so just do the math. In MANY of the elementary schools, they do not have a lunchhour at all, but rather something called "balanced day" with two "nutrition breaks" -- one at about 10:30 and one at about 1:30. It's been proven that eating many smaller meals is better than eating one big one. I think those nutrion breaks are about 45 minutes each, combining a half hour lunch with a fifteen minute break, twice a day.
I'm a grazer... always have been. It's a running joke at work... It's just not Jo's desk if I'm not eating something at any hour of the day. So I don't take an official lunch at all, and I leave an hour earlier. The union does not technically allow it, but tons of us do it. We are all on the road anyhow, so we can do drive throughs and stop and grab stuff easily.
Occasionally I'll take an hour lunch, but only when I have a lunch date.