Unpaid lunch
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Wait, so you don't eat for 8 hours?
I eat one big dinner each day, so I go around 23 hours between meals. It takes a little acclimation, but I don't get "hangry" anymore and can go much longer without effect if something comes up and I have to delay eating.
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Wait, so you don't eat for 8 hours?
That's not a problem at all. I've been intermittent fasting for almost 10 years now. Started with 36 hour fasts 3 times a week. Then eventually started following my shift work schedule. If I was evenings I'd eat breakfast and lunch, if I was days I'd only eat supper. Now I'm days only so I only eat supper.
My parents who are almost in their 70's started doing it a few years back and they lost a ton of weight. The thing I love about fasting is it changes how you deal with hunger. My body being hungry doesn't really phase me, I'm able to ignore it rather easily. I don't get stomach aches or headaches. I can mentally tell myself that this is my fasting window and it makes it really easy to not eat.
It's hard to explain without you actually doing it but it was one of the best choices I've made. I'll never go back.
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Not eating lunch and taking a break is bad for your health and potentially undermines your productivity. It's a bad idea all around.
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There's all kinds of legal murk with this.
If you don't get a break and you make a mistake that injures or kills you or someone else, the employer is responsible.
If you "don't get" a break, either by force or voluntarily (the reason actually doesn't matter), then many places consider that to be.... For lack of a better description (my brain can't think of one right now): bad working conditions, and illegal.
Even if you voluntarily skip you break/lunch, the thin line between that being fine, or a problem for the company, is whether you want to hire a lawyer and make it a problem or not.
That's liability that they don't want.
I guarantee they couldn't give any less of a shit whether you take your lunch/breaks or not, except for the fact that it could affect them.
I'm thankful for this, because bluntly, otherwise, they just wouldn't give you a break at all.
They would put it on the books as you working a 9 hour shift, and taking your lunch at the end of the day, but tell you that you are on an 8 hour shift that has no breaks. Since they can't cover their ass like that, you get an unpaid lunch.The unpaid part was the compromise to get the legislation passed so they don't subject workers to inhumane conditions. Remember that the government is largely comprised of, or paid for by, businesses and business owners. So if it isn't, at the very least "fair" to business owners, it's not going to pass.
There's also the problem that if your coworkers skip theirs voluntarily, then you feel pressured to do the same and it's no longer voluntary. Breaks and lunch are legally required because otherwise you just don't get them at all because of the legal murkiness you mention.
When I worked at Target about a decade ago, if you missed your break, YOU got written up. They'd been sued so many times for not giving breaks that they FORCED you to take a break or be written up for it. If you were within 10 minutes of working into your lunch break, you can bet your ass someone was on a walkie talkie telling you to get your ass out and stop working. At the time they loved 4h45m shifts because it gave them 15 minutes buffer before you had to take a lunch.
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lol wtf are yearly evaluations?
A way to only give one raise per department by pitting coworkers against each other based on goals they set for themselves. No, really…
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This is literally what I do every day. I intermittent fast, so I don't eat until dinner. I work through lunch, take breaks whenever I need to get up and stretch my legs, and leave at ~4:15.
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Not eating lunch and taking a break is bad for your health and potentially undermines your productivity. It's a bad idea all around.
And that's why lunch should be paid if it's inside the workday.
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And that's why lunch should be paid if it's inside the workday.
This is how it is at my current job in Denmark. Never experienced it before working in Denmark.
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In a lot of states it’s illegal for workers to work too many consecutive hours without a break, especially if it’s a physical labor job. Your employer may legally not be able to allow this.
Though sometimes they are just petty and inflexible.
It's not illegal where I live but it's against my union rules (though it's not a labour job). They have super strict rules about exactly when we should take our breaks. I get it in principle because there are asshole bosses who would try to force people to work through their breaks or shame them into it, but it really sucks for those of us who just don't mind pushing through so we can leave early or like to take late lunches.
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I can't because it wouldn't make much sense, we need people working together to do stuff so break times are synchronized
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Wait, so you don't eat for 8 hours?
No, I normally eat for about ten minutes.
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If they let you take lunch at the end of the day to leave sooner that creates a loophole to say they gave you your lunch break without actually doing so
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Reminder: the traditional "9 to 5" workday that is considered "full time" includes lunch. If you're not getting paid for it or are working 8 to 5 or whatever, you're getting swindled.
You might say it's "normal" now, but it only becomes normalized because workers fail to hold the line.
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And that's why lunch should be paid if it's inside the workday.
I've always noted with a certain cynicism that the old nomenclature for the workday '9-5' adds up to eight hours. Surely these people weren't missing lunch...
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8-4 is still 8 hours?
The average work day is 8-5 with an unpaid lunch break.
8-4 to your payroll people is 8 hours less a lunch break. Because they expect you took it and went home early.
Again it's not something that can't be fixed, and I'm sure once in a while it would be fine. But a bunch of people doing it all the time probably causes enough extra work to need to hire someone just to take care of it.
The most unreasonably rigid people you've ever met will work in accounting and payroll.
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And that's why lunch should be paid if it's inside the workday.
In a way it is paid/unpaid either way.
At the end of the day, the time you spend "for" work includes your transit to and from work as well as the breaks that you take without being able to really do your thing.
You have to calculate that time against your pay. This is also why working from home shouldn't be something companies have any doubt about. Taking away the commute time maintains the time you can be productive for the company, while notably shorting your total time spent "for" work.
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My entire career, I got a one-hour lunch, and two, paid, ten-minute breaks.
I know some will say you'd rather not because that's just more time at work, but with a one-hour lunch you can leave work, that's the whole point. It's a real break. One hour is enough time to go to a restaurant, or you can eat at work, and take a short walk. Half-an-hour is barely enough to time to eat and use the bathroom.
I guess what I'm saying is unionize.
That's why we use the bathroom before or after lunch.
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A yearly meeting with your boss where they either tell you all the things you did great and maybe a couple small things you can improve on while not paying you more, or they tell you how terrible you did and try to pressure you into doing more work by hanging the threat of your job (homelessness, loss of insurance, death) over your head.
Don't forget they also hold you responsible for all your work they held up.
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I can't because it wouldn't make much sense, we need people working together to do stuff so break times are synchronized
so then it's not my time because I can't take it when I want. since that's the case, why isn't it paid?
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It's not illegal where I live but it's against my union rules (though it's not a labour job). They have super strict rules about exactly when we should take our breaks. I get it in principle because there are asshole bosses who would try to force people to work through their breaks or shame them into it, but it really sucks for those of us who just don't mind pushing through so we can leave early or like to take late lunches.
Yeah, that's one thing that sucks about union jobs. On the other hand, I'm no longer at a union job and can break/lunch whenever I want, but my boss can make unrealistic expectations and I have no way to argue if I can't get another manager in the line to back me up. My current workplace is very quickly turning into a shittty place to work since there isn't a union to push back.
