Lunchtime

skier

skier

Line Up and Wait
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Jan 8, 2007
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CT
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Skier
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Working from home for the past few weeks has highlighted some interesting differences between my wife’s company and mine. The biggest one is lunchtime.

All the engineering/manufacturing places I’ve worked have lunch for 30 minutes between starting after 11:15am and ending before 1pm. My wife’s firm does a 60 minute lunch from 12:30-1:30.

so what’s your experience from around the country? What’s a normal lunchtime?
 
Lunch? Oh. right -- that's the thing I occasionally get, and is almost always eaten while I'm on yet another conference call. I generally find 5-10 minutes somewhere between 10:30 and 3.
 
Boeing standard in Seattle was 11:30 to 12:10; technically, we had only a half hour break, but were given an extra ten minutes. The early start time was due to the standard day shift starting at 7 AM.

The 11:30 start time helped if one was going off the campus for lunch, helped us beat the rush (though it didn't matter at cafes near the big Boeing plants). It was a cause of confusion when I worked at a start-up for a couple of years with a lot of ex-Boeing folks. One of the non-ex-Boeing types complained that many of us weren't around at 11:30..."They can't be at lunch, it's too early for lunch...."

Ron Wanttaja
 
I worked for one company where the official work day defined as 8:00am to 4:42pm. Yes, lunch was 42 minutes! Of course most didn't adhere to the official hours, they both took longer lunches and also worked more than 8hrs/day.
 
My work at home schedule....

Breakfast, 0800-1100.

Lunch, 1100-1500.

Afternoon break, 1500-1600.

Work time, 1600-1700.

Magnum PI from 1700-1900.

Supper break, 1900-2000.

Play with cat time, 2000-2200.

Curse governor and mayor for mandatory curfew and road blocks stopping people that live out of the city limits from coming in town to do grocery shopping, 2200-0000.

Bed time after that....
 
Bill Jennings said:
I worked for one company where the official work day defined as 8:00am to 4:42pm. Yes, lunch was 42 minutes! Of course most didn't adhere to the official hours, they both took longer lunches and also worked more than 8hrs/day.
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Where was that? I remember my first day at a former employer, I was told the same thing -- work day was 8 AM to 4:42, with a 42 minute lunch. Nobody paid any attention, we all worked 8 to 5, but I always wondered about that.
 
We are all over the board and traveling for work vs an office setting.

We typically do an hour for lunch as we all need to go find something but try and break at 11:30-11:45a to beat the rest of the lunch rush if in a busy area.

I had one buddy who was not on a rigid clock in/out start/stop schedule but had to clock 8 hours a day and would always pack in his lunch and only take the minimum required 30 min lunch break just so he could get off and home sooner.
 
8 to 5, lunch from 12 to 1, though it's somewhat flexible. I live close enough to work that I go home for lunch.

But with the plague they've split us up, half of us working 5am to 12:15, the other half 12:15 to 7:30pm. I'm working mornings, sucks getting up at 430 but it's sure nice having afternoons off to go flying...
 
Ryanb said:
That’s a crazy long day! How long is your commute?
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Commute is anywhere between 1:30 to 1:45 hr depending on how rough the sea is. Of course we have the occasional mechanical breakdown on the boat and have to wait for the crew to get the back up boat going. On a very rare day we never make it to work, drive around in 12 foot seas with 60 kt winds for an hour and return to the dock. The shift going home gets to spend a night/day in camp. A few years back everyone that was at work got stuck there for 3 days. During the 3 days a contractor broke his arm. Spent a couple of days in the medics care room, being given morphine to ease the pain.
 
We don't have any set time for lunch, but people generally break for lunch somewhere between 11:00 and 12:30. I myself tend to go earlier than later. Most of our people are working at home, although we technically don't have to as A/E firms are considered essential.
 
pretty much every place I've worked has had lunch for salaried employees formally from noon to 1.....but it's always been both flexible and work load dependent... My preference most of the time would be shave that in half and target to leave half an hour earlier. The only big exceptions to that were the short times where I lived close enough to the office to drive home for lunch.

Working from home I find myself tied to the desk pretty much the same time slots as before. I could easily break for lunch shorter or different times, but I'm trying to maintain a reasonable routine and stay away form work during non work hours.... and also to not get into a habit of working through all or most of lunch. I used to do that years ago, just eat at my desk and continue working..... I find that bad for your health!
 
Depends what the start times are. When I worked out west and we tended to start at 7AM (so we'd be inline with 9AM eastern), we ate earlier. My natural habit is to eat around 1PM. Of course, I worked one job where I'd typically go to work around 4:30PM and we'd eat at about 7.
 
Zeldman said:
My work at home schedule....

Breakfast, 0800-1100.

Lunch, 1100-1500.

Afternoon break, 1500-1600.

Work time, 1600-1700.

Magnum PI from 1700-1900.

Supper break, 1900-2000.

Play with cat time, 2000-2200.

Curse governor and mayor for mandatory curfew and road blocks stopping people that live out of the city limits from coming in town to do grocery shopping, 2200-0000.

Bed time after that....
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That's a lot of cat time. Does he/she get annoyed with you?
 
Our "rules" are start by 9:30, log 40 actual work hours minimum per week. That's it. Sometimes we have releases on the weekends or nights, that's additional to the 40 work hours you would normally log.

My wife is an RN, she gets a half hour, unless they get extremely busy, when they get none. The plus side is she is hourly, so they don't ask for unpaid overtime.
 
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we're all spread out and take lunch when we need to take lunch. since I WFH, I rarely, if ever take an official lunch.

back when I started, we were in the office and the team lead would say "break time" every day at 11:30. I didn't like him. one day he got up and said "break time" and I said enjoy, I'm working on something to which he said "but it's 11:30". I was like I don't give a flying #$%^ what time it is, if I'm in the middle of something I'll take a break if/when I can. people are weird, but also we're professionals, it should be more like take a break when you can or need to, not when someone else dictates.
 
FormerHangie said:
That's a lot of cat time. Does he/she get annoyed with you?
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She bugs me all day. Either she wants in my lap to sleep, or she wants me to pet her while she relaxes in her favorite box or she wants me to chase her around the house. Or she wants me to follow her to her fed bowl just to make sure it is full.
 
Zeldman said:
Curse governor and mayor for mandatory curfew and road blocks stopping people that live out of the city limits from coming in town to do grocery shopping
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are you caught up in that Gallup crap??
 
When I worked for Target it was 30 min if you worked from 6 to 12 hours anything beyond 12 got another 30 min. Same for when I worked at Coca-Cola, you got 30 min. When I CFI'd we scheduled 8am to 430 with no breaks. Now at the airline we don't get a lunch. You could do a 12 hour duty day of 5 leg 24 minute quickturns and plane swaps in hubs. No crew meals or anything lol.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
are you caught up in that Gallup crap??
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Yep, I am caught up in the Gallup crap. There is a road block on the road stopping people from getting into town. Guess which side of the city limit I live on....

I did find an old bootleggers trail and drove into town today unnoticed. I can cut through a couple pastures that butt up against the city limit line, go through the gate and onto a city road that has no houses. All this just to go to Walmart to pick up food, prescription drugs and check on my mom. Who is 88 and lives by herself.

I almost feel bad for the state police and national guard folks that have to sit at the road blocks and put up with all the ****ed off voters.
 
Wow. I haven't had a scheduled lunch since I was in high school.

Do job. Eat lunch. Do job. Don't suck. That's the schedule!
 
30 minute meal break sometime between the 4th and 6th hour of the shift. It would be dinner on the late shifts. That was when I was working. Now I just eat whenever I feel like it. Clock got nuthin to do with it.
 
We are on the honor system for lunch, arrival, departure, etc. So a couple of days a week, I eat lunch at my desk (usually a peanut butter sandwich or something fast and easy) and the rest of the week I leave the office to eat lunch with co-workers and/or run errands. As our business has grown from US centric to having operations and responsibilities in Asia and Europe, we've become much more flexible on work hours, with the knowledge that if someone comes in an hour late, takes a long lunch, or leaves an hour early, the company is getting all of that time back and more because people are dealing with many of the overseas issues via phone, e-mail, or video conference during non-traditional work hours.
 
03:15 to 03:45 officially, but sometimes we slide it a few minutes either way. Occasionally, we work thru if it’s a real necessity or we are in the middle of a long operation that can’t be easily stopped.
 
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