How long is your lunch break?

[SpookyFrank]

Employment is generally a friendlier and more accommodating relationship than you pretend.

But also, don't take any time off sick or else.

 

[klang]

also, what's the big deal?

how many hols do i get? - 28 days and 8 bhs. pls book early to not leave us short.
sick days? - need a cert after a week, and after 3 months off we'll have to see how we can cover costs for your substitute. in the past we've done this or that. pls read up on the policy, but of course I hope it will never come to you being unwell for too long.

 

[Pickman's model]

Where I used to work half the office took lunch and 12 and half at 1. I soon worked out I could go at 12.15 and come back at 1.45 and no one would be any the wiser. Happy days

 

[rubbershoes]

Yeah, fuck hiring people who know their rights that's what I always say.

I knew someone here would be on their side

 

[Rebelda]

45 minutes, but I work a 12 hour shift. I tend to take it in the morning and start late because otherwise I never get it. And I always take it, because it's unpaid.

 

[Voley]

There's no hard and fast rules in my job. I've ticked "an hour" but it varies. Some days I work through it, others I take a lot longer than an hour. On a normal day I like to walk round the woods when I'm wfh and that's 45 minutes. Quick sarnie after that and it's about a hour. No-one's watching, though, so it's up to me.

I once worked in an awful place that monitored your every minute and even they gave me 45 minutes for lunch AnnO'Neemus so I'd be a bit wary of this lot, I think.

 

[scifisam]

1 hour, but it's unpaid.

 

[A380]

I get 24 hours a day for lunch. It’s one of the very few advantages of not working.

When I was working I usually worked in the afternoons so had lunch before work, when I had to go in in the mornings I had 2 hours for lunch, the advantage of living and working in Spain.

The main question is do they really stick to this or not, either way? It may be that everyone just takes 30/45/60 minutes most days, or alternatively there might be an expectation that you just sit and eat a sandwich at the desk whilst working. But both of these will be symptoms of the wider organisational culture. You do seem to have got this job quite quickly after the awful place you were at before so start and see, you can always fuck then off if the place is shit. Flexibility in labour markets cutting both ways…

For me

Yes lunch is 24 hrs a day 365 days a year.

I didn’t get meal breaks for most of my main career, just try to grab something to eat on the go , if lucky, most days. Later working elsewhere in an office I’d try to encourage people to go and take lunch breaks away from their desks but often ended up not practicing what I preached and eating a sandwich at my desk.

 

[baldrick]

Half an hour, unpaid. I WFH and force myself out of the house for a walk or I would end up working through and eating at my desk like I did when I was office based.

 

[Looby]

You don’t have to demand what the sick pay is etc but you can ask about policies. Are they family friendly, what’s the leave like. Or at verbal offer it’s ok to ask for this info whilst you’re considering the offer.

We need to get past the idea that wanting to know if you’ll get paid if you have Covid or break your leg is somehow bad or the sign of being a shirker. These are our rights as an employee and it does us no favours if we’re too scared to ask.

 

[Steel Icarus]

Contract - one hour, unpaid. In practice I work through it most days, especially this academic year as all my sessions of delivery are in the middle of the day. I make sure I spend some time chewing it off in the afternoon

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

You don’t have to demand what the sick pay is etc but you can ask about policies. Are they family friendly, what’s the leave like. Or at verbal offer it’s ok to ask for this info whilst you’re considering the offer.

We need to get past the idea that wanting to know if you’ll get paid if you have Covid or break your leg is somehow bad or the sign of being a shirker. These are our rights as an employee and it does us no favours if we’re too scared to ask.

You ask once you've got the offer though don't you, not in the interview. Everyone knows interviews are bollocks - you can't say 'I want the job because you'll pay me' - but there's not much point doing something you know will blow it then complaining, you might as well just save yourself the bother and not apply.

 

[Orang Utan]

Have only every had half an hour for lunch.
I would venture that any longer than that is very unusual.
It’s not long enough though

 

[newme]

Have mainly had options, well since I got into offices anyway, council was take whatever between 12-2 but you should be doing your hours. Last place didn't care about hours one way or the other so long as things got done really, tho having to log billable hours made it sort of relevant you did the amount on the contract. Take as long as you want for lunch but we aren't paying for it so what difference does it make. I generally just did whatever since WFH so hours are a bit weird anyway. When I was in an office everyone spent the first bloody hour or 2 barely doing anything and making endless cups of coffee so I let myself have some leeway with this, also with some tasks staring at the screen doesn't really help a lot or I may have had some reply to an issue in some forum over the weekend and looked cos I wanted to get another question in or whatever, am I going to bill an hour on Sunday cos I was looking at something after a drink? Fudge the paperwork as everyone seemed to do. One guy did his entire years timesheet on the last two days, I am sure that was very accurate for the councils internal billing....

 

[Looby]

You ask once you've got the offer though don't you, not in the interview. Everyone knows interviews are bollocks - you can't say 'I want the job because you'll pay me' - but there's not much point doing something you know will blow it then complaining, you might as well just save yourself the bother and not apply.

Yes maybe but not always. I’m treating interviews a bit differently recently. I guess it’s easier if you’re applying whilst in another job you can stay in rather than being desperate to leave or not having a job.

At my last interview I was really clear about what was good about the role I was in and what I wanted in this role. Wellbeing stuff, supervision expectations etc I was nervous but they seemed impressed I knew what I wanted and were very reassuring. I think they liked that I was applying because I really wanted the job not that I was desperate to escape another hell hole.

I did push back on money at verbal offer based on perks I was giving up and ended up with slightly more than I’d asked for. Pay structures are set and limited but they could work without the scales.

So it’s not always bad to be quite frank about stuff, especially if you’re prepared to politely walk away.

 

[pinkmonkey]

Am self employed so its obviously not paid. Depends what I'm eating/how long it takes to prep/how busy I am. So if I have Huel it takes me 5-10 mins to prep and I'll go back to work whilst I drink it. Today I've airfried some veggie samosas, have eaten them and now am eating some fruit and a granola bar- so 45 mins?

 

[Puddy_Tat]

I haven't worked in an office job with fixed hours since about 1992 - that was the old fashioned approach where office hours were X time to Y time with a fixed lunch hour.

Since then, the office jobs I've had have been flexi time - usually with limits on earliest / latest start and finish time, and a requirement to take a minimum 30 minutes lunch break between specific times, but you can take longer if you want. usually with an expectation that in each team / office you would sort it out informally so that there would always be someone in the office between (say) 9 and 5, and if you were going to take an unusually long lunch break one day, you'd let your immediate colleagues know what was going on. And in some cases that flexi time could be built up over time so you could take the occasional day's 'flexi leave' off (subject to the work being there in the first place, and actual days off being agreed by manager) - one place i worked, quite a few people including me usually did a 9 day fortnight that way.

This usually worked informally - different people had different tastes in terms of start / finish / lunch time, a few teams ended up with complicated rotas for who was going to stay until 5 on what day and so on where the manager was a twat and / or it couldn't be sorted out informally.

Some people want to take as short a lunch break as possible so as to keep the overall day as short as possible, others prefer to take an hour so they can go and do their shopping or whatever (this can also be influenced by whether workplace is in a town centre or in the middle of nowhere.)

But obviously if the job (or part of it) is about staffing (for example) a reception desk, or a call centre, it's going to be less flexible than an office job where it's more about getting the work done some time during the day.

In my current job I'm mostly work from home, and very rarely get phone calls from anyone, so it's pretty flexible - I usually take somewhere between 40 minutes and an hour at lunch time, sometimes longer if i want to go and do a supermarket shop at lunch time. And some days I take about 40 minutes at lunch time and have a 20 minute afternoon break - the official time sheet system doesn't allow 3 part days, but as long as the number of hours i record is right, nobody is bothered.

Most places will say how many hours a week the job is before you're expected to take the job. Most places any break is unpaid (I have a vague memory that when I was civil service in the late 80s, it was officially something like a '42 hour week inclusive of lunch hour each day' but in practice, it was a 37 hour working week, and if you wanted to take shorter or longer lunch breaks that was ok.) i don't think people thought so much about hourly rates then, just the salary / weekly wage for the job.

I'm not sure that answers the original question - without wishing to be unkind, it seems to be a case of making assumptions rather than asking questions (at the appropriate time, which I agree with others, would have been at the job offer stage rather than the interview) and then finding out that the assumptions were not quite right...

 

[newme]

And in some cases that flexi time could be built up over time so you could take the occasional day's 'flexi leave' off (subject to the work being there in the first place, and actual days off being agreed by manager) - one place i worked, quite a few people including me usually did a 9 day fortnight that way.

Yeh this was one thing that was actually good about the council, everyone seemed weirdly to end up with loads of flexi but I actually took mine deliberately, some didn't which I found extremely odd, especially since there was a rule you couldn't build up over 22 hours (I think it was 22). According to the timesheet I made (complete with completely pointless graphs as I was playing about with excel). I took 29 flexi days over 4 years. Doing the extra half hour here and there really adds up if you are trying to make it do so and forced to go into a stupid office.

 

[Winot]

Yes, lesson definitely learned now.

Although one of the standard tips about interviews is not to ask about how many holidays you get, so as not to seem so keen on holiday, lest they think you're a slacker who's only interested in paid holidays.

And I wonder if questions about breaks might also come across as being a bit workshy?

I should definitely have checked before verbally accepting the verbal offer that was made to me at the end of the interview.

The fact you've accepted verbally doesn't prevent you from rejecting or negotiating if you want.

 

[neonwilderness]

Current job is 1 hour unpaid. When I'm in the office I usually make a point of going out somewhere as there isn't a separate staff room, so often get people bothering me When I'm WFH I usually take a bit less time for lunch, but have more breaks or finish a bit early so it balances out.

Last job was half an hour unpaid which was fine if I had lunch with me, but a bit of a pain of not. I was out and about a bit more in that job though, which often conveniently included being out somewhere around lunch time

 

[InArduisFouette]

Yeah, fuck hiring people who know their rights that's what I always say.

how much holiday you get is inthe advert or if it's something covered by collective bargaining published elsewhere but accessible, if it's not published it;s a valid question

how long you can take off sick is not really a valid question

company / occupational sick pay schemes are a valid question but even theere we still come to the question of capability process

 

[InArduisFouette]

I get an hours break within a 12.5 hour shift, split into two half hours. I get paid for 11.5 hours. So it's an unpaid break or 45 minutes of it is unpaid.

farily standard with 12 / 12/5 hour shifts, to have 30 paid and 30 unpaid, also depends on settings whether ytyou can have drinks ( other than plain water which should be accessible at all times) / snacks at your workstation

 

[cesare]

Nowadays employers are required to give you your principal terms and conditions from day 1 of employment. Principal Statement includes hours, breaks and pay.

So it's fine to ask an employer what the main terms are before you start working for them, given that they have to provide that info from day 1.

 

[spitfire]

Lunch is for wimps.

/gekko

 

[xenon]

I take an hour, I think it’s half paid. Not sure. at one point I was only working two day week. which amounted to 15 hours. Not my choice. But it meant I couldn’t claim tax credits or any of that for the sake of one hour… Great times.

 

[MickiQ]

I'm currently not only freelance but working from home. I'm contracted to supply 37.5hrs per week but no-one checks or monitors it. If I go the gym in the morning as I often do then I tend to start around 9.00-9.30ish and finish at 17.00-17.30ish. If I don't then I tend to start around 08.00ish and finish at 16.00ish. If I'm in the middle of something I will sometimes work longer and if I reach an obvious point to stop then I will do so. I don't tend to take long breaks lunchwise. This week is half-term so Mrs Q is home so we're eating together at lunch time but normally I go downstairs make myself something to eat and sit at the kitchen table before I come back to my office. Apart from usually Monday when I walk to the corner shop to stock up, my lunch break is rarely anymore than 20-30 mins.

Possibly because people are too scared to ask about their basic rights at interview thanks to a pervasive culture of bootlicking.

As someone who has sat on interview panels then someone whose only questions are 'how much holiday i there?' and 'how much time can I have off sick?' would get crossed off straightaway. They might as well be wearing a t-shirt with "I'm Not Really Interested in This Job" printed on it. The first question is OK as a follow-up question after several more relevant ones when the interviewer asks for any final questions. The second question is an absolute no-no since the obvious conclusion is that they are probably planning on taking that many sick days.

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

Varies from day to day, depending on what I’m doing. Sometimes I have to grab/eat whatever I can as I work, others I might get to eat at my desk, very occasionally I’ll actually get to leave the building and have a break.

 

[SpookyFrank]

The second question is an absolute no-no since the obvious conclusion is that they are probably planning on taking that many sick days.

Or their previous employer gave them shit for being legitimately off sick, as many employers will, and they're keen not to put themselves through that again.

And I bet you do something fucking pointless where it doesn't make any difference to anything if people are off sick or not anyway.

 

[Skim]

We have a rule at work that no one in the organisation can book a meeting between 1200-1300, so that everyone is guaranteed a lunch break if they want it. Hours are quite flexible, so sometimes I’ll just take half an hour when I want, or split two half-hours throughout the day depending on workload and energy levels. After years freelancing/private sector employments where I was never paid overtime, coming to the public sector and enjoying things like time off in lieu feels like a complete luxury.

 

[MickiQ]

Or their previous employer gave them shit for being legitimately off sick, as many employers will, and they're keen not to put themselves through that again.

And I bet you do something fucking pointless where it doesn't make any difference to anything if people are off sick or not anyway.

Funny thing with interviews Frank, the person being interviewed is the one who wants a job, the interviewers already have one. Making them think you're not interested in joining them not really a good idea no matter what your reason.
As to whether or what I do is pointless, well perhaps it is, perhaps it isn't. Doesn't bother me either way. I enjoy it, I'm good at it and I get paid very handsomely for it. Let those paying the bills decide whether it's worth doing, so far they seem to think it is.