US Federal Law does **NOT **require your employer to give you a lunch break. Cite. Any laws regarding this type of thing are handled on the state level, and not every state has laws requiring a meal break.
I’d like to point out that the important thing here is to figure out the following:
- your own needs and goals
- your supervisor’s/company’s requirements, both written and unwritten
- how those two things interact.
I’m coming at this from the perspective of a successful senior system administrator, but by my definition “successful” means taking a job where I might be only on the 50% percentile of salary range but I’m working for a company that believes in a 40-hour week for salaried types (and yes, I’m American, and yes, that 40-hour week except in case of emergency is in my apparently rare employment contract.) I’m senior enough that I report to the company president, who while the type of guy who’s currently walking around with his new baby in a sling for half the day, is also the type of guy who walks into your office and says “Why are you still here?” when it’s late in the day. Since I’ve been here, I’ve worked mostly 35-40 hour weeks, but then again, I’ve also come in on “the company is closed for Christmas holidays” break because that’s what a systems/network admin has to do sometimes to get core routing changes done without annoying other people in the building. =P
If your definition of “successful” is “makes mid-to-high six figures” or “has a fast-paced, challenging job that’s also your life”, then yeah, listen to msmith and Rand Rover–their attitudes and suggestions are absolutely correct for what I surmise they want out of life at this time. If it’s closer to mine, then find a company where you can work that way–admittedly, it’s not easy and it took me three jobs to get to here.
It actually isn’t that bad everywhere. My job is full of teh awesome and they actually don’t like it if you work during your breaks or after hours. I am here half an hour early every day because I allow for transportation issues in the morning to prevent me from being late, but other than that I am out the door at 5:01 and if I am still here at 5:03 my boss comes to shoo me away from my desk. To my employer it is more important that you have a happy balance between your work and your home life than that they squeeze ever penny worth of value out of you. Hell, today they are giving everyone and extra 15 minute break and had a massage therapist set up in the conference room to give massages to people during that extra 15 minutes, just because they want to make sure the environment is as low stress as possible. Not every company would do that, but then again not every person would want to work at a company that does that kind of thing either.
Exactly what I came in to say. Take your full hour and take it every day, if that’s what you need. If you start trimming that back, a precedent will be set and people will start assuming you will be at your desk all day. If you take your lunch every day, that just becomes what you do, and everyone will get used to it and it will be a non-issue.
Most people are forgetting here that the OP’s supervisors told him specifically he’s expected to work 8 hours with a one-hour lunch. Therefore there is no reason he shouldn’t abide by that. If his supervisor comments on his lunch break he can just tell them “I was told this when I was hired. Has the policy changed?” and see how they respond to that. If he were a bad worker and not getting things done, and he came in rushing in the door at 9 on the dot and ran screaming from his desk at 5:59 while some horrible deadline loomed and everyone was busting ass, then, yes, they might have an argument for him working through lunch to fulfill his obligations. But the OP sounds like he’s very conscientious, allowing extra time for transportation issues and thus often arriving early (if your bosses don’t appreciate that, they’re insane), and staying a few minutes late, presumably to wrap things up. As long as he keeps that up and gets all his work done and done well, and offers to help others if/when appropriate it seems to me that nobody will give a crap if he takes his full lunch hour. If they do, he should find a new job, because some other company would be thrilled to have an employee like him.
I’m still going to go back to the advice I gave in post 23.
Take your lunch. In very short order you will find out the truth of the matter. Which is either that everyone is afraid to do it because “everyone stays” and that might change if you actually take yours, or someone will clue you in to management attitude. At that point you know for sure what the story is.
Let’s not assume it’s a toxic workaholic hell until that’s actually proven. It might just be a den of fearful people who are afraid to take lunch because no one else does.
The thing you said which is key IMO is this: “During training at my current job I innocently asked if people ever ate lunch in the conference room; my supervisor looked at me strangely and said that she supposed it was theoretically possible, but since you’d have to keep answering the phone anyways, wouldn’t it make more sense to eat at your desk?”
If you are expected to cover the phones at your desk through the lunch hour then – surprise! you don’t get a lunch break. So there really isn’t much question as to whether or not you should take a lunch break: You don’t get one.
This of course conflicts with what you were told during training, which is that you get an hour for lunch. If you choose to make an issue of this – which you in fairness could do – IMO it should not be from the POV of whether you get to take lunch or not, but from the POV of simple compensation: You accepted the job at X salary based on a 40 hour work week, now you are give to understand from your manager that the work week is actually 45 hours plus. Which is correct? But I do NOT think you should simply unilaterally begin taking a lunch break, when no one else does and when your manager has indicated you don’t actually get one. At this point, it is by no means clear that you are even entitled to one, and simply absenting yourself from work for an hour every day, without permission, could land you in some serious trouble in short order. Thus, if you choose to pursue it, I think you must clarify the situation first.
But in this economy I would also suggest that you consider whether this is a battle you want to pick at this time. Does it make you look like a team player, a go-getter, a guy who’s invested in his job? No. It doesn’t. Now, other posters will no doubt weigh in on whether it should, and what you are entitled to, and what people should or should not conclude from your actions (especially if you get your work done anyway) – but none of that would mean shit in my particular field. People who tell you what you ought to do – be a rebel! claim your rights! fight the power! – without knowing your firm’s culture and what that might do to your job and your future – those people are not doing you any favors. People may be right that all it would take is for one person to start taking lunch and others would as well, but I question whether it’s smart for the new guy, the lowest man on the totem pole, to decide to be the one to change corporate culture.
Clarify the situation with your manager or with HR, if you feel you must. If it were me, I’d take 15 minute walks mid-morning and mid-afternoon, without saying anything or making a big deal of it, just slipping away from my desk. And I’d work through my lunch, like everybody else.
I find your characterization of **Rand Rover **and myself as “corporate drones” ignorant and offensive. I can look up your history as easily as you can look up mine. Let explain the difference between your type of job vs my type of job and people can decide which one of us is the “drone”. You’ve been doing clerical work in the accounting departments of various companies for the past 15 or so years, right? That’s what? Processing invoices, generating A/P or A/R reports or something of that nature?
What specialized skills or education are necessary to do your job? What is the career path? How long has your manager been in his position? What is the next step in his career? What does someone with 15 years in that role bring to the table that someone with 5 years can’t?
Now compare that job to an accounting major starting his career as a new Analyst I at Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers (the Big 4), or even second tier firms like BDO Seidman or Grant Thorton. Sure, the first few years are probably just at tedious and monotonous. Probably more so as the hours are much longer and the managers much more demanding. But let’s skip ahead 15 years. Over the next 15 years, that new hire is expected to get his CPA. Maybe get an MBA or some specialized certification like a CFE or a specialized masters. Every few years, they will probably be promoted. Analyst II, Associate, Manager, Senior Manager, eventually Partner. At each level their responsibility will increase. They will go from being a contributer to leading a team to leading an entire project to actually generating clients for the company. By the time they have been there 5-10 years, they are probably recognized as an expert in whatever it is they do. Oh yeah, and their salary tends to go up significantly along the way. If that’s important to you.
Even if they don’t want to stick around until they make Partner, having that experience opens a lot of doors. They might go work for a start up or start their own business. Or maybe they go manage the accounting department in a large company.
My example is specific to accounting, but it applies whether you want a career in law, graphic design, architecture, or pretty much anything.
Bottom line, Rodgers, is which one of us do you want to be in 15 years. Do you want to be featherlou finding another boring, repetetive job because he’s pissed off about his boss cutting into his 60 min break, or do you want to be me having lunch with a client at Smith & Wollensky in Manhattan?
Not much chance of that.
Your friend went to work at a law firm and is surprised they work long hours? Doesn’t sound very well thought out.
In this situation I don’t think trying to clarify the situation will actually help - they’ve given him two clear, different messages already, and I think they will continue to give him the two contradictory messages. A talk with his manager will probably go like this, “Do I get an hour for lunch?”
“Yes, of course.”
“But I need to take my break at my desk and continue to answer my phone?”
“Yes.”
“So is it a break or not?”
“Of course it’s a break.”
and round and round like that (a company that expects you to answer your phone during your lunch break is not a company that gets boundaries). It’s worth a try, I guess, but I wouldn’t expect much to come of it.
Also, the reason I suggest starting out like this is that it is different to do something at the start of a job while you’re still in your probationary period than it is later. During your probationary period, differences in work habits will be written off to not knowing the corporate culture yet. If you start something like that later on, when it’s obvious you know what’s going on, then it does look like you’re leading the revolt.
Personally, I’d rather be her, but that’s based on personality rather than career. But you do raise an excellent consideration for Rodgers, which is that some people cannot run with the dogs without becoming a dog: they drink the Kool-Aid of the corporate culture of arrogance, inflexibility, and conceit and the next thing you know they’ve sold their human kindness for a high salary and some Manhattan lunches. He might well want to think about whether he wants to be like you. More specifically, he might want to think about whether he can avoid becoming like you (at least, the “you” you present on these boards) and, if he can’t, what career change he’d like to make now.
AFAIK, the local law applies to hourly workers and he’s salaried. I can understand the pressure to stay at your desk for salaried people; here there’s some informal idea about comp time but really salaried people have to work as much as they need to to get the job done, with a minimum of the standard work week.
I don’t see what you’re basing that on. Yes, they’ve given him two contradictory messages; that’s why he needs to ask “which is it?” Let him come back and tell us he couldn’t get a straight answer, but unless you know more about the guy and where he works than I do, it seems premature to say that even asking for clarification would be useless.
BTW, I would never ask, "“But I need to take my break at my desk and continue to answer my phone?” since that itself implied that it is possible to both (a) take a break and (b) continue to answer phones. It obviously is not. The question is, “Do I get a break, or not?” If the answer is “yes,” then what happens to the phones on break is pretty irrelevant.
Ha! I agree with Jodi. I knwo exactly what I want and I’ve got it. I work a 9 to 5 job and take a lunch hour. I don’t make a lot of money but I don’t need a lot of money. I have a lot of leisure time and yet I am highly valued in my company.
Decide where you want to be in twenty years. mssmith’s life sounds like one version of hell to me, but it seems he likes it very much. I don’t want to be living in Manhattan, I don’t want to be responsible for a gazillion things. I want to live my life. Work is necessary - I have to do it to make my salary. I enjoy my job and my surroundings and that’s enough for me.
What do you want? I have my opinions on the rat race and others have theirs.
My apologies for calling you a corporate drone if you find that offensive. It was not my intent to insult you, but to give the OP a bit of a heads-up as to where your and Rand Rover’s attitudes were coming from. My background for giving the advice I’m giving is someone who is trying to get as much out of the system as I can with as little sacrifice from me as possible, and by my standards, I’m doing very well. I have what I need from my corporate jobs, I make enough* money doing that, and I give them very little of me in return, and that works for me. Your standards are obviously different.
Rodgers01 will have to make that decision for himself, too - does he want to go full bore and climb the ladder, with all the sacrifices that entails, or does he want a comfortable job that has him home at dinnertime every night, with minimal stress and responsibility? I’m the person who works five hours and goes home, and doesn’t think about work until I’m there the next day. My supervisor is the one who is in charge of running the company’s accounting department, and stays until the deadlines are met. I wouldn’t take her job for the world.
*“Enough money” is a key concept for Rodgers’ decision - people in the big leagues tend to only have a concept of “more money” - if you decide on the smaller career, you will do well to figure out what “enough” means to you.
Oh come on. Taking your (deserved and scheduled) lunch break does not preclude you from any of that. He was told when he was hired that he gets an hour for lunch.
I work as a consultant in an environment similar to what you describe above. It’s high pressure, and you do have to put in long hours sometimes - especially if you want to move up. But I have never seen nor heard of anyone getting labeled as a slacker or dead-ender because they actually took a lunch break. Sure, there are days when you get swamped and just don’t have time to leave for lunch but it’s not an everyday thing and it’s certainly not expected that you work through lunch in order to get ahead. In fact, if someone works through lunch every single day then it’s assumed they can’t/aren’t managing their time well and don’t have what it takes to get things done in a reasonable fashion.
This is one of those situations where everyone is correct to some degree, and wrong to some degree.
Federal labor law is quite clear that certain types of employees are required to have a break after a certain period of time working. If your job falls into that category I’d question whether or not I’d want to work for an employer who ignores such laws. However - certain other types of employee are NOT guaranteed a break. You, as an employee, need to know what type of job you currently have.
This generated much confusion at my last corporate employer. Several managers had to be disciplined because they attempted to force hourly workers to go without any break whatsoever “because that’s what I do”. Sorry, the law says those people had to take a break - and answering the phones was NOT a break according to the Legal department. That category of people took staggered lunches so the management/executives would continue to receive uninterrupted support (those jobs being the sort that did not require specialized skills) but those people took breaks. Even if they didn’t want to. The company was extremely strict about this because they did not want the legal problems that came with violating the law.
On the flip side - the managers, and to a greater degree, the executives, received MUCH more compensation than the hourly workers. This was in return for much greater commitment, time, and effort.
One is not superior to the other as human beings. A large company needs both sorts of employees. While the hourly folks don’t receive as much money and benefits they also have more time to devote to non-work activities, some of which, such as child-rearing, elder care, and volunteer work such as tutoring students (one could easily expand this list) are important to society at large. Not everyone wants to be an executive or wants to be the boss. That’s OK. But at some point you need to decide which track you’ll be on and you’ll need to accept some consequences from the route you take.
Another area where mandated breaks become important is in manual labor or factory work, where people really do need to rest and refuel for maximum efficiency. Management at such companies, however, may not habitually take breaks because the nature of their work is quite different.
One must look at the job, the industry, and the company then decide what you, personally, want and/or can live with. When I go to work for an employer I want the job responsibilities to be clear and told to me before I take the offer, I don’t want the company bigwigs say one thing and do another because that is dishonest and I prefer not to work for dishonest people. I have taken jobs where part of my job is to make coffee (although I don’t drink it myself) or feed the cat or do other things not normally considered part of that sort of job because such items were disclosed in the job interview and not as after-hire surprises. I also refuse to do things that are illegal or violate company policies. Any employer who can’t value an employee of that sort is not an employer I’d want to work for.
Amen and amen. Get the bone-in fillet and a glass of Macallan 18.
Let me say, respectfully, that mileage varies widely. We don’t know the situation for the OP’er, but while you may never have heard of anyone being labelled a slacker for leaving while everyone else stays, I certainly have. In my field – law – if you were a young up-and-coming lawyer and that was the firm culture, you’d be a fool to deviate from it that much. That’s not to say you can’t be a lawyer and have a decent personal life with reasonable hours and daily lunches, but that’s not the MO for young associates with high billable hours.
If you are on hourly and don’t clock out for lunch, won’t you be making overtime? Or do the others clock out for lunch and sit back down at their desks with their sandwich?
My honest opinion…
If no one else does and you work in the same capacity…don’t go out to lunch. You said yourself you want to get ahead at this place and the way to do that is to make the best possible impression. You can’t do that by being the only one that is gone an hour each day in the middle of the day. You being missing will be noticed.
Your friends and family are giving you great advice is you plan to be a clerk or some other entry level job all your life.
You can clarify all you want with management and they will probably tell you that you are entitled to leave. But if we are talking about making a good impression…don’t. Do as the others do.
Fair? Of course not but when in Rome…
Also, you should probably read Atlas Shrugged again (I’ll go ahead and assume you’ve already read it).
Or take a whole lunch break and drink shitty whisky. Your call.
Remember, you won’t notice if the liquor is any good after the first couple, anyway.