I agree it is BS. but there are alot of offices where that is the view. “You are not a team player” is the normal statement.
When I worked for a department store engineering crew we would get calls all the time. Me I usually never answered until after lunch. One year in negoations we asked for paid lunch period because of this. The company refused, the head of personal statement was along the lines "If you clock out for lunch and they call you because someone is trapped in an elevator we were to tell them when our lunch would be over and stay on lunch.
And yes she did back us on this statement. One day a store manager started paging me just as I started to eat my lunch. His office manager called the lunch room asking for me. I told the person answering the phone I was at lulnch and would be in as soon as I clocked back in. When I got to his office he was screamming and yelling at me and he was going to call the department head to complain. My response was JH was at the Hillsdale store and his extension is 6666, and I need to get back to work now. He was dialing when I walked out of his office. I heard that when JH got the call his responce was “good, that means that I will not have to give him a write up”.
Me I normally take my breaks and my full lunch. I work better if I do. Now we will take calls on our lunch, because if we do not then we will have to stager our lunches.
Or have an intimate spaghetti dinner with your SO and teach your kids to play baseball.
That’s not what everyone wants. Some people measure their own happiness and success by the important people they had dinner with and the exclusive places they’ve been. Some don’t. There’s nothing wrong with wanting either one as long as you don’t assume that your way is the only legitimate way.
Myself, I take an hour for lunch and two 15-minute breaks, I spend my money and my time on my hobbies, and I relax a few times a year with some friends to taste different varieties of scotch or rare and delightful foods. I have a grand old time. It was a pleasant epiphany when I realized that the people who live the high life aren’t actually having any more fun than I am on any given weekend. They may wear Armani and I may wear blue jeans, but I wake up every morning content that I am where I want to be.
Rodgers01, this varies greatly by company. msmith537’s (or Rand Rover’s) attitude would not get them anywhere where I work. Google is an excellent counterexample – you can beat your employees into being productive, but you can also “nice” people into being productive employees. So, in short, their advice is to be taken with a grain of salt. You do -not- have to suffer to get a high salary and a high position…
Just get close enough to a co-worker and figure out what’s up. See if they’re surfing the web during lunch hour. Then decide for yourself if you would be bucking anything by taking lunch hour, and decide if it’s worth it. Although, it sounds like to me you’re working for a mom & pop place – in my limited experience, these are universally crappy and micromanagey.
Good for your friend. Before we got the word that our lunches were not to be interupted I had a better solution. I was entitled to a complete half hour lunch. If I got pulled away I still had a half hour lunch coming.
If I understand you correctly, Snnipe, your job entails being on call for things that truly are emergencies (like people being stuck in elevators). In situations like that, it is pretty much universally understood that lunch breaks will be staggered so coverage is not interrupted. I’m not sure why your company seems to be having such a hard time with that concept. If I’m stuck in an elevator and the response I get is that everyone is at lunch, and they’ll see about getting me out in an hour, the fallout from this wouldn’t end for months.
ETA: I see this is a former job. It still doesn’t make much sense to me.
There is a differance between being salaried and exempted.
An exempt employee is not covered under most state labor laws and not under the NLRB. A non-exempt employee is covered.
Calling a employee salaried do not mean that he is exempt. Normally to be exempt you have to be a supervisor with higher fire authority.
As a non-exempt employee you are entitled to OT after 40 hours of work. If you are required to answer phones during your lunch, you are being required to work. So if you day is 8 to 5 including a working lunch you are working 9 hours a day. If you work 5 days a week that is 45, or 5 hours a week.
You owe your company an honest days work for an honest days pay. Being required to work free is not an honest days pay.
Now the part you were talking about was a consulting firm. I will only agree with you if you had laid out to your employees that you expect them to work through lunch and put in overtime.
The OP was told during his training he gets an hour for lunch. You don’t say that to an employee while “meaning” something else. It’s deceitful, and gives managers a companies a very bad name when they tell you one thing, but expect something else.
Have you ever told an employee you get ‘x’ hours for lunch, and then judge them for taking it? If so, that is a horrible thing to do to someone. If you expect it, you’d better state it up front so low men on the pole don’t have to figure out what his managers passive aggressiveness is all about.
It is former because they were bought out and I was not made a good enough offer. We were spread thin so most of the time there was only one person at a store. And the emergency call were not often. I was suprised by the head of personals responce. I went to work in a hotel and our lunch was inclusive of our work day. When at lunch if I got a customer call I put the fork down made sure I had finished chewing before I got to the customers room. Now in the high rise 3 man crew, we answer the feew calls that come in because if we do not then we will have to stager lunches.
Oh, and there are managers like msmith, and there are other types of managers too. The “Bobs” from office space come to mind. Fictional, yes. Does that type exist as a manager anyway, yes. So if you get a manager that doesn’t stress you out and will let you work to your maximum, but also respects that you get time to smell the flowers and take your lunch, you can still get far. Sometimes it’s not about hours worked, but using your skills to just get the job done quickly. Nothing wrong with that and mangers will notice that too, and it’s a plus with the right manager.
If the crew was in a store it was because they were necessary to work as a team. If one were to leave for lunch the work would slow down and in many cases stop so stagered lunches was not an option.
Thanks again to everyone. I’m going to have to bookmark this thread and read it through several times to mull over all the accumulated advice. My immediate reaction, I guess, is to keep doing what I’m doing – ie, sometimes taking a lunch break, sometimes working, do the best job I can regardless, and to keep my eyes and ears open for reactions from my coworkers (and also try to notice whether they’re surfing the web while they’re eating, or if they are still actually working). Then try to solidify my position in the company and weather out the recession. Thanks.
No, I actually haven’t. It’s on my list (though it’s a very long list). What’s the connection?
The “Bobs” were not managers, they were management consultants. And that is pretty much exactly what we do. We go into companies and talk to different people to understand how things work there. Then we give them recommendations for doing things better.
So let me use that kind of job as a perfect example. As a management consulting manager, my job would consist of flying out to some location with a team to help a company with a particular business problem. It could be a chemical company in Philly, an airline in Seattle, a financial services company in New York or a shipping company in Amsterdam. I’m only out there for a particular amount of time, so I might have to work late to complete tasks. Or I might spend my day talking to the 9 to 5s before they go home so I won’t get to writing up my reports until that night. Or I might have a dinner with the clients and the partner on the project to build the relationship. That’s part of the job and people understand that when they accept it.
So what happens if I have an employee who doesn’t want to travel? Or says “I need to go home at 5:00”? Ultimately I may have to tell them that they should find a career that is more in line with their lifestyle.
I generally try to be honest with them. It does me no good to have an employee who resents being there and then quits in a month because I am asking him to do something he never agreed to.
One of the challenges for any managers (especially in consulting firms) is keeping your employees motivated to go above and beyond while helping to maintain their work/life balance. A lot of managers fail to do that and simply focus on completing tasks at any cost.
It’s by author and founder of the philosophy of Objectivism Ayn Rand. I’ve never read it, however I believe it reflects her general philosophy. As it applies to this thread, basically it’s that no one owes you a living or a promotion. It is up to you to demonstrate to that you are deserving of them through hard work.
No thanks. Once was more than enough. (God, that was painful)
I only got chewed out for taking a break (fifteen minutes!) once-last month, when the computers went down, and we had to do everything by hand. When I ate my lunch, I took just an extra few minutes to sit and just let myself sort catch my breath, if that makes sense. My boss told me, “Well, it was your choice-but everyone else just at and came back.”
But most of the time, we do get our lunch breaks. I’ve eaten at my desk before, but in my case, I care more about getting something to eat than I do about a break. If I don’t eat, I can’t focus, and I get really cranky (without meaning to).
Sooooo…good luck with the bosses, Rodgers01. I would talk to them specifically. It might be that you don’t actually have to work, but you just have to be available in case you’re needed?
