Dangerosa, that’s a real problem you encounter all the time. The hesitation to deliver bad news. You just have to constantly reinforce that bad news is bad news and you don’t shoot the messenger, but delayed bad news is worthy of dismissal.
It ranges from the mundane like a taxi driver claiming they “aren’t lost” to the burned down factory you’re nightmaring about.
I work for a large aerospace manufacuring company as an hourly union represented employee. Lunch time safety meetings is one of the new tricks that have been thrown at us lately. It is one of the ways management is trying to improve productivity. My supervisor has tried it a couple of times, 6 showed up the first time and 3 the second. We do not get paid for lunch so I will not attend. They have also started scheduling training and certification classes that run before or after a persons shift. A couple of greviences of been filed by the union so it is wait a see time to find out if they can get away with it.
I always take my lunch hour. I take my breaks too; twenty minutes in the morning and twenty in the afternoon. Don’t let them do this to you.
Organize evenone in your office to insist that the lunch hours belong to you, not the company.
Thats “everyone”
Of course, if you take galen’s advice, you are limiting your upward mobility in the company. And you are painting a big target on yourself when you boss has to pick someone to lay off. “Pick me, I’m the one who agitates, and isn’t willing to work through my breaks, even when we are in a crunch.”
It depends what is more important to you, promotion opportunities and job stability or lunch.
(BTW, lunch is a perfectly acceptable answer.)
There is a major difference in being hourly or salaried here. In racer’s case, I wouldn’t be an hourly union employee not getting paid for safety meetings either. But as a salaried employee, its part and parcel of the package (along with leaving a little early today to take care of some personal stuff, on occation)
Maybe that’s the problem at our hospital. The people setting up these meetings are always salaried, but most of the people who are required to attend aren’t. So maybe they are just use to it, or they don’t care. How much bitchin’ are interns going to do anyway?
It’s give and take at our place. Good employees are treated extremely well, to the point of being given paid days off to move, see their lawyer, go to the doctor, sick time, etc etc. They are regularly treated to lunch, dinner, beer in the office on a slow Friday afternoon, unlimited personal phone calls, umlimited internet access, etc etc. One of our salaried guys gets a company vehicle, tax free, just because he’s that good.
All they have to do is make sure the work gets done and they do. People who can’t or won’t pull their weight don’t last. It really does pay to treat people well, as if there was any doubt 
Since I usually eat at my desk, I often have impromptu meetings with my boss or co-workers during lunch. If we need to have a scheduled meeting during lunch, then my boss will take us out to a decent restaurant and pick up the tab. I take a real lunch break about once a month.
That sounds pretty bogus. The whole point of lunch, as everyone knows, is to take a break from work…not simply to consume food. It sounds like whoever is in charge of these meetings is conveniently taking the meaning of the word literally.
However, this is just me. Lunch is my friggin’ sacred cow.