According to the 2006 Eurest Lunchtime Report, only two-thirds of male and one-half of female workers take a lunch break every day. Furthermore, the average lunch break is a miserable 28 minutes long, with workers citing “business” as the primary reason for a shorter or skipped lunch.
How many of us have a job so important that it warrants a lackluster lunch break?
Everyone loves to eat. And despite the popularity of processed food, I believe that everyone loves to eat good food. Yet modern society makes us feel like we’re too busy to prepare a proper meal and enjoy it in a relaxed fashion. You can see the result at lunchtime in the City of London: throngs of office workers pack into their local Pret a Manger for a quick and easy sandwich-in-a-box and bag of crisps to take back to their office and eat at their desks while staring at a computer screen.
If slavery is the condition of being subject or addicted to a specified influence, then the death of the lunch break is a frightening signal that we are becoming slaves to our jobs.
If we must work, then let’s take back the lunch break. Let’s take the full hour. Let’s eat real food. And for goodness sake, let’s not look at a computer screen while we eat it.
More food for thought:
London Lunch-Hour Photography Pool on Flickr
The Death of Lunch - the picture and caption from The World of Kafka pretty much sums it up
Lunch Hour ideas from New York Magazine
No such thing as free for lunch: Workers do plenty at midday, except take a meal break - via The Boston Globe
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