A boss has been slammed after imposing a ‘bizarre’ lunch break rule on his employees – but many think it is ‘fair’ and ‘reasonable’.
British career expert Ben Askins shared text messages between an employee and his boss about a lunch misstep.
‘Where are you? Why aren’t you at your desk?’ the boss asked.
The employee was concerned and said, “I’m going to have lunch, what’s going on?”
“Lunch is from 12 to 1 o’clock,” the boss said. ‘It’s almost ten past and I need to talk to you about this [document] you sent.”
The employee explained: ‘It was a busy morning and I couldn’t leave until around half past eleven. I’m on my way to the office now and will be back in a few minutes.’
“Okay, I know you’re new here, but the reason we have regular lunch times is so we can reach each other quickly when we need each other,” the boss wrote back.
Mr Askins said: ‘A fixed lunch time is pathetic. You are not children. Just say you can have lunch for an hour, take it whenever you want.’
A boss has been slammed after imposing a ‘bizarre’ lunch break rule on his employees
He added: ‘Most people will have it around 12 to 1 o’clock, but it doesn’t matter if you have to work late and have to take it a little later.
‘Otherwise people just stop doing the things they are already doing.
“You’re going to damage your business in the long run if you make these childish rules.”
The employee apologized for not being aware of the rule and promised to get back to him soon.
While the boss said it was “all good,” he asked the employee to “make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
‘Gotcha, it will happen. Will you still need my help when I get back?’ the employee asked, to which the boss replied, “No, don’t worry, I already figured it out.”
Mr Askins also said it was ‘annoying’ that the duo had to go through ‘all that’ just for the boss to claim he had discovered the problem himself.
Many sided with the boss.
‘It’s not sad, it’s necessary. If there is no set lunch, people can come and go as they please. Needing structure is a must in any functioning business,” said one.
“I’ve never worked anywhere that didn’t have a set lunch time,” another revealed.
“I thought the manager was understanding and fair,” said a third.
But a few others criticized the “unreasonable” policy.
‘I had a fixed lunch in a call center with twelve-hour shifts. “I got in trouble for starting my break late, so I started hanging up on customers on time and that got me in trouble,” one man said.
‘A set lunch only works if the tasks have a guaranteed length, so you can be sure you don’t have to start them too close to lunch – or can be interrupted and resumed. Factories can do that, but office jobs often cannot,” one worker noted.
Another said: ‘Why do some managers act like the world is ending if a task isn’t done immediately?’