Say Goodbye to Spain's Three-Hour Lunch Break • Hacker News Board

Re: Say Goodbye to Spain's Three-Hour Lunch Break

#11

Post by mcjiggerlog » Thu, Jul 20, 2017, 2:22 PM UTC

Literally nobody here takes 3 hour lunch breaks. A lot of offices have 2 hours, yeah, but this is becoming less and less common regardless. Small shops do close for 3 hours in the middle of the day, but they are open till about 9pm which is a lot more useful than being open in the middle of the day. It also should be noted that there are actually 5 meals in a spaniard's day. There's a mid-morning and late-afternoon snack, which is the actual reason for the "late" lunch and dinners.

Also, all changing the timezone would do is give us useless light early in the morning and less light in the evening to go out and play sports, hang out in the park etc. People would still eat at the same time regardless. It gets dark at 6pm in the winter and 10pm in the summer. It's not exactly crazy.

Re: Say Goodbye to Spain's Three-Hour Lunch Break

#12

Post by professorTuring » Thu, Jul 20, 2017, 2:27 PM UTC

I'm from Spain and this article does not represent Spain. Let me expand on this.

The typical workday in Spain (no matter if you are a worker or in an office) goes from 7:00/9:00 to 15:00/18:00. This is usually a 8 hours work day (a lot of unpaid extra hours are quite typical in any IT job).

Usually there are two stops before lucnh, one at the beginning of the day, usually 15 minutes to have a coffee with coworkers and another one of 15-20 minutes at midday (11:00/12:00) to have a piece of fruit or just another coffee.

At lunch there are two options, the ones that leave job at 15:00 usually eat at 15:30 - 16:00 (quite late but quite common), the rest takes an hour to have lunch (usually two dishes and dessert [a bit too much I admit]) and they are allowed to leave normally when they make 8 hours at work.

There are a lot of flexibility if you are not public facing so you can play a bit with the arriving/living time (usually you are allowed to arrive up to 10:00 in the morning).

Only people who lives really close to home (up to 10/15 minutes) goes there to have lunch with their family and they usually also take a power nap of 15 minutes more or less.

Spanish siesta is for Fridays and holidays.

Re: Say Goodbye to Spain's Three-Hour Lunch Break

#13

Post by LluisGerard » Thu, Jul 20, 2017, 2:27 PM UTC

santialbo wrote: post #7

Just a note: These working hours happen just in retail.

I moved to the UK but I still know many friends from Spain that work from 9am-1pm -> lunch break -> 3pm-7pm. Which means that in reality they can end up leaving the office at 7:30pm. By the other hand I worked for the Catalan TV for many years and they had very flexible hours and I could leave by 5pm, but it's not that usual in my experience (and that was 12 years ago).

Re: Say Goodbye to Spain's Three-Hour Lunch Break

#14

Post by readhn » Thu, Jul 20, 2017, 2:28 PM UTC

In the startup arena im in (USA) folks often work 8-9am till 7-8pm with half hour to hour MAX lunches.

No one complains, people just burnout and move on in 1-2-3 years. No one gets overtime. It would be nice to have an open discussion with HR or whoever but its a sensitive topic, in this culture you are not "allowed" to tell how much you actually work...

I guess its a "dirty little secret" but 9-5 does not exist anymore (honestly probably never did, at least in my field).

Re: Say Goodbye to Spain's Three-Hour Lunch Break

#15

Post by RBerenguel » Thu, Jul 20, 2017, 2:29 PM UTC

Kiro wrote: post #8

santialbo wrote: post #7

Just a note: These working hours happen just in retail.

Incorrect.

They don't happen in industrial settings (my father worked at a factory, he had a ~ 1h break). They don't happen in computer related stuff (I've seen 1h being the norm, 2h being frowned upon, and usually, you don't have a specific break and are just supposed to somehow arrive, work, eat and leave while working a reasonable amount of the time). They don't even happen in research, when I was teaching at a university our normal break was around 1h, 1h30 if we had a coffee meeting to discuss some topic afterwards.

Re: Say Goodbye to Spain's Three-Hour Lunch Break

#16

Post by scruti » Thu, Jul 20, 2017, 2:31 PM UTC

I lost the count of times that I had to explain here in UK than we Spaniards don't go home to take a nap every day at lunch time.

Nowadays this 3 hours break mainly affect the small shops instead of offices/big companies.

And, being honest, was quite useful since shops closing at 8 pm allow people doing their shopping chores when leaving the office/school/uni...

Edit: My English... U_U'

Re: Say Goodbye to Spain's Three-Hour Lunch Break

#17

Post by sotojuan » Thu, Jul 20, 2017, 2:33 PM UTC

readhn wrote: post #14

In the startup arena im in (USA) folks often work 8-9am till 7-8pm with half hour to hour MAX lunches. No one complains, people just burnout and move on in 1-2-3 years. No one gets overtime. It would be nice to have an open discussion with HR or whoever but its a sensitive topic, in this culture you are not "allowed" to tell how much you actually work... I guess its a "dirty little secret" but 9-5 does not exist anym…

Different companies have different cultures. The Incredibly, some people (mostly business/marketing, not engineering!) still make themselves work through lunch and stay later. No idea why, but I and others are able to leave after 8 hours so it doesn't affect me.

"9-5" may be rare, but it exists.

Re: Say Goodbye to Spain's Three-Hour Lunch Break

#18

Post by ashark » Thu, Jul 20, 2017, 2:33 PM UTC

untog wrote: post #3

Hardly surprising, and probably positive for many Spaniards, but it still makes me a little sad that every country is converging on a very similar way of working. Globalisation makes it inevitable, of course, but does Monday-Friday, 9-5 really make sense? Why not 8-6 Monday-Thursday with a three day weekend? We developers are often lucky that we can dictate our own hours and experiment with this, but I'd be fascinate…

I think a good goal would be shooting for a number of work hours that leave enough time to have another non-work thing you do even more of without having to sacrifice family and friends and every single other minor hobby or activity.

Re: Say Goodbye to Spain's Three-Hour Lunch Break

#19

Post by fhood » Thu, Jul 20, 2017, 2:37 PM UTC

professorTuring wrote: post #12

I'm from Spain and this article does not represent Spain. Let me expand on this. The typical workday in Spain (no matter if you are a worker or in an office) goes from 7:00/9:00 to 15:00/18:00. This is usually a 8 hours work day (a lot of unpaid extra hours are quite typical in any IT job). Usually there are two stops before lucnh, one at the beginning of the day, usually 15 minutes to have a coffee with coworkers an…

Out of curiosity, is it possible that tech jobs follow a more global schedule than more local/traditional professions?

Re: Say Goodbye to Spain's Three-Hour Lunch Break

#20

Post by euyyn » Thu, Jul 20, 2017, 2:38 PM UTC

LluisGerard wrote: post #13

santialbo wrote: post #7

Just a note: These working hours happen just in retail.

I moved to the UK but I still know many friends from Spain that work from 9am-1pm -> lunch break -> 3pm-7pm. Which means that in reality they can end up leaving the office at 7:30pm. By the other hand I worked for the Catalan TV for many years and they had very flexible hours and I could leave by 5pm, but it's not that usual in my experience (and that was 12 years ago).

Yeah, 2h break from 1pm to 3pm is the most I've seen.