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Say Goodbye to Spain's Three-Hour Lunch Break

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

#31

Post by pimeys »

sotojuan wrote: post #17
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.

> 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.

Because the deal for us engineers is that there's not enough of talent and companies fight for people. We're doing the same you described in your post, except the business/marketing have short lunches and work late. There's many people waiting to take their place, where you must spend great effort to hire a good engineer.

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

#32

Post by gcb0 »

natzar wrote: post #30
gcb0 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

from someone who lived briefly in madrid: offices take up to 2h lunch. smaller shops and commerce takes around 3. workday can go up to 8pm, like most offices around the world and nobody expects extra paid hours. now, that was changing at the time. big stores, mostly H&M/zara/forever21 style of chinese fashion dump, are open from 9 to 9 like in the US. big international brands of super markets too. thats was causing l…

smaller shops and commerce takes around 3 ¿? In spain no one have more than 1hour for lunch.. The only ones that could fit in that description are cookers or restaurants staff, working in 2 parts. (12:00 - 16:00) and (20:00 - 23:00). Im from spain btw.

thats was almost a decade ago, but in downtown madrid I couldnt find any local clothier or bank (other than hsbc) that was open during those ~3H. dont remember about other type of places.

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

#34

Post by kgwgk »

mcjiggerlog wrote: post #11

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 s…

> Literally nobody here takes 3 hour lunch breaks. [...] Small shops do close for 3 hours in the middle of the day

Doesn't anybody work in those small shops?

> There's a mid-morning and late-afternoon snack

The mid-morning snack is not generalised and the late-afternoon snack is mostly for kids (after-school "merienda").

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

#35

Post by icebraining »

mcjiggerlog wrote: post #11

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 s…

Open 'till 9pm? Where? Every time I'm in Spain (mostly in Galiza) it seems like the stores still close at 7-8pm, despite only opening at around 4:30pm.

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

#36

Post by franciscop »

I am sorry but this is totally backwards. As a Valencian Spaniard I want to set the record straight.

First, siesta is not dead. However, it is considered mostly a holiday luxury or reserved for small shops. It is normal in the extremely hot summer, after lunch we stop for 1h or so. While I do not do siesta, I would say about half+ of the people I know do it (holiday times). I would also say it is highly coupled with the summer heat wave though, in winter not so many people do it.

Then, late lunch. First off, Spain is actually in the "wrong" time zone. We are at the same longitude as UK but it's 1 hour later here. What this means in practical terms is that when it's 2pm here, it is in 1pm relative to the light-time/circadian clock.

However that still does not totally explain the really late lunches. The main reason for that is that we have "almuerzo" at around ~11am (note: the word "almuerzo" in some zones in Spain is "lunch", and in some others it's a mid-morning snack, or second breakfast as I like to call it. I mean here the mid-morning snack). It depends on the job, on the person and on many things, but it's not uncommon that it consists of a mid-sized sandwich of Spanish bread. This [random] image is a quite accurate picture of the places where almuerzo is had and on the type of almuerzo we eat: http://cdn.traveler.es/uploads/images/thumbs/es/trav/2/s/201...

So as you can see, we have a different, important course around 10:30-11:30 that makes us not remain hungry until lunch. Some people prefer lighter snacks of course. Also, breakfast is normally light as we don't have to worry about hunger since we have our almuerzo later on. Normally you'd combine breakfast and almuerzo; if you have too much breakfast then you have a light almuerzo or nothing at all, and the same otherwise.

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

#37

Post by professorTuring »

kgwgk wrote: post #34
mcjiggerlog wrote: post #11

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 s…

> Literally nobody here takes 3 hour lunch breaks. [...] Small shops do close for 3 hours in the middle of the day Doesn't anybody work in those small shops? > There's a mid-morning and late-afternoon snack The mid-morning snack is not generalised and the late-afternoon snack is mostly for kids (after-school "merienda").

Yes, but they don't take 3 hours to have lunch. Also closed to the public doesn't mean not working (back-office!).

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

#38

Post by gambiting »

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 briefly worked at a company which started at 6am(which meant getting up around 5am). We had "lunch" at 9:30 for 15 minutes, and would finish work at 2pm. I'd be home by 3pm, have dinner at 4pm and be in bed by ~8pm. Weirdly enough, most employees liked that schedule because it meant they were finishing work roughly the same time their kids were finishing school.

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

#39

Post by skj »

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…

I'm a SWE at Google. I get in at 8, leave at 3:50, maybe do a bit of work on the bus home.

My schedule has caused no one any problems.

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

#40

Post by klibertp »

treehau5 wrote: post #9
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…

> Globalisation makes it inevitable, of course, I would push back on this thinking that Globalization itself is inevitable. We have seen the reaction to this thinking in recent years -- you end up with Trumps, and Mays, and (almost) Le Pen's. Greeks are a prime example -- despite the intense crisis and austerity measures, the country still values its lunch and coffee breaks, despite how much we here in the west criti…

> Greeks are a prime example

I would love to hear from a Greek on this.

It's admittedly a very biased source, but I was following mr. Varoufakis writing/interviews back when the negotiations were being held and my understanding is that the "intense crisis" is, at this point and with the policies in place, mathematically impossible to fix (with really dire results for the country and people). If that's true then I can definitely understand the Greeks wanting to at least have their coffee breaks...

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