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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

#51

Post by treehau5 »

untog wrote: post #25
treehau5 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 -- despite the intense crisis and austerity measures, the country still values its lunch and coffee breaks Right, and their economy is in free fall. I'm not saying you can't do it, but that cost to doing it is ever-increasing.

Actually the free fall has seemed to have slowed, and bottomed out.

It's just a different cultural value -- not every culture values the green dollar as much as America or the UK or likewise. Is it the best for your GDP? Probably not, but it's honorable. "Cash is King" is not something you hear many Greeks say about one another

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

#52

Post by klibertp »

treehau5 wrote: post #43
klibertp wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> I would love to hear from a Greek on this. I am Greek

Great! If you don't mind me asking, what do you think about the crisis - the reasons for it and the proposed and implemented coping strategies - your country has fallen into?

You seem to suggest that the Greek work ethic is, in part, responsible for the crisis - if so, when that ethic became commonplace? And how come it formed in the first place? And why didn't it disappear naturally?

I'm asking this, because in my country - a post-Soviet one, after 50 years of nominally communist policy - we used to also have little to no respect for work. But that was because there was little correlation between your work and the money it got you. Once we started getting all capitalist in the 90's that started to change and by today most of the society understands that if you want more money you need to work harder.

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

#53

Post by RBerenguel »

gcb0 wrote: post #32
natzar wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As mentioned elsewhere, though, it's not a 3h break, but 3 hours closed to the public. Usually 1-2 of those hours is back office, maintenance, inventory, accounting, etc (well, for banks I'm not sure, but for independent shops that's definitely the case, usually at least)

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

#55

Post by dejv »

gambiting wrote: post #38
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.

This schedule is quite common in more industrial/medical areas. Even if you are not directly working in factory settings you might be required to punch in at 6am, quite a lot of my friend working in automation/aerospace engineering have to be in office at this time. My exgf really like this schedule as she can have most of the day for herself and still be able to do a lot of things outside of her work.

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

#56

Post by gadders »

I remember going to work in the small Madrid office of a private large bank in 20 or so years ago.

Being keen, I turned up at 8.30am and then waited for an hour for someone to arrive. The office was then closed and everyone turfed out from 12pm-2pm, but the working day didn't finish until around 7pm.

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

#57

Post by harperlee »

jorgemf wrote: post #21

This is a non-sense of article as other spaniards have commented. The only companies that close 3 hours in the middle of the day are the shops, usually small shops. They do it because for long part of the year no one goes to the street from 2pm to 5pm, because it is so fucking hot. So instead, our culture close the shops at those times but keep them opens until 9pm or later. It is very common to see shops full of peo…

I don't want to start the most alien flamewar in the history of HN, but if we start listing what does not go into paella we might end up with an mpty paella...

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

#58

Post by jorgemf »

harperlee wrote: post #57
jorgemf wrote: post #21

This is a non-sense of article as other spaniards have commented. The only companies that close 3 hours in the middle of the day are the shops, usually small shops. They do it because for long part of the year no one goes to the street from 2pm to 5pm, because it is so fucking hot. So instead, our culture close the shops at those times but keep them opens until 9pm or later. It is very common to see shops full of peo…

I don't want to start the most alien flamewar in the history of HN, but if we start listing what does not go into paella we might end up with an mpty paella...

It was a joke, there were a flamewar because of someone putting chorizo in the paella: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/04/jamie-oliver-ange...

The response in twitter was very funny

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

#59

Post by Sleeep »

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've worked 9-5 (always flexible hours) my entire career which spans more than one decade and four employers.

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

#60

Post by mdekkers »

mcjiggerlog wrote: post #46
icebraining wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm in Madrid. Independent shops are usually 0930-1400 and 1700-2030/2100. Chains are open about 0900-2100.

I'm near barcelona - same
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