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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

#131

Post by anigbrowl »

davidw wrote: post #78
mrkrabo wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spaniard; can confirm. 3 hour breaks are simply mandatory for small shops. In the south of the country during summer there is literally no way you can go out until... 19 or so if you don't want to die. So if shops closed then, there would be no business.

Small shops manage to operate in, say, Arizona during those hours. That said, I think Spain's hours are a more natural adaptation to the climate than Arizona's.

Yes, but at the cost of running crazy air conditioning. The only time I visited Phoenix I arrived near lunchtime and was baffled to be wandering around a seemingly modern city where the streets were entirely free of people. I felt like it I was in the opening scene of a zombie movie or something.

Personally speaking I've never seen much value in living by the clock if it puts you in conflict with the seasons. The notion that people everywhere should adhere to the same schedule regardless of local conditions is inherently absurd.

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

#132

Post by danmaz74 »

davidw wrote: post #78
mrkrabo wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spaniard; can confirm. 3 hour breaks are simply mandatory for small shops. In the south of the country during summer there is literally no way you can go out until... 19 or so if you don't want to die. So if shops closed then, there would be no business.

Small shops manage to operate in, say, Arizona during those hours. That said, I think Spain's hours are a more natural adaptation to the climate than Arizona's.

How many small shops in Arizona are located in air-conditioned malls though?

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

#133

Post by davidw »

danmaz74 wrote: post #132
davidw wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small shops manage to operate in, say, Arizona during those hours. That said, I think Spain's hours are a more natural adaptation to the climate than Arizona's.

How many small shops in Arizona are located in air-conditioned malls though?

Everything is air conditioned in AZ. Very few people would live there otherwise.

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

#134

Post by jorgemf »

pjmlp wrote: post #95
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…

> Bonus: we don't add chorizo to the paella. The chorizo is mostly for the bbq You should try it here in Germany, I was astonied the first time I saw them adding mayonnaise to the paella.

As the other commenter said, we also add Alioli, which is mayonnaise with garlic. Although the original one is only garlic and olive oil. (Ali means garlic and oli means oil in Valencian)

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

#135

Post by jorgemf »

magic_beans wrote: post #104
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…

For the people that eat lunch for 2 hours... do they go out to lunch every single day?? No one brings lunch from home?

It depends. Some people bring food some go out. But for 10€ is not worth for everybody to wake up earlier to prepare the meal and later have to warm it up in the microwave. You just go out and lunch. Some companies also have a special compensation for this, they give lunch tickets that you can spend in a lot of restaurants. Those tickets are like real money and are part of your salary but you don't pay taxes for them.

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

#136

Post by anigbrowl »

subway wrote: post #75
bill45 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Doesn't anybody work in those small shops? It's not a break if they make up that time later. Sounds more like working a shift, and then starting a second shift later.

Today I learned unpaid breaks are not breaks.

A break is generally considered as a short period of time amid an otherwise continuous activity. You don't conceive of night as a break between days, even though you could stretch the definition of the word to accommodate that. Likewise the siesta is not simply an overgrown lunch break.

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

#137

Post by anigbrowl »

scythe wrote: post #120
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…

>useless light early in the morning That light wakes people up and increases their energy levels. It's not always pleasant, but work isn't supposed to be. For example, in the US, pushing school start times back from 8 to 9 results in an increase in student performance (it was originally 9 and then moved to 8 to save money on buses).

Your example seems contradictory of your point. Since starting school alter is documented to increase student performance (perhaps because it also increases teacher performance), why would you want to have lower performance?

I also don't see why work shouldn't be pleasant except insofar as it's an unavoidable necessity for it to be otherwise. If you want people to work under less pleasant conditions, then the pay should be raised correspondingly.

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

#138

Post by bpodgursky »

vkou wrote: post #112
bpodgursky wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spending borrowed money like candy and calling repayment oppression isn't a cultural value I care about protecting.

Bankruptcy exists for a reason. If all debt were risk free, lenders would have no right to charge interest for it. Lenders who issue loans to organizations who won't ever be able to pay them off aren't a group I care very much for protecting, either. They were sophisticated investors who knew the risks. Greece is a sovereign state, and its first obligation its to its people.

Yeah, I have no problem with that, they should declare bankruptcy then, and deal with the fallout. But that's not what Greece chose to do -- they accepted bailout money and continue to complain about it,

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

#139

Post by [deleted] »

vkou wrote: post #112
bpodgursky wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spending borrowed money like candy and calling repayment oppression isn't a cultural value I care about protecting.

Bankruptcy exists for a reason. If all debt were risk free, lenders would have no right to charge interest for it. Lenders who issue loans to organizations who won't ever be able to pay them off aren't a group I care very much for protecting, either. They were sophisticated investors who knew the risks. Greece is a sovereign state, and its first obligation its to its people.

[deleted]

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

#140

Post by anigbrowl »

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…

Spanish siesta is for Fridays and holidays.

It's been a while since I worked in Spain (15 years) but the firm I worked at had an every day siesta policy because the owner likes siestas and had grown his business that way. The company had offices in Barcelona and Valencia so maybe the tradition has deeper roots in Catalonia.

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