I moved away from the city where my company is located, but I still work for them as a telecommuter. I miss having lunch with my coworkers. Even though we rarely talked about work during lunch, it was a great chance to bond and have fun.
Not eating lunch with your team every day? You're missing out.
41–50 of 57 posts
Re: Not eating lunch with your team every day? You're missing out.
#42Great, as long as it's a paid lunch and counts towards the 8 hours per day limit prior to accruing overtime.
And you get your mandated-by-law lunch break (30 minutes in California).
No, the employer need not pay for this time.
However, they may not impede or discourage it either.
Re: Not eating lunch with your team every day? You're missing out.
#43A lot of the comments are based on the expectation that nothing personally worthwhile could happen during lunch with co-workers. I'm sure that's an accurate description of some workplaces. I read the interesting submitted article as suggesting that for a small start-up, focused on successful teamwork to launch new products, making part of the team interaction happen over a tasty, unhurried meal is a change of context…
If the company makes more money for all employees (reflected in higher pay and better benefits that you desire) and reduces the number of tedious meetings that are not over lunch, it could be a win-win to have lunch together with everyone else on staff.
My experience is that this is never the case. More often it is in companies that already have too many meetings and appear to be using lunch as yet another one.
Re: Not eating lunch with your team every day? You're missing out.
#44I'm an IT consultant making Swedish style consultant money and I eat out of a plastic box at the office alone while most of my co-workers are usually eating out. I just think it's a waste of money to be honest. Maybe I'm being too pragmatic because this is far from the first time I hear that it strengthens morale and team spirit to eat together but I'm not paying 90SEK for a buffet when I get full from drinking a gla…
making Swedish style consultant money
Is this humble or bragging? I honestly don't know how well (or poorly) Swedish consultants are paid?
Re: Not eating lunch with your team every day? You're missing out.
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Introverted or not, being able to sit down and converse with your teammates is important. I wouldn't want to work with someone who either couldn't or didn't feel it important to do so.
then do not take my time to do so. Seems to me there is a great deal of time other than lunch to allow us to bond. Why do some people feel intent on taking my time away to do something they won't give of their time to let me do; as in your meetings are far more important than bonding but my lunch time isn't. Been there, done that. Its like another management fad that poorly managed companies try to graft unto their d…
They of course fail at it because they don't understand it really is they who are the problem, not the employees.
It could be a little bit of both. That said, I am curious if you could say what situation / circumstances would make you want to spend more time with your co-workers and/or enjoy the idea of doing lunch together, etc. IOW, in your experience, what is the root of (what I perceive as) the adversarial "us vs them" mentality between employee & employer?
I ask because if/when they day comes that our startup gets off the ground and we have money and employees, I really want to have the kind of culture where everyone feels like part of one team, where employees, founders, managers, whoever, can go out together, have lunch, go out for drinks after work, etc. and actually enjoy it, not feel like it's something that's being forced on them (it never would be forced, of course). I have my own take, based on my years of experience in all sorts of companies, but I like hearing other perspectives on this - because I believe there is value in that "bonding" or "gelling" between colleagues in a firm.
Re: Not eating lunch with your team every day? You're missing out.
#46Re: Not eating lunch with your team every day? You're missing out.
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ugh, seriously. Some of us just want to do our work and go home, not stick around for a company mandated 'happy hour'.
Great, go work at IBM.
I hate this kind of "work hard, play hard" attitude.
I'm here to get work done, NOT make buddies.
Let me work hard and get my stuff done, then while you're out pounding the Jagerbombs maybe I can get some more stuff done. You know, because "getting stuff done" is my job. My job is not, "get sh*faced with my coworkers". The latter activity does not add (objectively measured) shareholder value.
Re: Not eating lunch with your team every day? You're missing out.
#48Not vacationing with your team every holiday? You're missing out. Not living with your coworkers? You're missing out. And so on. The atmosphere described in this article seems stifling, almost like a religious service. That doesn't sound like a good way to foster spontaneous interactions. As others have commented, provide an optional lunch that is not mandated, isn't expected, and where people who don't participate a…
That seems like a pretty gross overreaction. The article is about a pretty small, close-knit startup serving a free gourmet lunch by professional chef. I doubt anyone there feels like it's stifling and I doubt anyone is thought less of for occasionally doing their own thing. Certainly this is a Forbes blog and someone may take the idea and try to force it into an environment inappropriately, but arguing that it can n…
Perhaps you misunderstood my comment. I can only speak to the fact that based on how it was described (the reporter may have misrepresented what it was like for dramatic effect) I would find it stifling. Even if the description is 100% spot on and it's not for me, it could be that everyone there enjoys it and it becomes a good filter for finding employees who are into that kind of culture. I never stated that it can never work. Only that it would only work for me if it's a no-pressure, opt-in, spontaneous thing.
Re: Not eating lunch with your team every day? You're missing out.
#49I think that making it possible, and encouraging it, is great. Just don't make people feel bad if they decide to spend their lunch time dealing with groceries, paying bills, or going for a walk in the sun.
I've never worked in a close-knit place like where I've seen these type of lunches described (the article, Fog Creek, etc), but it seems like it works very well for them. "Everyone eats lunch together" obviously doesn't scale very well - at some point it becomes just "free food" like Google.
[deleted]
Re: Not eating lunch with your team every day? You're missing out.
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's what meetings are for, right? Or even just the ability to walk to someone's office/cube/desk, and talk to them about important things. You can establish a culture of communication within a team that doesn't intrude on personal time.
There is a lot of use in say, complaining that a way you are going about a problem will work, but seems too damn hard. Say for example, I see a 4 hour solution to a problem that should really be solved in 30 minutes. Often coworkers who know some systems better, or have a different way of viewing the problem will see a much easier way to solve it by leveraging tools I don't know about or approaches I didn't think of.…
Why can't those conversations occur normally? Is it that they aren't considered real work?