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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

#21

Post by jorgemf »

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 people from 7pm to 9pm.

Some offices have 2 hours lunch break, which I also find non-sense. But 1 hour is usually not enough for us for lunch, we don't eat sandwiches, we are used to do a proper meal with 2 dishes, dessert and coffee.

We also eat quite late, around 2pm or 3pm, but that is mostly because our time doesn't match the Solar time. We should have 1,5 hour less in our clocks. Which makes we really eat at 12:30-1pm of sun time. That is what most countries do as well.

We do take naps, only in summer on our holidays. Usually from 3pm to 5pm, because as I said, it is so fucking hot in summer at those hours. But any foreign who is here in summer does the same (actually probably more % of foreigns take naps than spaniash). People who also have an intense 8hours day job from 7am to 3pm they also take naps, because they wake up quite early and the social life starts at 6-7pm.

Bonus: we don't add chorizo to the paella. The chorizo is mostly for the bbq

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

#22

Post by gcb0 »

fhood wrote: post #19
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?

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 lots of conflicts from unions and such. and that was over 6 years ago. so maybe those companies managed to redefine it in the last decade?

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

#23

Post by debaserab2 »

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…

You get the culture you tolerate. I've worked at similar companies; never again will I work in an environment that doesn't respect work life balance. I currently work at a startup that understands this.

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

#24

Post by Tade0 »

scruti wrote: post #16

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'

To be honest where I come from a shop closing at 8pm is early.

True, the smallest ones are open between 8am and 7pm, but they're loosing market share in favor of mini-markets, which are usually open from 7am to 9-10pm.

And if that's not enough there are liquor stores and petrol stations, both of which are usually open 24/7.

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

#25

Post by untog »

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 -- 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.

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

#26

Post by professorTuring »

fhood wrote: post #19
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?

I believe that more "artisan" work or traditional professions does not have an schedule. Also, if you work for yourself you don't have a schedule neither.

A carpenter, for example, will work in projects and probably doesn't have an specific schedule (I believe this applies globally).

A policeman or a nurse will work in work shifts...

But this I can tell you, practically nobody will have a three hours stop in their typical work day.

In the retail industry it's a bit different and you can find small shops owners that usually close from 14:00 to 17:00) and people working in big companies like "Ikea" or "MediaMarkt" that are being forced to have strange daily workshifts with 4 hours working in the morning and another 4 hours in the afternoon... But they are usually young people that hate that and usually goes to the gym with that extra time...

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

#27

Post by maxxxxx »

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…

9-5 (or more like 9-6) exists in a lot of mature companies,

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

#28

Post by majewsky »

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…

It most certainly exists. Just not in "the startup arena".

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

#29

Post by untog »

ende wrote: post #10
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'd be fascinated to see every individual choose their own system to adapt.

I would too, but that's very difficult to pull off, especially when you factor in things like retail store availability. That's why an entire society switching would be so interesting (and so unrealistic).

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

#30

Post by natzar »

gcb0 wrote: post #22
fhood wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

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