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Work Break

by Christine(Yuna) on December 5th, 2005

One thing I have noticed after consulting for 20+ companies is the different “Work Break” culture each company has adopted. Here are a couple of extreme cases I have encountered in the past a few years:

The Worst

An insurance company I worked for in Hartford, CT loved to schedule meetings from 8 to 5. Everyday my Outlook schedule looked so pathetic that if I had one yellow empty spot opened up, I would grab some food before my luck ran out. My longest work break was from 6pm to 8pm for dinner (sometimes the only meal I could have) before my evening shift started so I could finally get some work done before 1am. I did that for about a year.

The Best

Ironically, the most relaxing work environment was my own company’s internal division. When I was hired out of the college almost 10 years ago, I was working internally as a supporting programmer. Everybody had an office so we constantly closed doors and gossiped for hours. Morning coffee break and afternoon ice cream break were the usual activates every day. Not to mention we constantly drove to the nearby New Jersey restaurants to relax a couple of hours during the lunch breaks. I hardly worked more than 5 hours a day since the entire building became a ghost town after 4pm. If we got REALLY lucky, the project manager would take us to the nearby Arcade to shoot some monsters at 2pm.

Most of the companies I have been to are somewhere in between. But since I am a consultant who is begging for food at a customer location, I tried not to get too carried away even if my customers (The Employees) are taking 10 breaks a day.

Some companies realized that the excessive “Work Break” has becoming a cause of the lost productivities, so memos started to flying around. Check this one out:

To All Employees:
Due to increased competition and a keen desire to remain in business, we find it necessary to institute a new policy.
Effective immediately, we find we must ask that somewhere between starting time and quitting time and without infringing too much on the time usually devoted to lunch period, coffee breaks, rest period, story telling, ticket selling, golfing, auto racing, sporting events, vacation and the re-hashing of yesterday’s T.V. programs, that each employee endeavor to find some time that can be set aside and known as a WORK BREAK.
To some this may seem a radical innovation, but we honestly believe the idea has great possibilities. It can be an aid to steady employment and it might also be a means of assuring regular paychecks.
While the WORK BREAK adoption plan is not compulsory, it is hoped that each employee will find enough time to give the plan a fair trial. It is also hoped that those employees not in favor of adopting the WORK BREAK idea will have fully completed their vacation plans.
The Management

Do you have an outrageous “Work Break” experience? If so, let’s hear it….

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