Reply With QuoteI haven't had a tea break or lunch break since November 2008.
Its the way forward.
10.20am seems to ring a bell? Out came the cards and the banter would start. Lunch was an hour not a sandwich at your desk.3pm would be another 15 minute break.
My first two jobs (one in Sketchleys one in a printers) were factory based, tea breaks were a major part of the day, tuff (not pronounced tough) time was a fag break it was not sanctioned but sort of excepted.
This is forty years ago but I remember a lot of laughs and smiling faces. Beanos and workers days out together were regular too.Staff even went on holiday together.
Where I work now nobody communicates unless by email. We have become hamsters. Are businesses more efficient I doubt it? Mental health issues and sickness are rife nobody gives a stuff about others issues or really cares about the work.More productivity is required we are told, less staff working longer into our 60’s.
Bring back tea breaks I say and reunite the workers... people just might start to smile again!
I haven't had a tea break or lunch break since November 2008.
Its the way forward.
I'm willing to compromise on a lot but I'm not willing to cut my lunch down to an hour.
We don't have tea breaks here either
How long do you get?Originally Posted by Alansmithee
An excellent observation. I remember tea breaks in both the structural engineers and mechanical engineers offices where I worked as a junior draughtsman before going to university. In both places, the office manager would wander into the drawing office and take orders then return with a tray of teas and coffees, complete with biscuits. When I left university and started work, tea breaks did happen but were less organised, often a couple of people catching up in the kitchen while they made their drinks. There was a short time when we enjoyed an 'early dart' on a Friday and left to go to the pub mid afternoon but that didn't last long and Fridays became the longest day due to deadlines tending to fall on a Friday.
Now I run my own practice, I encourage my staff to get out for an hour long lunch and don't mind if they have a chat while making tea, as long as deadlines are met. In the summer, I might even suggest they all bugger off for the afternoon if things have gone well in the week but there is a balance. If time is of the essence, I also expect them to put the hours in to get things done.
I would be interested to see if productivity went up with more breaks. I rarely if ever have a break. Sometimes I even worry if if leave the office to pop out. Worry about missing something important which is not likely.
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I'm an academic - it's output based - as long as I keep bring in the money and turning out the publications, I could sit in the park all day with my laptop and no questions would be asked.
A very good point - well raised - I was discussing this yesterday with a old work pal at Sikorsky - in the day, the design office got a bus out to the gates so they could have a smoke - that's a tea break- smoking was banned on site even then.
I also agree that nobody seems to "enjoy" the day and have a good laugh.............Sigh
I don't believe that businesses are more productive today and as for innovations - there are pockets across the world but few and far between and they have become innovation Ghettos - which I don't think are as widespread as we need for the future - :-)
B
I remember sales guys being told that "provided you bring in the numbers you can work from the golf course" but of course they never could really. I am glad you are truly measured on output.
I remember tea breaks...and the lady with the tea trolley. Unfortunately, she went as the first, of many, economy measures.
Then there were various tea-boats, but it took someone to administer them and someone had to make the tea/coffee, clean the cups/pot and buy the supplies. Once that couldn't be agreed upon, everyone did their own thing. That's how I got my coffee habit...
Oddly I often go into work more in the summer because I live around the corner and I'm regularly the only one here...
We have the 30 mins deducted from our pay regardless of if we take it or not. So I insist on taking mine.
I will not work through or have my lunch at my desk!
That's not balance, that's their employer wanting everything by saying leave early on this particular day, but stay late on that particular day.
I worked occasionally during school and University holidays at a family owned Brewery in Lincolnshire in my teens and 20´s where instead of tea breaks we were allowed to nip down to the allowance barrel for a fortifying half pint every hour or so.
If you were the driver or drayman on some of the delivery rounds landlords would always offer you a quick pint after the drop....happy days.
This was nearly 25 years ago and doubtless things have tightened up somewhat.
What ever happened to tea breaks?
They've been outsourced to Costa Coffee and Starbucks. Many larger offices have an outlet on site resulting in better time flexibility and product choice.
Tea breaks should stay as a distant memory of the 1970's.
The only pity is that "fag" breaks took longer to disappear.
In defence of the tea break; it was a time for group discussion (or networking for the younger generation) with one's colleagues from other departments etc.
Working from home has it's benefits I suppose. You become the master of your own destiny. That is until deadlines fall and clients expect the impossible.
On a similar note, I worked in a factory back in the 80's, and every Friday lunchtime, most of the staff would go down the pub for lunch - normally consuming 2/3 pints in an extended "hour".
This was a factory containing some potentially lethal chemicals and machinery. Not much generally got done on Friday PMs.
Don't think that would get past health and safety nowadays.
I remember working in Northern Ireland a few years ago. In the middle of the first morning my colleagues announced that they were going for their tea break. I was surprised that it took them 35 minutes to return.
When i queried the length of time they had taken they explained that it was a 15 minute break; that started when you entered the canteen.
On a similar theme whatever happened to sleepwalking? When i was a kid in the 70s the papers seemed to be full of people sleepwalking into their neighbours bedroom or the back of a cow.
Last edited by raysablade; 16th August 2016 at 13:40.
And whatever happened to sleepwalking and p1ssing into the wardrobe after a particularly heavy session.
Not the proudest of moments.
Beat me to it "Lunch is for wimps"
All these things went away with the smart-phone era. On call 24/7.
At 49 yrs old, I shudder to think what my girls work/quality of life will be like when they are here.
We have them in the AM but not PM. Not sure whether legally or union agreed but, there has to be a 15 min break for every four hours of work at my place. Therefore a morning break but not afternoon as there isn't 4 hours after lunch. 8.5 days with a 1 hour lunch break (unpaid).
If one of my guys needs to start early, work through lunch and leave early I let them, as long as it doesn't become a pattern or the 'norm', they don't get paid extra for staying longer so I don't ask them to. But, often if we are against it, they will volunteer to help.
I'm lucky where I am as it is a real case of give and take. As long as your day's / week's work is done and you are here during core hours you can more or less come and go as you please. It's something we've been doing for over a decade, treating staff like 'real' people and not a commodity, it works for the most part. And if you get a PI55 taker (usually new and unused to the relaxed attitude) that could possibly spoil the status quo, they either learn to fit in with 'our ways' or they are out.
Not true at at all, well at my place at least. Yes 'on-call' during working hours when at work, as that's the nature of our business. However I insist that my guys leave their work mobiles at work when finished for the day. If something really did 'hit the fan' and the end of the world needed our expertise the HR dept has all out home contact details anyway. In all the years I've been here it's never happened, not once
It's just a change of perspective. If you are employed firms want to squeeze the last drops from you nowadays.
A friend of mine is the MD of a large recruitment firm and nobody moves from their desks all day.
Contrast that with a large manufacturer I did some advertising for back in the late '70's.
They had a subsidised staff canteen, proper tea breaks and lunch hour and when the factory shut down for the summer break they all went on holiday abroad together!
Cheers,
Neil.
Triumph Motorcylces? British Leyland? ICL? Coloroll?
Maybe its a US thing. There is no way to turn off, it seems. If you want to keep the gravy-train going, it's a part of the game. 50 weeks a year.
We have a traditional half hour break every day, once upon a time called a Naafi break and now called tea and toast.
I swear it is where most business gets done.
Where i work at the moment i manage my own hours and am only held to account for output (which is always excellent) so i take a break whenever i see fit and choose to substitute a lunch break on most days for an early knock off. My boss knows my "working" hours and has only ever intimated that he isnt too bothered provided no balls get dropped.
The lack of tea breaks makes the civillian world sound even worse than i already thought it might be.
i bet you arent allowed to knock off to go and sort your MOT or collect somthing from the post office as and when you please either!
Never mind tea break I don't book lunch break for me or my staff- there is always time to grab something to eat between appointments and as there is no hour gap in the middle of the day I finish at 4pm - except Friday when we finish at 2pm.
It would drive me nuts to sit for a planned hour of inactivity in the middle of the day.
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I suspect so much of the above is in direct proportion to the reduction in the power of the unions. My nephew recently started work for an electronics company and neither of his 15 minute breaks are paid for. Eight-and-a-half-hour days.
Having said that the wages of the normal worker are so much more than they were in the '60s, if you take into account (recent rise in house prices notwithstanding) the things they can now buy.
I've an idea: we should join the EU and make all businesses factor in worker health, mental and physical, into their bottom line with appropriate taxes as an incentive.
In our place it was flexi time and flexible working that killed off the breaks during the day. Before that it was a horn that would sound for the breaks, but with the advent of flexible working it was sold to the workforce that they could get away half an hour earlier with the loss of the two breaks.
Used to work on computers inputting data and it was 5 mins off every hour 20 minutes every three hours and a lunch hour, during which time any data inputted would not save and as type speed had an effect on your wage it wasn't worth doing.
Now where i work we are allowed 30 mins lunch break 3 or 4 days a week I will take 10 minutes of it and walk to the shop I'm often the first in and last out a lot of the younger staff turn up 30 seconds before there shift starts and expect to finish bang on clocking out time as well as there 30 mins lunch break. The boss let's me take chunks of time off for various voluntary things I do outside of work as I don't take the mick whilst at work and always do more than I'm meant to, it's a trade off that works for both of us, tomorrow I'm finishing 4 hours early to take part in a carnival raising money for charity.
During my apprenticeship at a large engineering company in the 80's, every lunchtime would see the Financial Director, Sales Director and occasionally the MD ( and other sundry office staff ) sitting at tables with production staff and even lowly apprentices, eating fresh cooked food served by Lillian and Sandra in the on site canteen. Happy days.
EDITED: Oops, thought it was the bear pit
Depends on the nature of the work. When I worked in retail, an unbroken twelve hour shift was perfectly doable, as the variety of tasks required throughout the day kept you fresh. Other work I've done, anything more than two three-hour sessions in a day with an hour break in between would just be pointless, the results would be substandard.
Suspect a large part of it was killed by leaders like Red Robbo trying to make the tea break last all day, and also be extended to Mickey Mouse and Daffy Duck, while on overtime rates.
I am certainly not anti-Union, but there was a time in the 70's and 80's where their demands were so unreasonable and unrealistic that a backlash was inevitable.
We lost paid tea breaks in about 2000, the fat cats up the spiral staircase decided although it was clearly good for moral it wasn't as good apparently for their pocket. Up until that point not one bloke in the workshop had an issue with working through his lunch to finish a job off, after the loss of the tea breaks that halted quite rapidly. The senior management couldn't understand why.....funny.
Do Gert and Daisy still do Workers Playtime? ......
Follow the smokers out every 10 mins!.If the Boss asks what your doing,tell him your picking up the hundreds of dirty fag ends littering the footpath they just throw away.........
Alternatively carry on working as the smokers brigade toss it off.
Reminds me of this joke
Union Rep comes back from working conditions & pay meeting with management and addresses the assembled workforce
"Lads, it was a hard slog, but I got us a good deal, we all keep full pay and get 10% pay rise, working hours have been reduced to 1 hour on a Saturday at double time"
A voice can be heard from the back
"You what? Every f**king Saturday"
OP I remember those brake times back then, and I'm still shy of 50, place I work at when I started you only had half a hour at lunch time, non of us were slouches but I then others started having a brew around 10.00 and again at 3.00 ish we got plenty of work done in between.
I always get to a job at least ten minutes earlier, got to have a brew before I start anything, just to add I've had enough of said company, handed in my notice last week, sat at home with a brew, happy days
Damn right brother, power to the people.
Looks like a loaf to me on his desk, eating is cheating.
Sky recently moved into several buildings in Leeds, these buildings have not been unused for years, new fit out etc, I've had to call to site a few times for repairs etc, tea breaks the whole bloody day looked like a break, I'm talking pool tables, PS4, food and drink scattered over desks, all this in a large open plan office, god knows if they actually get any work done.
Last edited by geran; 17th August 2016 at 12:47.
The best manager I ever had told me "It's not about the hours you put into the work... it's the work you put into the hours that matter"
My 'contract of employment' states that I am to work 35 hours a week, with core hours being 10:00 - 16:00.
Other than that I am free to organise myself.
Seeing as I spend 4 hours commuting to and from work at least 3 days a week, I regularly record in excess of 50 hours on my timesheet each week (I've opted out of the EU regulations around working hours) for which I get no additional pay or recognition, although I consider myself to be well paid for the job I do.
I also work from home most Fridays, and can excuse myself from the office to 'go and do something' without asking permission if I need to.
The days of clocking in and out are long gone (although I dare say my time could be tracked from my VPN login on my computer), as is the tea lady who used to come round the office twice a day with free goodies.
It's interesting how much this conversation has gone to "give and take" - at the bottom end of the economy that has been replaced with ZHCs and "I need you for two hours... oh wait I don't... sorry you travelled 45 minutes to get here for free".
I work at a place where the staff are encouraged to take their breaks, both morning and afternoon as well as a lunch. As a manager though, I take what I can get when I can get it.
None of the above, it was Schreiber furniture in Hoddesdon Herts.
Cheers,
Neil.
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