11 ms·
lunch and coffee breaks count towards 8 hour work day? usually 8 hour work day = 4 hours work before lunch and 4 hours work after
by kirykl 10y ago
lunch and coffee breaks count towards 8 hour work day? usually 8 hour work day = 4 hours work before lunch and 4 hours work after
- vtlynch 10y agoIt should, yes.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoDifference between US and Europe, maybe? In Europe so far I haven't seen the case where lunch time doesn't count into work time (assuming you get lunch time at all - many employers in low-skill fields use every dirty trick in the book to extract work out of people).
- vtlynch 10y agoIt is certainly common practice to not include lunch as work time in the US. But I think that is unfair to the employee. In the US almost all Low-skill jobs that pay by the hour dont count lunch as work time. At those jobs you usually explicitly "clock out" for lunch. At salaried jobs it is less common, though I'd guess 50% or more don't count lunch as work time. If that is the case, then workers should also be allowed to eat at their desk (or otherwise eat while working - reading emails on phone, etc) and leave early if they spend less than an hour at lunch.
- nocman 10y agoPerhaps this is regional, but I don't know anyone in a salaried position that gets paid for lunch time. It is always expected that you are working 8 hours a day outside of the lunch hour. To be clear, I live in the United States.
- nommm-nommm 10y agoI have a cousin with a union job. Her union negotiated 8 hour day with mandatory paid half hour lunch. The lunch is negotiated as mandatory so they go around and make everyone leave their cubicles at lunch time. Perhaps to make sure no bosses are expecting people to work through lunch.
- Jade_Jet 10y agoI started work at 9. I'm responding to your comment while eating lunch at a restaurant. I plan to leave around 5 today. This is my normal schedule. I'm salaried and live in the US as well. My last two jobs were the same way as well.
- vtlynch 10y agoThat's great :) Just how it should be.
- bencoder 10y agoSame in UK - My work week is considered 37.5 hours with work day of 9-17:30.
- Atropos 10y agoTotally the opposite experience - normal 40 hour week means working 9 AM to 6 PM, due to 1 hour lunch break. This is even the case in most public administrations (Germany, France, EU Commission), I'm quite curious where a 9 AM to 5 PM day is normal...
- jawilson2 10y agoI count my work day as "time spent commuting, working, or anything else keeping me from spending time at home with my family."
- camelNotation 10y agoMe too. It isn't time off just because I'm not producing for an employer. If it requires me to commute, walk, etc. and it is work related, I classify that as working hours because those are the hours of my day that are given to my employer, even if they are not getting an immediate, direct benefit from those minutes. I realize I am not being paid for that time, but it doesn't change the fact that I am doing that instead of something else.
- jsprogrammer 10y agoIf you are salaried, you are being paid for that time. The effect is to reduce your effective hourly wage. I quit my last employer because the extra 2 hours required for commuting and dressing (both of which incur unreimbursed expenses) on top of my 9 billable hours was taking up a significant chunk of my compensation.
- __derek__ 10y agoI co-sign this. If you want me to be in a location, any time spent conveying myself or being there counts.
- 35bge57dtjku 10y agoI wish I could live in that fantasy world, where my hour commute both ways and my lunch break counted as working. Then I'd only have to do 5 hours of work while my coworkers did 7, and we'd all get paid the same.
- Hydraulix989 10y agoPerhaps you should take up smoking cigarettes then? My coworkers take four 20-minute smoke breaks a day.
- camelNotation 10y agoI work through lunch, eating at my desk. I prefer to do this over wasting time away from the office. 1 hour is not enough for me to go home and see my kids or work on my house or do anything legitimately useful or meaningful. Instead, I find myself being forced to fill it with something I wouldn't otherwise want to do. Therefore, I just grab a sandwich and eat while working. Officially, we aren't supposed to do this. Unofficially, no one has stopped me yet.
- mk89 10y agoIn my experience, lunch with your colleagues is one of the indicators of a healthy work environment. When this doesn't happen, for whatever reason you may have, I have always found the team to be unhealthy. How is it for you?
- protomok 10y agoIn my team we usually eat lunch at our cubes while being stuck on conference calls with folks from our local office, California, and Europe. Not sure if this counts as having lunch with colleagues :)
- nommm-nommm 10y agoI don't do lunch with my colleagues because I don't eat lunch. Even if I did eat lunch I don't want to waste more time at work than I have to so I would nibble at my desk while coding. Our team is perfectly healthy. I can't imagine lunch taking a full hour, seems like a waste of time to me though I know other people have different opinions on this, it's individual preference. Do you have mandatory lunch times and locations? Doesn't anyone ever want to spend their lunch break exercising or taking a walk? Or even going home to eat with their families? These are all common in my office. What if you hired a Muslim who fasted for Ramadan? Will you force them to watch everyone else eat?
- TeMPOraL 10y agoI have similar approach. I like to eat lunch at my desk - even if my hands are full so I am not coding on the work project per se, I can at least be reading something. I have plenty of opportunities to talk to my teammates during the rest of the day anyway. As for hour+-long lunches, I don't get it either. I guess some people like it - in the same way in which I like to come home and work on my own projects. Everyone wants to allocate time on stuff they like. I don't particularly fancy eating with people.