7 ms·

Hem, I't common in any country of the world, perhaps with different names, different food, different packing but the same principles. In Italy is called "schis

by xte 8y ago

Hem, I't common in any country of the world, perhaps with different names, different food, different packing but the same principles. In Italy is called "schiscetta" (read in English Skishetta), in Japan is called "bento" etc... In few countries however such kind of "productivity" is considered a kind of (self) slavery and it's not really accepted. For instance in Swiss it not common at all eat in your workplace no matter the provenance of food because we do not live for work but the contrary. In French is common only for low-paid labors, mostly young at career start etc. Have seen the different idea of productivity in few countries and their relevant economic level I think there is no real correlation...

claudiawerner 8y ago
>In few countries however such kind of "productivity" is considered a kind of (self) slavery and it's not really accepted. For instance in Swiss it not common at all eat in your workplace no matter the provenance of food because we do not live for work but the contrary. In French is common only for low-paid labors, mostly young at career start etc. This is fascinating and very interesting from a radical point of view. A while ago there was a thread on HN about if it would be bad for a workplace to have bunks and a kitchen such that employees can sleep there. To me the whole idea felt incredibly dystopian. In the end, though, some authors have observed a kind of cultural shift, in which we are no longer told what to do at work, but rather the workplace tries to align our desire to theirs, the analogy Frédéric Lordon[0] uses is that desires can be expressed as vectors, and the modern workplace, lacking the old methods to make us work (because they are culturally inappropriate, or illegal) must use such a method which seems a whole lot less pernicious at face value. It's not only the time to make the lunch which counts as unpaid labour, it's also the time and expense to travel to work (and according to some stories on HN this can get to absurd levels) and due to the phenomena I mentioned a lot of time spent around work doing non-work activities (though this is more common if there is a "workplace culture"). [0] "Willing Slaves of Capital: Spinoza and Marx on Desire"
- xte 8y ago
  Take it with veeery long fireplace tongs but IMO any living being, not only human try to have the most he/she want at the least "cost" so we humans during our evolution we do various kind of effort with various kind of success to have more working less. Nowadays we struggle a lot less to accomplish many tasks we need, for instance we can cut wood with machines so quickly and with very little fatigue, we can dig ground with an excavator in minutes instead of hours and hours of manual work with shovel and pickaxe etc. Naturally for us it's still "fatigue" so we want do automate more, work less. That's natural nor positive nor negative (we may say that avoid struggling and have much free time is positive and counterarguments that we discover obesity, diabetes and many other disease due to that) but trying to bend it to have people work is a subtle form of slavery. For instance Google classic "game-fill workplace" to me is more a way to "capture" workforce than a nice way of work... Of course I'd like to work in my favorite field so work seems more pleasure than work but with some limits: work is work, play is play. Even if they seems to blend work have expiring dates, require a certain kind of attention and do not require other kind of attention. Play have normally no expiring dates, no guarantees etc. Long story short my own personal "best compromise" way is being responsible adults that try to play together for our own sake. The modern idea of reject individual responsibilities and so being directed like sheep in the flock happily ignorant is not really different than ancient slavery and it certainly not a thing I like.
  - ForrestN 8y ago
    You shouldn’t have been downvoted. This is an interesting perspective that’s relevant to the article.
    - xte 8y ago
      Perhaps that's due to my terrible English... However I see few "downvote trends" not against me but against certain "families of arguments", normally without zero accompany comments to explain why, counterargument etc Perhaps it can be a nice analysis to made on whole HN comments to "track" the trend and discover why...
galfarragem 8y ago
In Portugal is called "marmita". Despite having been laundered a bit (healthier food than restaurants) during last years, it is still mostly correlated with low-paid labour. You will hardly ever see a well paid worker taking lunch from home.
- swah 8y ago
  In Brazil its called that as well, but these days its more associated with fitness people and meal prepping in my mind. Here its mostly buffet restaurants (huge restaurants many times) where you "make your plate and pay per kg", and there is always dessert and fried food. In Lisbon I saw mostly restaurants where you pay for a "menu" (a "special plate" for the day) which made it easier for me to control my intake, easier for the smallish restaurants to prepare, etc. (I rather liked eating a quick lunch at my last job - heated in the microwave - since I could I can leave at 16h15 instead of 17 and beat the traffic...)
noisy_boy 8y ago
There is a cultural factor too in addition to economic one. E.g. in India, packed lunches are very common and even movie stars get their, admittedly elaborate, lunches packed from home. It is getting somewhat less common for double-income-no-kids type families but still quite prevalent in general. The dabba[0] system used to deliver home-made packed-lunches from home to the office desk gained international fame. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala
masklinn 8y ago
Japan's bento seem way more on the crafted and enjoyable side of things though. I'm certain there's a lot of variations, but I've seen folks wax poetic about bento and ekiben (train station bentos).
- ehnto 8y ago
  I am Australian, but when I worked in the city one of the most reasonably priced and healthy options was a Japanese restaurant's bento boxes. Quick and easy but also filling. You can also get cheap and hearty meals from the china town food courts. Packing lunches makes total financiak sense but I guess I have a hard time spending my only free hour during the day time at the same place I will be at for 8 hours. A walk and some time lost amongst the hustle and bustle clears my mind.
- funtastique 8y ago
  Agreeable.
tigershark 8y ago
No way that in Italy is called schiscetta, I never heard it, maybe it is some dialectal word, for sure it’s not Italian. And I never ever saw everyone bringing always packed lunch at work in Italy.
- xte 8y ago
  It's Milan's dialect but commonly used in all north Italy and maybe in many part of the center (I'm Italian)... Of course not everyone bring food from home, especially in big towns where "worker's launch" cost around 9/10 euros, but that's the name I always hear. And it has on many journals recently (so, not only in north Italy) due to a series of litigation between schools and parent that do not want their child to eat school-provided food coming from obscure cooperative society often at the center of many scandal for low quality food and hygiene. Few examples: - https://www.luinonotizie.it/2018/11/07/luino-schiscetta-a-scuola-pronti-ad-eventuali-richieste/200808 https://www.luinonotizie.it/2018/11/07/luino-schiscetta-a-sc... - http://www.oggiscuola.com/web/2017/01/29/la-schiscetta-classe-bambino-costretto-ad-uscire-scuola-pausa-pranzo-polemica/ http://www.oggiscuola.com/web/2017/01/29/la-schiscetta-class... - https://www.tgcom24.mediaset.it/perlei/articoli/1098601/le-regole-d-oro-della-schiscetta-.shtml https://www.tgcom24.mediaset.it/perlei/articoli/1098601/le-r... - https://www.wired.it/lifestyle/food/2016/09/27/schiscetta-scuola-cosi-si-distrugge-la-speranza-mensa-migliore/ https://www.wired.it/lifestyle/food/2016/09/27/schiscetta-sc... - https://d.repubblica.it/attualita/2016/09/16/news/mense_scolastiche_codacons_sentenza_tribunale_pasti_da_casa_miur_esperti-3234538/ https://d.repubblica.it/attualita/2016/09/16/news/mense_scol... - https://www.ilmattino.it/primopiano/cronaca/schiscetta_scuola_comune_non_ci_critica_accordo_presidi_genitori-2205254.html https://www.ilmattino.it/primopiano/cronaca/schiscetta_scuol... This last one is a Naple's journal.
  - tigershark 8y ago
    This just testifies the amazing bad state of Italian journalism, it doesn’t make “schiscetta” an Italian word. I am also Italian and I never heard it before today and you can’t find it in Italian dictionaries.
    - 8y ago
snovv_crash 8y ago
Not true for the Swiss, it is quite common for people to bring a lunch, only for the offices in central districs is it more common to go somewhere else to eat.
- xte 8y ago
  My experience of Swiss is really limited and "in central district" but... The first time I bring my meal I was told like a father to a child "no, here you work, there you eat, we are humans not slave nor machine" and it wasn't a "left-wing extremist"...
  - snovv_crash 8y ago
    Yes, you won't eat at your desk, usually a few people will go to a kitchen area or meeting room and eat together. It definitely isn't the American style of eat-while-you-work.

by xte 8y ago

claudiawerner 8y ago

>In few countries however such kind of "productivity" is considered a kind of (self) slavery and it's not really accepted. For instance in Swiss it not common at all eat in your workplace no matter the provenance of food because we do not live for work but the contrary. In French is common only for low-paid labors, mostly young at career start etc. This is fascinating and very interesting from a radical point of view. A while ago there was a thread on HN about if it would be bad for a workplace to have bunks and a kitchen such that employees can sleep there. To me the whole idea felt incredibly dystopian. In the end, though, some authors have observed a kind of cultural shift, in which we are no longer told what to do at work, but rather the workplace tries to align our desire to theirs, the analogy Frédéric Lordon[0] uses is that desires can be expressed as vectors, and the modern workplace, lacking the old methods to make us work (because they are culturally inappropriate, or illegal) must use such a method which seems a whole lot less pernicious at face value. It's not only the time to make the lunch which counts as unpaid labour, it's also the time and expense to travel to work (and according to some stories on HN this can get to absurd levels) and due to the phenomena I mentioned a lot of time spent around work doing non-work activities (though this is more common if there is a "workplace culture"). [0] "Willing Slaves of Capital: Spinoza and Marx on Desire"

xte 8y ago
Take it with veeery long fireplace tongs but IMO any living being, not only human try to have the most he/she want at the least "cost" so we humans during our evolution we do various kind of effort with various kind of success to have more working less. Nowadays we struggle a lot less to accomplish many tasks we need, for instance we can cut wood with machines so quickly and with very little fatigue, we can dig ground with an excavator in minutes instead of hours and hours of manual work with shovel and pickaxe etc. Naturally for us it's still "fatigue" so we want do automate more, work less. That's natural nor positive nor negative (we may say that avoid struggling and have much free time is positive and counterarguments that we discover obesity, diabetes and many other disease due to that) but trying to bend it to have people work is a subtle form of slavery. For instance Google classic "game-fill workplace" to me is more a way to "capture" workforce than a nice way of work... Of course I'd like to work in my favorite field so work seems more pleasure than work but with some limits: work is work, play is play. Even if they seems to blend work have expiring dates, require a certain kind of attention and do not require other kind of attention. Play have normally no expiring dates, no guarantees etc. Long story short my own personal "best compromise" way is being responsible adults that try to play together for our own sake. The modern idea of reject individual responsibilities and so being directed like sheep in the flock happily ignorant is not really different than ancient slavery and it certainly not a thing I like.
- ForrestN 8y ago
  You shouldn’t have been downvoted. This is an interesting perspective that’s relevant to the article.
  - xte 8y ago
    Perhaps that's due to my terrible English... However I see few "downvote trends" not against me but against certain "families of arguments", normally without zero accompany comments to explain why, counterargument etc Perhaps it can be a nice analysis to made on whole HN comments to "track" the trend and discover why...

galfarragem 8y ago

In Portugal is called "marmita". Despite having been laundered a bit (healthier food than restaurants) during last years, it is still mostly correlated with low-paid labour. You will hardly ever see a well paid worker taking lunch from home.

swah 8y ago
In Brazil its called that as well, but these days its more associated with fitness people and meal prepping in my mind. Here its mostly buffet restaurants (huge restaurants many times) where you "make your plate and pay per kg", and there is always dessert and fried food. In Lisbon I saw mostly restaurants where you pay for a "menu" (a "special plate" for the day) which made it easier for me to control my intake, easier for the smallish restaurants to prepare, etc. (I rather liked eating a quick lunch at my last job - heated in the microwave - since I could I can leave at 16h15 instead of 17 and beat the traffic...)

noisy_boy 8y ago

There is a cultural factor too in addition to economic one. E.g. in India, packed lunches are very common and even movie stars get their, admittedly elaborate, lunches packed from home. It is getting somewhat less common for double-income-no-kids type families but still quite prevalent in general. The dabba[0] system used to deliver home-made packed-lunches from home to the office desk gained international fame. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala

masklinn 8y ago

Japan's bento seem way more on the crafted and enjoyable side of things though. I'm certain there's a lot of variations, but I've seen folks wax poetic about bento and ekiben (train station bentos).

ehnto 8y ago
I am Australian, but when I worked in the city one of the most reasonably priced and healthy options was a Japanese restaurant's bento boxes. Quick and easy but also filling. You can also get cheap and hearty meals from the china town food courts. Packing lunches makes total financiak sense but I guess I have a hard time spending my only free hour during the day time at the same place I will be at for 8 hours. A walk and some time lost amongst the hustle and bustle clears my mind.
funtastique 8y ago
Agreeable.

tigershark 8y ago

No way that in Italy is called schiscetta, I never heard it, maybe it is some dialectal word, for sure it’s not Italian. And I never ever saw everyone bringing always packed lunch at work in Italy.

xte 8y ago
It's Milan's dialect but commonly used in all north Italy and maybe in many part of the center (I'm Italian)... Of course not everyone bring food from home, especially in big towns where "worker's launch" cost around 9/10 euros, but that's the name I always hear. And it has on many journals recently (so, not only in north Italy) due to a series of litigation between schools and parent that do not want their child to eat school-provided food coming from obscure cooperative society often at the center of many scandal for low quality food and hygiene. Few examples: - https://www.luinonotizie.it/2018/11/07/luino-schiscetta-a-scuola-pronti-ad-eventuali-richieste/200808 https://www.luinonotizie.it/2018/11/07/luino-schiscetta-a-sc... - http://www.oggiscuola.com/web/2017/01/29/la-schiscetta-classe-bambino-costretto-ad-uscire-scuola-pausa-pranzo-polemica/ http://www.oggiscuola.com/web/2017/01/29/la-schiscetta-class... - https://www.tgcom24.mediaset.it/perlei/articoli/1098601/le-regole-d-oro-della-schiscetta-.shtml https://www.tgcom24.mediaset.it/perlei/articoli/1098601/le-r... - https://www.wired.it/lifestyle/food/2016/09/27/schiscetta-scuola-cosi-si-distrugge-la-speranza-mensa-migliore/ https://www.wired.it/lifestyle/food/2016/09/27/schiscetta-sc... - https://d.repubblica.it/attualita/2016/09/16/news/mense_scolastiche_codacons_sentenza_tribunale_pasti_da_casa_miur_esperti-3234538/ https://d.repubblica.it/attualita/2016/09/16/news/mense_scol... - https://www.ilmattino.it/primopiano/cronaca/schiscetta_scuola_comune_non_ci_critica_accordo_presidi_genitori-2205254.html https://www.ilmattino.it/primopiano/cronaca/schiscetta_scuol... This last one is a Naple's journal.
- tigershark 8y ago
  This just testifies the amazing bad state of Italian journalism, it doesn’t make “schiscetta” an Italian word. I am also Italian and I never heard it before today and you can’t find it in Italian dictionaries.
  - 8y ago

snovv_crash 8y ago

Not true for the Swiss, it is quite common for people to bring a lunch, only for the offices in central districs is it more common to go somewhere else to eat.

xte 8y ago
My experience of Swiss is really limited and "in central district" but... The first time I bring my meal I was told like a father to a child "no, here you work, there you eat, we are humans not slave nor machine" and it wasn't a "left-wing extremist"...
- snovv_crash 8y ago
  Yes, you won't eat at your desk, usually a few people will go to a kitchen area or meeting room and eat together. It definitely isn't the American style of eat-while-you-work.