the relatively short history of the American workday lunch

December 18, 2019 8:46 AM

"...if you define the power in “power lunch” more like the power in “power walk”—an activity defined by arm-pumping and joyless, ruthless efficiency—Cuozzo’s wrong. Millennials have that kind of power lunch mastered. For many young urban professionals in the U.S., the typical mid-day meal involves shoveling in a lightly-dressed salad alone at a desk, or maybe on a curb outside listening to a podcast on double speed." What Have We Done To Lunch?
posted by everybody had matching towels (41 comments total)

related, the Edible Geography post from 2012, Lunch: An Urban Invention (linked in the article but worth highlighting on its own).
posted by everybody had matching towels at 8:47 AM on December 18, 2019

What Have We Done To Lunch?

Late-stage capitalism
posted by Rust Moranis at 8:50 AM on December 18, 2019 [41 favorites]

An American friend moved back from France after a decade there and was appalled that no one here took a break, sat down, and "had a proper lunch." Saw him again six months later and asked about his work lunches. He shrugged, frowned, and said "Now I grab a sandwich and eat at my desk like everyone else."
posted by PhineasGage at 9:02 AM on December 18, 2019 [6 favorites]

The New Power Lunch is Sweetgreen, Serena Dai, Eater, 11/7/19
posted by ohkay at 9:09 AM on December 18, 2019

I generally eat alone for lunch and it mirrors the social realities of being in my early 40s - I don't have work friends to have lunch with. At jobs in my 20s and even 30s I did make friends with coworkers. Today I'm certainly friendly with everyone, but it doesn't evolve beyond "acquaintance-friend." This is heavily gendered too - the women I work with, who are mostly in their 30s and 40s, are all much more social with each other.

As to time demands, my job isn't insane so I typically take a 30-45 minutes break sometime in the afternoon to go for a walk, do nothing (my work has several small personal meeting rooms I can grab), read, or play dumb games on my phone.
posted by MillMan at 9:13 AM on December 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

We can't go to lunch with coworkers here because too many people have to work during lunch to cover phones and front counter. It is a HUGE effort to go to lunch with anyone and may only happen once or twice a year if you're lucky. I also generally need to leave the office or else people will keep asking me work questions. I have my own office now and when it's too wet to go out, I lock my door, but that doesn't stop some people.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:46 AM on December 18, 2019 [2 favorites]

I'm sure it all depends a lot on which sector of the work force you're looking at, but... hot food, salads and going out to lunch all sound pretty posh. Here in the Netherlands, sandwiches or rolls are the standard lunch food.
No one ever asks what's for lunch because we all know what's for lunch. Bread is what's for lunch.
posted by Too-Ticky at 9:52 AM on December 18, 2019 [8 favorites]

I think that geography and/or multiple time zones are factors. I work in an office in the Eastern Standard Time zone, but the main corporate headquarters for my company is in California. A meeting at 9 am PST is noon my time.
posted by tallmiddleagedgeek at 10:06 AM on December 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

There are obviously lots of situations that are going to prevent being able to eat a decent lunch, but if you are in the position to be able to do it, I believe strongly it's worth the effort. Particularly if you are in a managerial or supervisory role, try like hell not to eat at your desk. You may think it's just being 'efficient', but that behavior may be what keeps other more junior people from taking 30 or 45 minutes or whatever away from work, sitting down, and potentially getting to know their coworkers or just recharging for a while. Which in turn just makes your workplace that much shittier of a place to be.

And if you're a candidate looking at companies (and in a high-demand field where you're in a position to be choosy), definitely ask what people do for lunch when you're interviewing. It's a good indicator question of the culture. If you get a sort of vague "uhh, mostly we just eat at our desks", IMO that is a huge black mark and one sign of a toxic, 'busy' culture. Run away. A place where nobody has time to eat is no place you want to work, given a choice. Similarly, look at the break room or kitchen, and see how many seats it has relative to the number of employees. A small number of seats indicates that people are probably eating hurriedly, in shifts (or at their desks), or are going out to eat—nothing wrong with the latter, but it means if you want to bring your own food for financial or dietary reasons, you're going to be left out, so YMMV.

One of the upshots of a tight labor market is that some (again, in industries where employees are valued and in-demand) companies are starting to see the value of meal times; compared to other benefits you might use to woo potential hires, encouraging people to eat lunch together is relatively cheap. Unfortunately, once you have established the pattern of everyone eating at their desk, drooling crumbs into their keyboards, it's a tough one to break.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:18 AM on December 18, 2019 [13 favorites]

Is it that more people had an hour for lunch in the old days or did they have more than an hour?
posted by Selena777 at 10:24 AM on December 18, 2019

What a delightfully disruptive future we have ahead of us! I envision "food deli-ght depos" where customers can scoop up their own meals into containers -- priced only by weight, measured by an electronic scale! And eventually we'll have "mobile kitchens" that will prepare and sell meals right in front of your workplace!
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 10:33 AM on December 18, 2019

Is it that more people had an hour for lunch in the old days or did they have more than an hour?

No more than an hour, but definitely a full hour. That said, I had an employer who hated giving us that hour because, even though we were all salaried, they saw lunch hour as an hour they were paying us for and getting no work done through it. They viewed it as lost profit. CWaA, indeed.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:39 AM on December 18, 2019 [2 favorites]

My lunch hours double as social time and i would hate it if i no longer had that option. I have standing lunch dates Mondays and Fridays (both of which the tradition is more than a decade old) and a lunch meeting on Thursdays. It was a godsend to be able to see my friends during the day when my kids were younger and our evenings were filled with practices, games and homework. Now it is a time to catch up and get out of the office for awhile.

Definitely one of the perks of living and working in a small town!
posted by domino at 10:49 AM on December 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

Most healthcare providers I know spend their lunch scarfing down something mediocre from the hospital cafeteria while scrambling to finish chart notes. It's not something I would recommend, but it is one way to live.
posted by Lutoslawski at 11:05 AM on December 18, 2019 [3 favorites]

I get a lunch hour, used to go to lunch (expensive and the food gets repetitive quickly), but the conversation was generally cool and we were work friends, with all the (lack of) egalitarianism and equality that entails in terms of career advancement. Honestly now I prefer eating at my desk and internetting and zoning out, even if it is worse for my career.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:13 AM on December 18, 2019

What Have We Done To Lunch?

Late-stage capitalism

Solved in 2! Next post!
posted by briank at 12:04 PM on December 18, 2019 [2 favorites]

Oh hey, more work from Laura Shapiro, neat.
posted by clew at 12:10 PM on December 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

There's a novel from a few years back entitled Sad Desk Salad and, frankly, few other 3-word phrases have resonated so much with me.
posted by mhum at 12:15 PM on December 18, 2019 [2 favorites]

There's a novel from a few years back entitled Sad Desk Salad and, frankly, few other 3-word phrases have resonated so much with me.
That, and Sad Desk Lunch for me ...
posted by milnews.ca at 12:30 PM on December 18, 2019

Achievement unlocked: how to replicate all the essential features of indentured servitude and get away with calling it 'freedom'.
posted by jamjam at 12:38 PM on December 18, 2019 [4 favorites]

Is it that more people had an hour for lunch in the old days or did they have more than an hour?

I suspect it's a combination of both. Whenever I've gone out to lunch with co-workers (which I only did in the days of my youth when I didn't really consider the concept of budgeting) we were usually back at work without 40-45 minutes. Often the location is chosen based upon minimizing the combination of travel and wait time for that time of day.

But everytime that I've been taken out to lunch with a boss/manager, it's 90-150 minutes after leaving that we get back.

When it's just a cluster of workers, everyone wants to put in the effort to not steal time from the company. Well, more to the point, to not be seen as stealing time from the company.

But when you're with the boss, they set the pace. But as they also set the pace when you quickly pull you aside for a quick (couch: 30-60 minutes) question/conversation as you're literally on your way out of the building, it's not like you come out ahead. I send my wife an "I'm on my way home" email every night just before I leave my desk, and I've sent more "OK, that message before was a lie - I got grabbed by $Boss and am only now actually in my car." messages than times I've had an old-school power lunch.
posted by nobeagle at 1:10 PM on December 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

I often eat lunch at my desk, but I also spend it mucking around on the internet in general rather than working. Which I think is at least slightly less sad?
posted by rmd1023 at 1:11 PM on December 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

Seems like an appropriate place for this: The Norwegian art of the packed lunch, Matpakke - Most Boring Lunch in the world - Ever?

For me it seems to be more about location. When you can walk across the street to an International Food Court and eat something interesting a 30-45 minute lunch can be pretty nice. When you're stuck somewhere that would take you 20 minutes of travel just to get to somewhere to eat... not so much, might as well just pack something and eat at your desk and browse the internets.
posted by zengargoyle at 2:09 PM on December 18, 2019 [4 favorites]

A lot of my coworkers take a "real" lunch, but I definitely just grab food and eat at my desk. Since I have no fixed hours, spending less time at lunch means I can leave earlier, which is worth it. (I'm still working ~9 hour days, but better than 10!).
posted by thefoxgod at 2:35 PM on December 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

I had a conversation with a young person the other day when I recalled my first white-collar job, as an office junior in an insurance broker's office in 1997-1998. The extent of cultural change relating to work time and break habits really does push the imagination, at least in Australia anyway. The first one was smokos—I didn't smoke, but everyone insisted that I get the 15 minutes morning and afternoon break customary for that, a communal break for chatting, and it was almost a breach of faith with the rest of the office to keep working through. More odd to look back on now though was the alcohol: every lunch time, every single day, a good portion of the office would get in the lift, go down to the pub around the corner, and slam down as many schooners of beer as could be divided between eating a sandwich or a pie and the 45 minute allowed lunch break. It was completely normal, and not in the decadent luxuriation of expense-account lurk-merchantry you see on Mad Men, it was just an ordinary habit of work, and wasn't even commented on unless you were completely unable to do your job in the afternoon.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 2:49 PM on December 18, 2019 [4 favorites]

A lot of my fellow university faculty eat in the dining hall daily--there's usually a little table full of faculty at noonish every day. I personally find the dining hall food fine, but not something I want to eat every day, and by noonish I'm also often ready for introvert hibernation. Still, it's worth an occasional visit for the camaraderie and the all-you-can-eat dessert. Otherwise, it's a salad or sandwich brought from home while hiding in my office for me.
posted by hydropsyche at 2:59 PM on December 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

"Here, on Park Avenue South, a patron can order via an app, walk in, approach a giant green shelf system, find their custom $15 Thai chicken bowl, and leave without interacting with a single human,” writes Ryan Sutton, reviewing the incubator in Eater. The salad-servers who are available for interaction are trapped “behind a grid-like metal structure that rises toward the ceiling”

They've... invented the Automat?
posted by Mchelly at 3:15 PM on December 18, 2019 [7 favorites]

Similarly, look at the break room or kitchen, and see how many seats it has relative to the number of employees. A small number of seats indicates that people are probably eating hurriedly, in shifts (or at their desks), or are going out to eat

Hahahahaha, we have a table in the "break room" (also combination printer/scanner/storage room) that seats one person, and really isn't intended to actually sit in there and eat or use it as a break room. If you try to eat in there, everyone else wanders in and wants to put free food on the table, or free donation items, or use it to organize the scanning....

You gotta figure out where you're eating on your own.
posted by jenfullmoon at 3:20 PM on December 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

This has come up at my place of work recently. The older employees (partners - wait they're not employees - , directors, senior managers) were bemoaning why the newer employees don't go out to lunch together daily as is common at the higher levels and even on down into mid management. Why weren't we, the new staff, building the same work connections through lunch socializing and having drinks in offices?

I can only speak for myself, but I have a number of contracted hours (as do all but the partners at my firm). My contracted hours are above full-time and average to about 42 hours a week. If I want to take a lunch of even 45 minutes, that means my "at work" obligation increases to 45.75 hours a week. This does not take into account commuting which is about 45 minutes a day door to desk and back minimum (add 15 or so minutes during the winter). So there's 50 hours (rounding) a week (don't get me started on time spent on required grooming, etc for professional services). So ten hours a day, on average, where I have little to no control over where I am and extremely minimal control over what I do. This does not take into account the 30 or so minutes I feel I need to myself after work so as to not be an angry robot towards my partner.

So I skip lunch and drink a fairly nutritious smoothie everyday, and I take short breaks throughout the day to stay sane. That puts me at 45 hours a week on average and that's way more than enough. I don't want to stick around for drinks. I don't want to take long lunches. I want to go home.

I think part of the disconnect too is that these MadMen style lunches were happening at a time of de facto apartheid (still are?) and where more appropriated labor was benefiting lower levels of management. Why not take a long lunch and have a few drinks at the office after 5 when you're one of the privileged few able to exploit others for economic gain? As we can see, these types of situations are becoming fewer and fewer between as wealth continues to concentrate. Now more is expected of middle management. Their lunches are becoming the power lunches too. The equity holders insist!

Also I think most of the men I see take long lunches and having drinks at the office at the end of the day are avoiding their wives and children. For some I know this to be fact. I don't think I ever see the women at my firm taking long lunches.
posted by avalonian at 3:26 PM on December 18, 2019 [6 favorites]

When I started working in Paris in 1989, the standard lunch was one-and-a-half to two hours. There was never any food at all in the office, eating at your desk was seen as bizarre, and so everyone went out. A lot of the cafes around the office had reasonably cheap and amazing fixed-price menus that included appetizer, main course, dessert, a glass of wine and a coffee. I found that clearing my head over a long lunch made me a lot more productive in the afternoon than I was when I was doing 45-minute lunches in the US, and I got to know my coworkers much more easily because no one wanted to talk about anything connected to work over lunch. Even at a business lunch with a partner or a client, we would spend the whole lunch talking about non-work things, and only get to the point at the end over coffee.

A couple of years later, they opened a McDonalds near the office, and people started to go. I was mystified, but people told me that even though it cost about the same as a full lunch menu in a cafe, McDonalds was the only place in the neighborhood where they could get through lunch in under an hour when they had a lot of work to do.

Not long after, the local bakeries started selling takeout sandwiches, and by 1995 the famous two-hour French lunch had disappeared for everyone but the top management. Thinking back on it now, I realize how lucky we were, and understand why young people just say "OK Boomer".
posted by fuzz at 3:26 PM on December 18, 2019 [10 favorites]

Is it possible that early-to-mid-career coworker bonding (and drinking) has shifted from lunch to early evening happy hour, maybe as young people have more early afternoon meetings and fewer children?

Also, it seems like a lot of low-to-mid-level white collar workers see requests pile up until maybe a little after lunch, when things start to slow down? At least that's been my experience in a few different industries and cities.

Like, your boss gets in, talks to their boss or the client or whoever, and suddenly there are questions to answer and things to do, so you can't really disappear for an hour and come back smelling like vermouth and happiness. And then those things are done at 2 or 3, and your boss is in an afternoon meeting, and everyone relaxes a bit or even strolls to the coffee shop down the street.
posted by smelendez at 4:03 PM on December 18, 2019

I've heard that all Swedes get meal tickets that can be used at local restaurants. Any Swedes here that can confirm that?

At my former workplace we had an hour for lunch and a huge table in the middle of the office. Some days there would be office meetings during that lunch, and every single day we would discuss work issues. We weren't ever slacking. But it was a great way to bond with co-workers and catch up on things important or fun. Once or twice a year we'd have a glass of wine, if something great had happened. More often there would be cake.
Then we merged with another institution, and our new colleagues were invited in and quickly learnt to love the lunch hour. Except for the bosses. We should have known that was a bad sign, but our former boss was a bit shy and never said a word during lunch and that was no problem. He listened and he took our comments to heart.
The new bosses were different. And they found Quislings among us. We should have noticed who was eating at their desk. Or who was gossiping at the lunch table rather than discussing the intricate problems of textile production in East Asia. But we were so innocent. I've heard that today no one talks at that table, even if they eat there. I'm gone. I can see that productivity at that department is down to a fraction of what it was.
posted by mumimor at 4:15 PM on December 18, 2019 [1 favorite]

I almost never take a lunch. Kids and a 35 minute commute mean that I want to minimize the amount of time I am in the office. Fortunately my job allows us the flexibility to arrange our schedules how we see fit. In terms of culture, I much prefer this flexibility over an enforced lunch time with associated longer work day.
posted by scantee at 5:38 PM on December 18, 2019 [3 favorites]

Dutch point of reference. Company of 30, lunch is usually a few groups of 5-6 taking a ten minute walk to sandwich shops for a pair of €3-4 sandwiches, then a 20-30 minute walk around the city to stretch legs. Rare to have a sit down meal, but also extremely rare and (unless there's reason) relatively frowned upon not to leave the office for a bit to recharge.

... now I want another broodje kipkerrie...
posted by Seeba at 3:28 AM on December 19, 2019

> Swedes get meal tickets that can be used at local restaurants

Canadian living in Sweden here - I've never heard of that, it's less common here to have a company-provided lunch than say in Germany (or maybe NL). What I have seen is:

* Taking coffee breaks (15-30 minutes) together with your immediate team is still very strongly encouraged. Helps relax, build trust with your colleagues, and I suspect organize labor solidarity, comrades.

* Lunch is the restaurant meal, half-price specials are everywhere, because so many go out to lunch (relative to dinner at least). Having lunch away from your desk (30m-1h) is strongly encouraged, but lots of people seem to use it to stay in touch with their friends outside of their normal work teams.

* School lunch is free, and some schools near factories share a cafeteria. Workers pay for their lunch, and kids show their student card instead. The lunchroom is then a funny mix of factory workers and junior teenagers. Food fight?
posted by anthill at 5:53 AM on December 19, 2019 [1 favorite]

I work on a big corporate campus with multiple coffee shops, a bakery and three separate cafeterias. It's about a 10-15 minute drive to anywhere useful for a noontime break, so most people stay on campus for lunch. I seldom am away from my desk for a full hour, but I rarely eat a meal at it.
posted by emelenjr at 5:59 AM on December 19, 2019

mumimor, in France most companies will subsidise the building's restaurant meaning you can have a meal for about 3€, or offer 'ticket restaurant' which are vouchers that can be used in supermarkets and restaurants. Most of the people in my (American) company in Paris take the full hour for lunch.

jenfullmoon, we have a kitchen in the office with free food, and a restaurant as above, but I much prefer paying the 3€ and avoiding work questions while I'm eating!

The restaurant in my building (5-6 companies share) serves wine which I find crazy, but there are far fewer after work drinks than in the UK.
posted by ellieBOA at 7:41 AM on December 19, 2019

What a delightfully disruptive future we have ahead of us! I envision "food deli-ght depos" where customers can scoop up their own meals into containers -- priced only by weight, measured by an electronic scale! And eventually we'll have "mobile kitchens" that will prepare and sell meals right in front of your workplace!

The place I worked at in Atlanta actually did have this. It was actually really convenient since traffic meant that the only places to eat and get back in 45ish minutes was the mall or McDonalds. Sometimes people went out together, sometimes people ate at their desk, sometimes people went out alone. I did all three.

I now work for the same company in Germany and here absolutely no one eats at their desk (we have a cafeteria and free lunch). My company culture is even one to schedule lunch dates with coworkers. So lunch here is rarely a solitary activity. I (and a few other people I know) block their calendars at lunchtime for a day or two of the week just to be able to do their own thing. Also when I eat alone my lunch is much shorter than when I eat with others and so that means I can leave earlier.
posted by LizBoBiz at 9:01 AM on December 19, 2019

Oh my god, that reply from WeWork about the freezers is so deranged! i completely get why the author got obsessed. Knowing what we know more, of course, nothing could really surprise me about that place...
posted by en forme de poire at 11:27 AM on December 19, 2019 [4 favorites]

I'm eating my lunch right now. You all are my lunch date. We're at a real table and everything, by the way.
posted by The corpse in the library at 11:34 AM on December 19, 2019 [3 favorites]

I got my first job at age 16 in a large Fortune 500 company as a high school co-op. (I started full-time in the Summer right after my Junior year of high school, and then went part-time once Senior year started.) At that time lunch hour was a social thing, co-workers would always pop by and ask "Did you bring a lunch?" "Are you going out?", etc. But after a while, even at that young age, I discovered quite by accident that I preferred a solitary lunch (I'd had to replace the switchboard operator who'd called in sick, and didn't get relieved for lunch until late in the afternoon.) I'd bought a newspaper, walked a few blocks to a local fast-food outlet and spent an ambrosial 55 minutes enjoying my food while reading Ann Landers and doing the Jumble. No ringing phones, no having to listen to co-workers' endless stories about their kids, their dating life, office gossip, etc. As the years progressed and I worked at different companies, I often ate lunch at my desk (because they were small offices without "break" rooms) completely absorbed in my daily newspaper. Other than the occasional "special" occasion, lunch as a social event had lost its appeal for me.

(PS The first time in my life I ever got drunk was at that first company, when I was still a naive 16-year-old. My boss took me out for lunch as a "thank you" after I'd spent a week filling in at the switchboard. We went to a very elegant restaurant called the Stag & Hounds, and I was served alcohol without question [apparently because I was with a businessman/regular with an expense account]. I had a couple of Mai Tais, which were served in glasses the size of goldfish bowls and which tasted like sweet fruit punch. Had my first prime rib there as well. This was the late 1970s, and no one gave you a second glance if you came back from an extended lunch obviously loopy.)
posted by Oriole Adams at 11:57 AM on December 19, 2019 [2 favorites]