Lunch Time - Another Chance to Lose Time!!

Lunch is such a simple concept.  You go to the time clock, punch out and then disappear for a certain period of time…or so it should be…but it really isn’t…

The simplest times were back in the Woolworth days.  If you worked at least 6 hours, you were entitled to a 15 minute break and a ½ hour lunch or no lunch if you didn’t want it.  If you worked 8 hours or more, you were entitled to an hour lunch and two 15 minute breaks during the day.  Most days this worked out perfectly, but there was the occasional snag that kept me from getting both 15 minute breaks, but I looked at it as “no big deal”.

HQ never really mattered for a lunch break because I was never there long enough to even get one.  I believe I got only 1 during the whole 7 weeks I was with the company and it was a ½ hour in length.

Staples, however, had their own rules and then even violated them.  Here is how it all started:

When I was first hired at Staples, the break and lunch procedures were similar to Woolworth’s.  At least that was the way it was supposed to work in concept, but in practice it NEVER worked out that way.  Why?  The reason has more to do with scheduling (another future post) than with my need for a break.  Usually I started my day at 1pm in the afternoon.  The management told me that I should take a break around 3pm to get one in before I went to lunch.  My lunch period was usually scheduled at 4pm because the other day cashier left at 5pm so I had to get it in before they left.  Of course, having a break less than an hour before my lunch not only was stupid but unfair as well.  Nobody else in the store had to do anything that stupid..only me because of the scheduling of help.  So usually I ended up not taking a break before lunch at all.  To make matters worse, depending on the scheduling, I never got a break later in the night either.  Certainly, there was NO fairness in all this, not only that but it wasn’t legal either.  I felt no need to complain because the management didn't want anything to do with the problem nor did they want to concern themselves with it.  Since there was no human resources person in store anymore, my complaint would go nowhere. 

To make matters worse with the company, about 6 years into my employment with the company, Staples made a major change in scheduling.  Employees would now only get a ½ hour lunch break instead of the previous hour break.  The time employees worked during the day was cut back to accommodate this lunch schedule shift.  So now a situation that was bad got worse, a lot worse.  In fact, the store manager at the time Terence told me one night “don’t expect to ever get another night break ever again…I just don’t have the staff to cover it”. 

At this point, I thought this was a HUGE mistake, not only on personal level, but a legal standpoint as well.  I don’t think Terence realized the implications of what he said at all, but given it was just another stupid thing coming out of his mouth, it didn’t surprise me.  It was then I had decided to make a change, one that they would have to accept to be somewhat fair to me.  I told them that I wanted to take a 15 minute break along with my lunch break (total time gone 45 minutes), so that I would get at least one of my breaks.  Terence reluctantly agreed to this and it remained in effect during the remainder of my employment with the company despite being hated by the future management.

Throughout my entire employment with Staples, I figured that I was probably cheated out of about 100 hours of breaks that were entitled to me.  Certainly, nobody ever care that I ever got breaks, but eventually it came down to that management didn’t care whether or when anybody got breaks.

Interview Section:

Why did you not report the unfair treatment of breaks with the Department of Labor?

Certainly, that came across my mind a few times.  I just didn’t really feel that I wanted to make a bad situation worse by reporting the issue and chances were that Staples would have said it was MY choice not to take breaks, not a scheduling problem.

Terence seems like such a jerk.  Don’t you think he regretted saying what he did?

I don’t think Terence ever regretted anything he ever said.  He was just way too stupid to know what he was ever doing.

It seems that when Staples changed from an hour lunch to a half-hour lunch break, they also cut back employees work schedules as well.  Is that true?

Yes, they did.  And not just to compensate for the half-hour, but a complete scaling back of work hours.  I will discuss this in my next post. 

Next Up:  Full-Time or Part-Time:  Scheduling Makes All the Difference (or Does It?)