Lunch Is For Wimps

was recently asked to do a little bit of writing as part of an application for a job and I thought I would put that piece of writing to good use and hopefully by putting it further out into the universe it will bring me closer to the job. It's worth a try right?

Anyway - here it is.


A phrase made famous my Gordon Gecko (Michael Douglas), Lunch is for Wimps, has sparked many thoughts and debates around the illusive lunch hour.

Back in the day a lunch hour was just that – a full hour where employees were given the chance to have a leisurely lunch, catch up with colleagues and simply relax. The logic behind lunch hours being that workers would happily return to work rejuvenated and ready to push themselves for the rest of the day.

Times are however changing and a lunch hour is commonly more like a lunch half-an-hour. In fact, studies show that 55% of workers are taking less than 30 minutes for lunch each day.

Many people wrongly think that this deteriorating lunch hour is due to mean employers forcing their workers to sit at their desks and starve, when in fact studies have shown that a shorter lunch hour is often at the hands of the hungry employees themselves.

Employees are beginning to see lunch hour as a dispensable luxury – by skipping lunch they are giving themselves more time to work and produce results. They feel that they are proving their loyalty to their employer, and in today’s world where everyone is doing whatever needs to be done to fight their way up the corporate ladder, this is just one more way of getting ahead.

But is desk-top dining really improving productivity? Just because you are physically sitting at your desk for 9 hours a day does that mean that you are working to your full potential for those 9 hours?

To give my two cents worth and as a “lunch at my desk” culprit, I can say that those extra sentences typed between mouthfuls can be crucial but it has also been proven that sunlight and fresh air are healthy additives to any work day. Standing up from your desk every now and then, if not to keep the blood flowing, might delay an email response for a few minutes but I’m sure employers would rather have healthy workers instead of emaciated corpses with bad circulation.


Victoria Maltby
Thursday, July 08, 2010