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I bring a lunch and eat at my desk. (In my own office with a door.) We do not have a break room - everyone has their own office. I put on my headphones and watch something on Amazon Prime to try to escape a bit. Sometimes I do still answer my phone or reply to emails - depends on who it is from - other times I let them go to voicemail or wait until after lunch to return them, so sometimes I do end up working through lunch even when not intended.
I prefer to be able to disengage from what I'm doing and actually leave the site and take a true mental break from whatever I'm working on, but only if there is a sufficient window of time to do so. I loathe rushing around. If leaving for lunch entails doing it in a rush, count me out. Lunch is a break, not something to be stressfully crammed in. In that case, I'd rather just find a quiet place onsite to decompress in and not be tasked with doing anything.
When I taught, lunch was shoveled in while standing up, supervising students. No duty-free lunch. Blah.
Me, too. When I was a employee, I packed a lunch and water, and a nice warm blanket, and took off to the park to eat and read and decompress. The blanket kept me clean from dust and leaves and toasty in the cooler weather. When weather was really bad, I had a number of delis to go to. I budgeted for lunch out.
On a rare occasion I went to lunch with coworkers.
But I really needed that hour away, and my coworkers respected that.
I work from a home office most days, so I usually just prepare a quick sandwich to eat. Sometimes, if the mood strikes, I’ll go out. I have to take clients out on occasion also, so we play it by ear, in terms of a venue.
There are a couple of food courts and food trucks on campus, but I always bring lunch from home. I either eat outside or in my car, because its my only "alone time" to read or go for a walk. I was eating in my cubicle all winter, but one of my co-workers has boundary issues and likes to ask me work-related questions if I am there during lunch, so I'm glad the weather is getting nicer again.
I've used to eat in my car a couple of times during lunch breaks when travelled somewhere on business or leisure and understood that this was a bad idea since the food smell transmits to the car interior and crumbles fall off. So the car might become messy in a time. As for you coworker who intrudes your personal boundaries asking you job questions while you eat, I'd like to say this is one of the reasons many people prefer not to eat at their desk.
I like to sit in my car and people watch. Always good for a laugh or two. It`s amazing watching how people park, and as they walk by you get to see how they dress, and the shoes they wear. Sometimes I cringe, and say how in the heck can they spend the day in those shoes....oops, getting OT
I don't know what OT means yet I'm surprised you spend your lunch hours this peculiar way.
Most often I go to lunch to our eatery on the first floor of our office building. The second place in terms of frequency is taken by the lunches from home placed in plastic containers. When I do so I eat in the small kitchen on our floor in the office. Rarely if I neither lunch in our eatery nor take food from home I go to the nearest groceries to buy some food.
Most of my coworkers, who don’t take their food from home, go to lunch together in small groups to the eatery in our office or somewhere else. I prefer to go there alone though. I don’t get much of a joy eating together with someone else. It distracts me from the process of eating and having pleasure from food.
What is your attitude towards lunches on job?
I bring my lunch and eat it alone in the lunch room. Sometimes, someone is there and we do not speak. Sometimes we do. My preference largely depends on my mood and who is in there with me.
I had a similar problem, but I wasn't willing to walk all the way out to my car just to avoid my coworkers. So I printed out a sign that said "On my lunch break. I'm not really here. I'm just a figment of your imagination. I will return at 1:00" and I tape it above my head during my lunch hour. When a coworker approaches with a question, I don't even turn around. I just point to the sign and keep eating.
It sounds like a way out, but I wonder if it is not easier just to walk out to breakroom instead of fencing off the annoying questions and phone calls? Back in the day I worked in some company where there were too many tasks. It was terrible. We locked our office door and hung a sign that stated it is a lunch hour, but some of our coworkers could care less. They knocked on door or phoned us saying it is urgent that we deal with their issues. So it was no pleasure eating in such a state.
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