I have been put into a sour mood. Twenty minutes into the official start of business, my manager calls me into his office. I got chewed out, because I had left at 4:55 p.m.; a spineless, high-maintenance teammate needed* wanted to get in contact with me, and when he couldn’t get ahold of me on my office line, instead of calling my work cell phone, which he has done so in the past, he instead called my manager to inform him that I had apparently left unreasonably early.
*“need” would imply it was something important and essential, but rest assured this particular matter was not
I used the phrase “official start of business” in the preceding paragraph to emphasize the fact that despite more or less starting my workday getting chewed out, I had actually been in the office closer to forty minutes. This is often times the case, that I arrive to the office earlier than 8:00 a.m., because I’m generally of the work ethic that “early is on time and on time is late,” and for whatever reasons, the county schools down here aren’t on any sort of schedule, so I like to leave early to compensate for the various times in which I might get stuck behind a school bus, so that I am not actually late.
Aside from arriving to work early on a regular basis, something else that I do regularly is that I eat lunch at my desk. Part of this is due to the fact that my office does not actually have any seating in the break room, which I’m now pondering if it such is something of a labor violation in some capacity in itself. But while at my desk, it’s not like I’m going to close all my meticulously positioned windows and applications, and frivolously surf the internet on a Big Brother-monitored connection; if emails come in, I’m going to engage them, and if I’m in the midst of a good working flow, I’m going to continue working, to maximize my productivity.
In a perfect world, I would prefer arriving early and leaving at a correspondingly earlier time. I would rather not be so nickel-and-dimed about lunch breaks, and let me work through a burst of productivity, or allow me to have a longer lunch if it’s necessary. But we all know what’s said about perfect worlds.
So I’ve established the fact that on any given day, I’m typically giving more than the traditionally-expected eight-hour work day, towards a 40-hour work week. If I were to actually exert the effort to nickel-and-dime my time, or if I worked hourly, where every fraction of a minute counted, then it’s safe to assume that I probably put in closer to nearly 44-46 working hours on a consistent basis.
But leaving five minutes early? That’s a reprimand.
Needless to say, if I weren’t salty about getting chewed out, I wouldn’t be brogging about it in the first place.
Basically, I’m already generally displeased with my job, but this recent episode raises the temperature just a little bit more. No longer, do I wish to work for free, and give my office any more time por gratis than I am required to provide. As much as I would love to find the magic equation to leaving my house to get to work at precisely 8:00 a.m., my erratic sleep habits and the unpredictable school bus schedule aren’t really going to make me alter my commuting schedule, so the solution appears to be in the lunch break. Even though I think lunch breaks have the potential to be counterproductive, when they interrupt a solid flow of productive work, I’d rather not forfeit my time for free any more than I already have.
The problem is, finding a happy medium manner in which to consistently have a lunch break, where I can feel like I’m successfully getting away from the office, yet not wasting too much of it, appears to be like finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.
However, I simply don’t know what to do with my forced lunch break. Regardless of what suggestions exist on the internet on how to take good lunch breaks, not everyone’s circumstances are conducive to being able to do the same things as a New York blogger/office slave is capable of doing. Not to mention that I’m a creature of habit that prefers some consistency and routine, so the more activities are reliant on variable factors, the less appealing they are to me.
In some cases, an hour is too much time, because it’s encroaching on my productivity, and then an hour is too little time, to relax or run errands, on top of actually eating lunch.
My current circumstances are that I work in an office building that is kind of out in the sticks, relatively speaking. There are a few amenities nearby that accommodate the ability to acquire food, but there’s not much in terms of convenience in finding means to kill time. As much as tons of people wish they could be better about bringing their own lunches to the job, that doesn’t always happen, resulting in the necessity to go out and acquire food from the nearby grocery stores or the small variety of restaurants I deem worth grab-and-going to. However, in the nickel-and-dime game of time, these are all valuable minutes which are ticking away from the overall lunch break, where we could be decompressing and relaxing.
Not to mention, I’m not particularly hurting terribly over money, but I’m fairly conservative with my daily expenses, and although it seems like a good idea, I don’t really want the unpredictability in time and money consumption trying out every single restaurant in my surrounding area.
There’s absolutely nothing remotely nearby worth investing the game of minutes necessary to kill some time with. No parks, lakes or walking trails where I could anxiously explore while counting minutes until I have to get back to my unpleasant working conditions.
Going on walks is an often suggested idea, but it’s dependent on the weather. In the winter, it might be too cold, which doesn’t bother me frankly, but in the summer it’s too hot, and I don’t want to return to the office all gross and sweaty. If it rains at all, the activity is outright nixed, and then I’d be downtrodden on being denied my desire to adhere to routine. It’s not a bad idea, but the variable nature of weather conditions makes it less appealing to me.
Driving around is also an option, but going back to the money thing, sure it’s (knock on wood) not exactly 2009 with their $4/gallon gas prices right now, but at the same, it’s still a far cry from 2001 and their sub-$1/gallon gas prices. Not to mention that I try to be a little more conservative with putting unnecessary miles on my car, back from when I somehow managed to squeeze out 100,000 miles in three years. Additionally, the area around me is absolutely crawling with senior citizens in automobiles that like to wander out and about between the hours of 11-2, so driving around here is sometimes an arduous chore.
As for my building itself, I’ve stated that my office does not have a break room that can actually be sat in. The front lobby is not large, and is the pathway to and from the restrooms. I’ve already stated my general line of thinking is getting away from my actual desk, so that the temptation to give free work time is outright eliminated. I could possibly hide in a conference room, and read a book or surf on my phone, but if any colleagues suddenly need to use them, that would be a pain. Unfortunately, there’s also nowhere else in the building that has a lobby or waiting room where I could escape for a little bit either.
I can’t help but think back to some of the cush places I’d worked in, in the past where I had some truly great ways to utilize my mandated lunch breaks, and then eat at my desk while working, and feel melancholy. Once, I worked in the Queen Building, and I deliberately parked in the lowest level of the parking garage, where it was underground; and I would take hour-long naps. It was remained cool enough in the summer, and I literally had a blanket in my car for when I did similarly in the wintertime. Once, I worked in an office that had an entire wing of the building, completely abandoned in preparation for moving. Left behind were all sorts of executive furniture, including couches; needless to say, I managed to catch up on Z’s there as well. And then there was my previous job, which had the gym I went to every single working day; I’d probably never been in better shape than when I did that.
I miss each and every one of those options, compared to the conundrum I have now of wanting to find an effective way to feel fulfilled with my required lunch breaks.
Seriously, lunch breaking is apparently a skill in itself. As much as utilizing leisure time, and spending money.
Ultimately, this really amounts to just general unhappiness with my job currently, and coping with the defiant emotions of having been chewed out in the first place. There’s no guarantee that substantial changes will actually occur, as much as I’d like to state effort in wanting to do so, but I really am a creature of habit. The less I have to think about things like “where should I go spend my lunch break today?” and shit along that sort, the generally more content I wind up.
But seriously, getting chewed out for five fucking minutes? Give me a god damn break.
