Check your local laws. In many states, there is no requirement that you take a lunch. There is no federal requirement for that either.
I’ve had employers tell me that that I legally had to clock out for a certain amount of time, but that’s bullshit. It might be company policy but it’s not a law.
Also, this applies to teens working too. The laws are bad. Found this out when Subway was making my 16 yr old niece work 9-12 hour shifts with no lunch break.
In California, you can only waive it if you work less than 6 hours. Otherwise, you need to take a lunch before the 5th hour hits. For overtime, you get a second (you can waive, they cant) meal period after your 10th hour.
America is not the norm, dude.
Again, check local laws, but in general you can be fired for cause (meaning no unemployment insurance eligibility) for violating company policy. So “legally” might be wrong but “had to clock out (if you want to keep working here)” might be accurate.
In “at will” states in the US, you can be fired without cause and without notice. So do your homework before you decide not to follow company policy.
This is false. You cannot be fired without reason, you can be fired for any legal reason which will vary from state to state, which may be more strict (for employers) than federal law.
“No reason” IS a legal reason to fire someone in an At-Will state (which is the entire US excepting Montana).
You can be fired without cause. That is in the literal definition of “At will”
I’ve always been in an “at will” state (Arkansas) and my more recent firing was without cause and without notice. But, since it wasn’t for cause, I was/am eligible for unemployment insurance.
I’m not claiming, because I can’t actually accept any job offer, due to the constraints of familial duties, and Arkansas requires you accept an offer when you on UI. (I think there are conditions where you can reject, but I’ve not read the statues, just the guidelines published by the relevant Arkansas government department, which aren’t that explicit.)
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Wait, there’s jobs where people don’t get payed for their lunch break? I thought that was a scary myth.
Yep, I work for a fortune 500 and I have to clock out for lunch.
Don’t you feel fortunate? /s
To quote the bird from the Flintstones “It’s a living”. Honestly I don’t hate my job, bored and annoyed with some stuff, but they treat us plebs with a fair amount of decency, plus they pay us decently compared to the rest of the industry.
Same.
Canada here, my lunch routine includes hitting up my digital “punch clock” (I work remote, but we have an app thing), then setting a timer to remind myself that my lunch is ending when I have about 2 minutes left on the clock. I then go and “enjoy” my lunch, and when my timer alerts, trudge back to my computer and press the “lunch is over” button.
To be fair, of the last 4 jobs I’ve worked, plus my current workplace, this is the only one that actually had a punch clock of any sort or variety. The rest just trusted that I took my lunch for an appropriate amount of time and took the normal amount off of my worked hours for the day.
My favorite workplace of the above set, paid me a set salary every payday, regardless of if I was in office, on vacation, sick, working partial days some days, or whatever. I’d always collect the same amount at regular intervals. They didn’t bother with all the micromanagement and complexity of counting the seconds on/off shift… Which is both good and bad, since that basically negates any overtime, but in all other circumstances, works in my favor. To be clear, OT/after hours/extra time working was rare, and not really something that happened.
I work IT support, so it definitely happened, it was just so rare that I couldn’t cite any specific circumstances when it happened.
Almost all jobs in America…
*Almost all non-salary jobs in America
You think most salary jobs aren’t giving you specific working hours these days, which generally span 9 hours a day but pay you based on 40 hours a week?
My god. You poor souls. Its illegal to do that here. Even the most demanding “squeeze every minute out of the worker” jobs don’t do that. 30 min out of your 8 hours is reserved for lunch and lunch is payed for by the employer (the food as well), by law. 8 hour shift effectively comes out to a maximum of 7.5 hours of actual work.
Yeah it used to be like that here, too. But billionaires have been attacking union power for decades to the point they were able to pull this bullshit
I work in The Netherlands, same thing. On the other side, I can skip lunch and leave earlier. Or can I have a longer lunch break. But I have to work 8 hrs net.
And I live in Canada and I can do the same!
One problem is that if others are dependent on you being there, this screws 'em. Guys at the other Lowe’s store did it all the time. By the middle of the afternoon the garden center was dead, who care’s if there’s only one guy for an hour?
requirements for doing your work efficiently cannot be considered out of work, including transport.
Sleep?
Half an hour?
Damn.
Breaks are unpaid because that was another way to minimize what workers have to be paid.
Businesses always look for ways to pay their employees less and only change practices when forced.
Without strong unions and support from politicians things tend to get worse and worse.
Too bad that we have neither.
There’s all kinds of legal murk with this.
If you don’t get a break and you make a mistake that injures or kills you or someone else, the employer is responsible.
If you “don’t get” a break, either by force or voluntarily (the reason actually doesn’t matter), then many places consider that to be… For lack of a better description (my brain can’t think of one right now): bad working conditions, and illegal.
Even if you voluntarily skip you break/lunch, the thin line between that being fine, or a problem for the company, is whether you want to hire a lawyer and make it a problem or not.
That’s liability that they don’t want.
I guarantee they couldn’t give any less of a shit whether you take your lunch/breaks or not, except for the fact that it could affect them.
I’m thankful for this, because bluntly, otherwise, they just wouldn’t give you a break at all. They would put it on the books as you working a 9 hour shift, and taking your lunch at the end of the day, but tell you that you are on an 8 hour shift that has no breaks. Since they can’t cover their ass like that, you get an unpaid lunch.
The unpaid part was the compromise to get the legislation passed so they don’t subject workers to inhumane conditions. Remember that the government is largely comprised of, or paid for by, businesses and business owners. So if it isn’t, at the very least “fair” to business owners, it’s not going to pass.
There’s also the problem that if your coworkers skip theirs voluntarily, then you feel pressured to do the same and it’s no longer voluntary. Breaks and lunch are legally required because otherwise you just don’t get them at all because of the legal murkiness you mention.
When I worked at Target about a decade ago, if you missed your break, YOU got written up. They’d been sued so many times for not giving breaks that they FORCED you to take a break or be written up for it. If you were within 10 minutes of working into your lunch break, you can bet your ass someone was on a walkie talkie telling you to get your ass out and stop working. At the time they loved 4h45m shifts because it gave them 15 minutes buffer before you had to take a lunch.
Yeah thats my job. If you have an incident and we check your vehicle logs and you arent taking your breaks its an automatic write up. Because nationally its been proven that drivers who DO take their breaks have less incidents.
I’m a salaried software developer. My first job was 8-5 with a lunch break that we had to take. I asked if I could take it at the start or the end of the day and was told, “No.” So my coworkers and I started playing board games 3-4 times a week during our lunch break in one of the offices. Mainly legacy games like Gloomhaven and Pandemic Legacy. The VP loved showing off the board game room to the interviewees to show that we like to have fun there.
I do miss that job sometimes because it was just raw programming. I was programming or writing SQL queries for over 30 hours a week. No AppSec, no lengthy review process, no bullshit (except the pay, which was ok for Mississippi).
When I worked for a big game studio, we had a clan, as did many of the other big studios in the country. Every lunch we’d join the same servers. Battlefield, TF2, StarCraft… good times. Well, good lunch times.
They let you out of your crunch cages?!
Thankfully, lunchtime is pretty well enforced by law in Australia… didn’t prevent the “reasonable overtime is included in your base salary” contract clause, where “reasonable” is defined by the publisher, though.
Wait, so you don’t eat for 8 hours?
No, I normally eat for about ten minutes.
That’s pretty quick.
I eat one big dinner each day, so I go around 23 hours between meals. It takes a little acclimation, but I don’t get “hangry” anymore and can go much longer without effect if something comes up and I have to delay eating.
I had dinner last night around 630pm. I’m not planning to eat anything until around 1pm today - and that might be optimistic. I subsist on sleep, coffee, and rage until then.
Intermittent fasting is a decent way to lose weight without thinking too hard about calorie counting. You stop feeling hungry during the day after a week or two.
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That’s not a problem at all. I’ve been intermittent fasting for almost 10 years now. Started with 36 hour fasts 3 times a week. Then eventually started following my shift work schedule. If I was evenings I’d eat breakfast and lunch, if I was days I’d only eat supper. Now I’m days only so I only eat supper.
My parents who are almost in their 70’s started doing it a few years back and they lost a ton of weight. The thing I love about fasting is it changes how you deal with hunger. My body being hungry doesn’t really phase me, I’m able to ignore it rather easily. I don’t get stomach aches or headaches. I can mentally tell myself that this is my fasting window and it makes it really easy to not eat.
It’s hard to explain without you actually doing it but it was one of the best choices I’ve made. I’ll never go back.
An american joke i am too european to understand
Lunch breaks are required by law, but they are not required to pay you when you take them. So when you work an 8 hour day, you are actually working an 8.5 hour day (8:30 - 17:00) with your .5 hour break at some point in the middle. The joke is basically the guy asking to work 8 hours straight and leave at 16:30 instead of 17:00 and management tossing him out a window.
German law also requires you to take a half hour break in the middle of a >6h work day.
It’s more about reducing fatigue and minimising workplace accidents than workers rights.
It hurts how true this is. 🥲
I still think it’s a good rule. Sitting on your ass for 8 hours straight isn’t healthy, so no matter the motivation it has positive consequences.
I don’t think so. Finnish labour laws at least specify breaks, paid and unpaid, can not be at the start or the end of the day. It wouldn’t be a break otherwise.
Classic Europeans on the Internet trying to make fun of [bad thing that happens in the US] without realising it also happens in Europe
If you work between 6 to 9 hours a day, you are entitled to a 30-minute break after no later than 6 hours. If you work more than 9 hours a day, the break is extended to 45 minutes. Labour law prohibits taking the break at the end of the day’s work in order to leave earlier.
As soon as your daily working time reaches 6 hours immediately, you must have a break of at least 20 minutes consecutive
The break is granted:
- Either immediately after 6 hours of work[, or]
- before this 6-hour period is completed
Employers can say when employees take rest breaks during work time as long as:
- the break is taken in one go somewhere in the middle of the day (not at the beginning or end)
- workers are allowed to spend it away from their desk or workstation (ie away from where they actually work)
American states set their own labour laws, but the ones of the state where I live (Oregon) are actually far more generous than comparable ones in Europe. I am entitled by law during an eight-hour working day to one 30-minute lunch break (not paid) and two additional 10-minute breaks (counts as time worked and is paid). Meaning I get 50 minutes of breaks in a day and the employer has to pay me during 20 minutes of those breaks. My employment contract actually gives me a 1-hour lunch break in addition to the two 10-minute breaks, which isn’t required by law but is not uncommon.
France goes even harder saying you aren’t even allowed to eat at your desk
Thats also in germany
If they let you take lunch at the end of the day to leave sooner that creates a loophole to say they gave you your lunch break without actually doing so
There’s no federal law in the US that requires them to give you a lunch break. My state doesn’t have one either.
If I recal, there are federal laws in the US that require breaks, just not specifically for lunch?
Nope! The only laws that really apply to those are which breaks are paid and which are not. If you are given any breaks, 20 minutes or less must be paid and count towards OT. Anything over can be off the clock.
My entire career, I got a one-hour lunch, and two, paid, ten-minute breaks.
I know some will say you’d rather not because that’s just more time at work, but with a one-hour lunch you can leave work, that’s the whole point. It’s a real break. One hour is enough time to go to a restaurant, or you can eat at work, and take a short walk. Half-an-hour is barely enough to time to eat and use the bathroom.
I guess what I’m saying is unionize.
That’s why we use the bathroom before or after lunch. ;)
the boss makes a dollar,
I make a dime.
that’s why I shit on company time.
Or live in a state that doesn’t screw you over. 1 hr lunch, two 15 minute breaks for 8 hour shift. Or half hour lunch minimum required after 6 hours work.
This is with or without union.
Being on the clock for lunch is a terrible idea. I like my own time thanks.
In my state in my career path at least the lunch is just used to keep is there for longer operational hours. They want us there 9 but pay for 8 and say we have an hour lunch, that way we’re 8 to 5 instead of 9-5.
With or without, that right is still due to Union actions my friend
Agreed
Seriously though, I really hate that managers hate employees leaving early. Just how controlling do you want to be? Employees are not kids.
It’s about power.
That just goes to show how fragile power is.
I lead small teams doing construction/remodel type work.
It gets real screwy when people start leaving at different times. Those who take lunch end up stuck with extra clean up or fixing last minute issues that pop up.
It also sucks when the office folk leave early and we’re stuck in the field with questions or issues that they need to decide on.
Once in a while, it doesn’t matter, but every day of people working slightly different schedules gets annoying.
For independent work, yeah its ridiculous people are forced to work specific hours for no reason.
In my experience when you loosen the restrictions on specific starting and ending times you get some people who prefer earlier and some people who prefer later and most people will probably be pretty close to traditional most of the time to maintain cooperation across large groups. Sometimes they call it ‘core hours’ when formalizing it in da rules. When most people are working independently then you can get rid of even that.
Yeah just takes a little extra planning. I start an hour earlier than the rest of my team but they know that so they make sure to cover anything they need from me before I leave for the day (usually, sometimes we’ll have a vendor call or something I have to stay late for but it’s fine). On the other hand I’m there to catch most issues before most of the other employees arrive and start calling us.
That’s why most places use “core hours” for varied schedules.
If you need collaboration then you do it from 10 AM to 2 PM. Everyone works those hours whether you leave early, or come in late. Any meetings should happen in those times.
This isn’t a difficult problem to solve.
If you can’t regularly get your job don’t with a few hours of not having immediate assistance - I feel like you probably need to rethink your processes, or who you’re employing.
I’ll be a bit less vague, my job involves installing various equipment systems that are designed/programmed by the office people.
Part of the process is testing and bug fixing, nothing in life goes perfect. Install typically takes 4-6 hours, with time allotted for a few hours to test and configure being at end of day. We are often at the mercy of the business hours of wherever we work, so install typically doesn’t begin until 8am.
When its 3pm and the job is supposed to be done by end of day and some technical issue pops up (typically client wants a change, or sometimes we all make a mistake) if the guy who programmed the electronics went home at 2, the job won’t get done.
As I said, once in a while people leaving early is fine, if we have to return to a job we will. But if we have to do that for every single one, we’d never get anything done.
Some jobs require assistance because that’s how life works. not everyone is a computer genius.
But then you phone them at 14:00 and they’ve already left
In California, when you take your lunch is also mandated by the law. So even if your employer was okay with the idea, you still have to take it before your 5th working hour.
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I think that’s a common US blue state issue. NY is the same. Mandated 15-min, and lunch breaks every few hours, but still “At-Will”
Yep. While negotiating our last CBA I brought this up as an option. The union told me we’re not even allowed to voluntarily wave our lunch break.
Well then it’s not yours. And it should be paid. If the labour regulations say you have to take an unpaid break, the labour regulations are bad.
Step back and think about why that regulation exists to begin with. No one said it’s perfect but it’s better than what was.
Interesting, in Ohio you have to clock out before the 6th hour.
It used to be 5th hour about a decade ago but DeWine be DeWining
Well that makes sense, pro business DeWine does something that hurts the workers.
