Time to go to my car for my lunch break

Hahahaha, I'd be forwarding that straight to Dept of Labor

Cool, so since I only took 20 minutes for lunch, I'll be heading home 40 minutes earlier.

"It really doesn't look good for you to take your break during your break time, so please avoid taking breaks during your break."

-- Someone that clearly hasn't worked in a while

Brenda, fuck you.

Time to take 30 minutes to eat your sandwich.

"support your work family"

RUN AWAY!

Hi Brenda,

I wanted to reach out regarding a small observation I made in your last email. In telling me how to spend 30 minute meal break and encouraging me to cut it short for the company's benefit, you violated US labor law.

Let's correct this behavior and try to be more mindful of that "our company is not above the law" spirit so we can keep your momentum going in the right direction. :-)

Eric

P. S. I will be retaining this communication in case this remains an issue. Thanks :-)

Hi Brenda!

Thank you for your enthusiasm in squeezing my tight knit work family, even tighter ❤️

I will be saving this email for my wrongful termination lawsuit 🤤

Let's keep things going in the right direction, and follow the law 🤣

Mental

I leave the building and go for a walk by the river. Usually watch the ducks for a bit.

I have dealt with someone's concern of "optics" where I'd take my team for morning coffee and it'd make our room empty so we looked lazy. They suggested we go two at a time.

I used to do that and nobody batted an eye. I guess my coworkers were slightly better than Eric's though.

Also it was technically illegal lol

This is too rage-inducing to be real ... Right?

And I would CC Brenda on the forwarded email

A New Optimization Opportunity

Depending on the state/country, that would be a very juicy lawsuit or just par for the course.

Correct.

If this is real, I'm bigger than Ron Jeremy.

This is clearly a meme, but the culture is real. I don't advocate communism because it has its flaws, but assuming it wasn't abused the same way capitalism/imperialism is, it would be an upgrade.

They'd also complain if you skipped lunch and left an hour early.

Hah, why would you quit? You are a made man now, because if they fire you anytime soon you have a slam dunk lawsuit.

Have lawyer write Brenda a letter and then crop dust her cubicle every morning while making aggressive eye contact.

People who have time to worry about "optics" aren't doing anything important.

But... we bring you loooooovvveee...

You guys know this shit isn’t real, right?

It absolutely is. At my first job one of the owners complained that I was sitting and reading a book during my lunch break. They said the same thing about bad optics, and insisted I couldn't read during my lunch break. I brought in bigger books after that.

Lol this but CC your state labor board

This reads like someone collecting momentum to fire OOP anyhow.

And that's why you retain the email. Establishing a pattern makes the specific language less important, although in this case there's a pretty clear implication that the employee will be punished for using their full meal break.

Yeah this. Imagine Brenda hovering over you, pointedly checking the time.

She did also say "correct this behaviour" which is the corpo way of saying "do it or else"

When I was 16 I worked at Walmart. I was a smoker, and took my break in the indoor smoke break room, I mention that because my manager didn't smoke, and so we rarely saw her. I would eat my lunch while listening to books on tale through headphones/Walkman.

After about 6 months my manager started smoking again, and she made me stop listening to my books on tape and claimed it was unprofessional and the optics were bad.

Optics for fucking who? It's an indoor break room! No customers are seeing me. I'm on a fucking break. But no. Signs went up, no headphones in the break room. No books in the break room. It was fucking awful.

Is this stuff actually real? I’m in the UK and our office installed an outdoor heated seating area to encourage people to stop sitting at their desks during their breaks purely because they don’t want us to work for the hour.

Imo the move is to respond with a clarifying question about whether the hr person is asking them to cut breaks short while reiterating that asking them to do so is a violation of labor law and document the hell out of it.

If it happens again, then make a complaint with labor. This shows that you are operating in good faith and giving the company a chance to correct before going nuclear, which further strengthens your case if you do have to report.

Sometimes the hr person is just an idiot. I've seen suggestions like this before and it turned out the hr person literally didn't know you can't just arbitrarily deduct wages without explicit permission from the payee (and in some states, not even then).

I'm not saying it's airtight. But the pattern of 'recommendations' certainly helps. It convinced a judge in my friend's wrongful termination case at a big box retailer.

If you were in a jury box and were shown just this message and a note about how he was fired two months later for "not being a team player" you'd infer the intent and vote to hold the company liable for wrongful termination.

Corpospeak keeps a "work through lunch" message from being a self-evident labor law violation even if no adverse action occurrrd. They don't disguise intent if those later bad actions occur

In my state there is no legal requirement for any break whatsoever for adults -_-

If they are offered however, 20 minutes or less are required to be paid, and no matter the amount of time, if you are expected to do anything (answer phones, emails, monitor equipment, etc) then that break must be paid. But when and how long you take a break, if at all, is completely up to the company :(

So if this were in my state, whether this would be allowed or not would be entirely dependent on what company policy on breaks is, and I'm sure they would've written that to benefit themselves

(Ohio)

Fucking surveillance bullshit.

Perhaps they should hire more people to "support the work family" and fire the fucking corporate morality agency employees

This specific email from Brenda is most likely a fictional version of something that does actually happen fairly regularly. There are laws in many countries and even in some US states mandating breaks because of companies or leadership or HR encouraging them to never stop working.

I thought for sure you were wrong and that Federal law mandated breaks and lunch. But fucking hell, nope. I'm glad don't live in a red state. We have breaks and lunch required by law, and at least a decent minimum wage.4 hours=paid break. 6 hours = paid break and unpaid lunch. 8 hours has 2 paid breaks and lunch. There's some exceptions, like farm work. And if you can't leave your job and have to take a working lunch. But then they have to pay you for it.

My workplace tries to encourage short breaks in subtle little ways and to eat in the cafeteria. And I thought that was obnoxious.

Particularly in countries that allow employers to force arbitration clauses on employees. You don't get a jury, you get an "impartial" arbitrator paid for by the company.

Because the company knows it can settle to avoid the Discovery process.

Hahahaha

Ianal but "voluntarily" taking a shorter lunch break is still illegal in some states. In my state, my boss would get in trouble if it could be proven that they knew I wasn't taking the full, mandatory 30 minutes.

"I don't know how to read so it looks bad if you do"

"I have to eat super slow. Doctor's orders. Since no special accommodations are required to meet my medical needs, your not legally entitled to see documentation. Sorry Brenda."

That was the first thing that jumped out. If anyone said that to me, I would be sending out resumes during that 30 minute break.