The following Q&A turned up on my Quora feed this morning. I’m of two minds about it. “Yes,” the employee lunch break should be inviolable in the sense that it is impermeable by management. But, “No,” this is ridiculous that a manager could ask a work-related question, or make a work-related remark, during lunch break. Here it is:
My employee has begun setting his or her phone on "personal" mode during his or her lunch break. I do not find this acceptable. Should I fire them?
This exact issue was decided in a U.S. Federal court about 18–20 years ago. If an employee does not get an uninterruted lunch break, be it 30 minutes or 60, the employee is entitled to full pay for the entire period. If an employee is on their lunch break, a manager walks by and asks a question related to the business, operations or not, the employee gets paid for the entire lunch. As a senior manager for a large healthcare company, we set policy and trained managers to have every employee take a full 35 minutes lunch, preferably away from the workplace, in the company cafeteria or department breakroom and all supervisors and above were trained not to engage the employees on any work related manner during that time. Non business related conversations such as sports interests, a family event, etc. were permissible. By the way, the most difficult challenge was the motivated emloyees that only wanted 15 minutes for lunch and wanted to return to the job too soon. So go ahead and engage the employee, I suspect the lawsuit woud win backpay for all lunches taken in a 2 year period ( the statutory limits of a civil action) as well as compensatory and punitive damages. So budget about 2 years salary for every employee you treat this way. Can I get an application? [answer from Roger Walker]
As you might imagine, this reply has attracted a good many comments. I’ll give you two of them:
James McGuire· Aug 20
That must be a state statute. Federal guidelines don't specify that any sort of break must be given. Only that IF any sort of break is given it MUST be at least 20 uninterrupted minutes, or it must be paid.
Mind, I am not challenging the truth of what you are saying, just making an observation. State Laws can require MORE than federal but not less. Here in Missouri they go with mirroring federal law. And it sucks.
John McElroy · Aug 24
You are correct. Person most likely citing California Supreme Court case. State Law. Federal law has no mandated required break or lunch. But if state has no applicable laws then info you list above is correct per DOL US Dept of Labor.
This sort of thing is why the modern world is piled high with regulations and the courts are clogged adjudicating insane minutiae. And yet in a world with Elon Musks in it...don’t subordinates deserve some protection? Sure, you can say, “but no one who’s that protective of their time would work for Musk,” but just what do you mean by “work for Musk”? Be his direct report? Or, rather more loosely, work some job at a Musk-run organization?
I mean, it’s one thing if management intervenes on someone lunch break once in five years. It’s something else if it’s constant, two, three, four, even five times a week.
I don’t know just what to think. Yes, the world is complicated and messy. What do we do about it? What happens when work roles are increasingly ceded to AIs? Will AIs insist on having time to themselves? Yes, I know, an oft-cited advantage of AIs is that they are machines, and machines don’t care about such things. Are you sure about that? Should we let AIs adjudicate these matters, take up the slop and slack?
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