Your work breaks

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Hahahaha

Rubbish!!!! Ive tried that and it hasn't worked for me

I tend to browse on these forums on and off while at work and I recentley quit smoking...

so my new addicition is Cert Forums!!!!!!

 

Current job we eat usually when hungry at our desk.

Sometimes the best times to troubleshoot / get things done are when people are at lunch/break.

So basically no breaks/lunches (although its meant to be 30 minutes) we just browse the news/websites/email and have a tea/eat throughout the day and it probably amounts to about 30 mins.

 

Breaks are always a bone of contention, specially in my place!

I work 10-7(ish, often a bit earlier) every day and take my hour break at 1-2 dead on.. I also wander downstairs for a bit of fresh air / break from the phones every now and then aswell but I don't smoke anymore..

There is however one person who does smoke and takes so many fag breaks a day I decided to time his total fag break daily total - it came to over 3 HOURS!!!!!! and that is every day, he often goes down 2 or 3 times per hour, at least 10 mins per fag break...

 

That is absolutely obscene. Don't you have any management there? I'd 86 his ass within a week if I managed him.

 

the only "mangement" is actually the owner of the company who is in the office all day, and often complains about how this person is "always downstairs", whenever I have mentioned it to him before he just says "I'm not going into discussions about it" or some words to that effect, he's just a wuss basically... Hence me wanting to leave

 

Maybe a way round this problem is to get your boss to give people official breaks, rather than tolerate people going out as and when they feel like it. Hopefully Smokey Joe will socially comply, if not bossman has a perfect reason to "get into discussions about it" with the aforementioned chimney.

 

Smokers allways take the mick wherever i have worked if they can!

Specially when working in manufacturing industry. I was I.T. there but so many people from diff deps just went off and took the p*** but a good way of socialising and gossip was the fag break

 

Wow thats a lot of wasted time. If I was his boss he would be warned and then sacked as he is clearly having a laugh. As for me I take around 20 mins for lunch and go for a walk and might take another 5-10 mins to stretch my legs depending on what I'm doing through the day. I think it's hard having set times in the job I do but as long as you don't take the @@@@ then I'm free to do whatever I want for breaks.

 

Yep ol' smokey joe is definitely taking the p*ss - I have previously complained to my boss about this amongst his other countless flaws which cost the company time / money, but the only way he would do anything was if I submitted formal complaints about him, which would have made the atmosphere worse than it is! So he obviously isn't willing to do anything about it, hence no one bothers saying anything any more, he seems content to just put up with the old fossil 'til he retires in a few years time... I'm just going to leave as soon as I get a new job

 

Sounds like your best out of there. My first job was a bit like that in the sense my manager and senior engineer (I use those titles loosly) used to go and get hammered at the pub and I had to cover for them which I didn't like as it put me on the spot when people asked where dumb and dumber were. In the end sometimes it's just best to cut your losses and go.

 

Trust me been trying to leave for years lol.. but difficult finding a job, specially seeing as I am trying to break into IT so I just keep my head down and try not to let it annoy me too much, one day I will be free!! And never look back

 

Hmm interesting thread
I don't think I've ever worked anywhere that I couldn't just slip out for a few minutes whenever I chose to do so
I don't even have to work 40 hours anymore, as long as my jobs are getting done on time and on track, I can work when I want really, there obviously is some sort of daylight hours required due to client interactions, but other than that.. hell I've been working from home most of the last 3 months anyway

 

I eat lunch in front of the screen, working. I do, however, smoke and take a 7 min smoke break every 2 hours approx. But I get to drive to other branches during the day and I hit McDonalds on the way, have a smoke in the car and so on, so it's nearly like a break. I do however spend minimum 2 hours a day working at home (well busy lately) remotely or developing/fixing applications.

I could however spend at least 2 hours a day doing nothing if I wanted to. What's the point though? I am the only IT person in the company. No one's gonna do the job for me. And belive me, after poor outsourced company (no names here) was ditched, I've got so much to do it's unbelivable.

 

My company has just one rule, do your 8.25 hours every day/41.25 hours every week at a minimum, and you can pretty much come into the office when you want, leave when you want, eat when you want, take your breaks when you want, etc...

Of course we're asked to be sensible about it, in other words, it's better if we come to the office before 10am, take our lunch break anytime between 11am and 3pm, and so on for consistencies sake. We provide a service to the company after all, and for example, had I decided to come to the office at 10am today rather than 8:30am, I would not have been able to catch the Domain Controller failure which occurred on our PDCe down in the server room at around 9am (hardware failure, those Dell PowerEdge's are truly crap).

I typically do the 15 minute lunch break on front of my PC as well, and I easily do more hours a day than required. I don't take many lunch breaks, but we also tend to take turns in preparing the tea or bringing in some food for the team if someone goes off the supermarket for lunch shopping (we hand him the cash and a shopping list, and they come back with the goodies).

I think it's the best way to do it. If you're micromanaged, you just end up miserable. By giving us freedom, we're kept happier in the job and as was said, adults in general will do the right thing if you base it on a sort of honor system.

 

I would just like to point out that is the best thing and most valid point Ive heard in this thread, unfortunatley my break system is slightly different and fixed working hours 9-5:30 BUT! I do have a choice of when I can take my lunch which is a good way I try look at it! we also have the taking turns in making tea for each other as well, saves our whole team time if we take turns instead of us going indvidually.