Say Goodbye to Spain's Three-Hour Lunch Break
citylab.com
citylab.com
Also, all changing the timezone would do is give us useless light early in the morning and less light in the evening to go out and play sports, hang out in the park etc. People would still eat at the same time regardless. It gets dark at 6pm in the winter and 10pm in the summer. It's not exactly crazy.
Doesn't anybody work in those small shops?
> There's a mid-morning and late-afternoon snack
The mid-morning snack is not generalised and the late-afternoon snack is mostly for kids (after-school "merienda").
Edit: to be clear, I agree that most people doesn't have siestas and three-hours breaks only remain common in some sectors (retail) and places (small cities). The original article doesn't make much sense, by the way.
It's not a break if they make up that time later. Sounds more like working a shift, and then starting a second shift later.
Rephrase the original comment for a brief rest when working: "if you make up that 5 minutes later, then it's not a break". It's a nonsensical comment.
the next related news headline will be "Say Goodbye to Spain's Glorious Small Shops"
I dont think its natural anywhere in the world. What time is sunrise during winter?
That said, I think Spain's hours are a more natural adaptation to the climate than Arizona's.
Apparently that's rapidly ending, so maybe the standard schedule will change as well someday.
Those hours are pretty ingrained in US culture, though, and virtually no one (compared to the present population) would live in Arizona without massive amounts of air conditioning anyway, whereas conserving water has a direct economic advantage in the here and now.
I presume you mean south of Flagstaff. It's actually quite nice in the north :)
People exist in Chicago despite the fact that it would be completely inhospitable without heating sources. The only difference is that air conditioning is a newer invention so people like you view it as some kind of opulent luxury rather than a technological tool like anything else.
Not everyone works in an office, though.
People definitely don't faint within minutes in a typical Phoenix sunlight. The biggest risks are sunburn and dehydration, both of which take a lot longer.
That cannot possibly be correct.
I would take 110F dry over 80F humid any day. I would also take 10F dry over 30F humid.
You do have to go outside to get anywhere. We don't have completely domed cities yet.
There are many plants that are not native that still grow very well ranging from Mediterranean species to some that are from the desert regions of Asia.
*edit (Thu Jul 20 13:35:05 EDT 2017) I about parts of Chandler and Gilbert still have water rights tied to the property.
My point is how much water does it take even for that. If what you were saying is true, I'd expect to see that grass growing all over Phoenix and it would be green rather than red.
But instead California gave away massive free water rights to landowners who use it to farm in their deserts. Over 90% of their fresh water is given to farmers to grow crops a little cheaper than farmers in other states who aren't raping water supplies, and so bad farming and water usage drives out good.
Restaurants refer to those hours specifically as "dead hours" in my experience.
Spain, like most Europe is a lot more pedestrian/cyclist friendly and I'd imagine that traffic drops off a lot during the heat of the day.
I live in Canada which isn't anything near as hot as Arizona or Spain and I walk/cycle everywhere and I specifically avoid going anywhere from 11am-2pm in July/August if I can help it. sample-size=1, your mileage may vary.
I'm in the humid Maritimes it's 28C but with the humidity it feels like 40C.
I've been to the south of Spain it's hot but 35c isn't unbearable in the middle of the day.
It is much easier in local towns and villages to walk around and get what you need rather than take a car, often a more difficult thing to do given parking scarcity, and really not necessary given that there are many options for going local. I have two supermarkets within a KM of my home, 16 (!) cafeteria/bars/restaurants, and most other services are covered (banks, dry cleaner, gas station etc). In larger cities (Barcelona, Madrid and smaller cities) the neighborhoods tend to have most things. You really only do the long drive to hit larger supermarkets or to go to a mall or something.
I'd take 37 C air in the shade over 35 C in the midday sun any time.
For the same reasons you mention it makes 2pm in the afternoon the worst time to be on break and out of your air conditioned office or workplace.
Melbourne has summers that are nearly as hot as Phoenix. AC isn't so prevalent here, yet the shops don't change their hours in summer.
Personally speaking I've never seen much value in living by the clock if it puts you in conflict with the seasons. The notion that people everywhere should adhere to the same schedule regardless of local conditions is inherently absurd.
I was visiting in April a few years ago and was really surprised how empty the sidewalks were despite the beautiful weather - you would see more people outside walking in a non-central residential neighborhood in berlin in the rain.
With full on blaring air-conditioning and everybody driving around gus-guzzlers to go 1km further down.
That's not how Spanish cities are built, or the culture they enjoy.
That light wakes people up and increases their energy levels. It's not always pleasant, but work isn't supposed to be. For example, in the US, pushing school start times back from 8 to 9 results in an increase in student performance (it was originally 9 and then moved to 8 to save money on buses).
I also don't see why work shouldn't be pleasant except insofar as it's an unavoidable necessity for it to be otherwise. If you want people to work under less pleasant conditions, then the pay should be raised correspondingly.
Pay cannot be raised to compensate for the unpleasantness of light coming through your window in the morning. I don't see why you chose to argue about that.
so you are basically hobbits?
Is that because nobody likes to, or because pressures for employers and economic conformity forces them? That this is "becoming less and less common" (implying it was indeed common) speaks to the latter.
Some people like it, because it lets you eat and take a short nap and rest, but then you have to go back to work, which is a pretty big downside.
However, we don't consider it a lunch break here, we consider it as having to work two shorter shifts per day.
That, in Greece and elsewhere where it happens, is usually a habit from an earlier era, when most city businesses were small and/or family owned, retail stores and the like, and people lived in neighborhoods next to their business. So they would just close the store, had lunch or a nap etc at the house, and come back open for business again at the afternoon.
The current situation is a regression, and not because of the remnants of the "3 hour break": commutes and/or major traffic, and offices that demand people stay late without major breaks, so you get the same 8-9pm to late shift, working constantly (and then having to commute back).
Only the regular course of modern business, is not to give back the lunch break time to family/friends, but for the companies to have you work 9 to 7 or 8 just without the break.
The typical workday in Spain (no matter if you are a worker or in an office) goes from 7:00/9:00 to 15:00/18:00. This is usually a 8 hours work day (a lot of unpaid extra hours are quite typical in any IT job).
Usually there are two stops before lucnh, one at the beginning of the day, usually 15 minutes to have a coffee with coworkers and another one of 15-20 minutes at midday (11:00/12:00) to have a piece of fruit or just another coffee.
At lunch there are two options, the ones that leave job at 15:00 usually eat at 15:30 - 16:00 (quite late but quite common), the rest takes an hour to have lunch (usually two dishes and dessert [a bit too much I admit]) and they are allowed to leave normally when they make 8 hours at work.
There are a lot of flexibility if you are not public facing so you can play a bit with the arriving/living time (usually you are allowed to arrive up to 10:00 in the morning).
Only people who lives really close to home (up to 10/15 minutes) goes there to have lunch with their family and they usually also take a power nap of 15 minutes more or less.
Spanish siesta is for Fridays and holidays.
now, that was changing at the time. big stores, mostly H&M/zara/forever21 style of chinese fashion dump, are open from 9 to 9 like in the US. big international brands of super markets too.
thats was causing lots of conflicts from unions and such. and that was over 6 years ago. so maybe those companies managed to redefine it in the last decade?
In spain no one have more than 1hour for lunch.. The only ones that could fit in that description are cookers or restaurants staff, working in 2 parts. (12:00 - 16:00) and (20:00 - 23:00). Im from spain btw.
A carpenter, for example, will work in projects and probably doesn't have an specific schedule (I believe this applies globally).
A policeman or a nurse will work in work shifts...
But this I can tell you, practically nobody will have a three hours stop in their typical work day.
In the retail industry it's a bit different and you can find small shops owners that usually close from 14:00 to 17:00) and people working in big companies like "Ikea" or "MediaMarkt" that are being forced to have strange daily workshifts with 4 hours working in the morning and another 4 hours in the afternoon... But they are usually young people that hate that and usually goes to the gym with that extra time...
It's been a while since I worked in Spain (15 years) but the firm I worked at had an every day siesta policy because the owner likes siestas and had grown his business that way. The company had offices in Barcelona and Valencia so maybe the tradition has deeper roots in Catalonia.
It is reserved for holidays or weekends
Some offices have 2 hours lunch break, which I also find non-sense. But 1 hour is usually not enough for us for lunch, we don't eat sandwiches, we are used to do a proper meal with 2 dishes, dessert and coffee.
We also eat quite late, around 2pm or 3pm, but that is mostly because our time doesn't match the Solar time. We should have 1,5 hour less in our clocks. Which makes we really eat at 12:30-1pm of sun time. That is what most countries do as well.
We do take naps, only in summer on our holidays. Usually from 3pm to 5pm, because as I said, it is so fucking hot in summer at those hours. But any foreign who is here in summer does the same (actually probably more % of foreigns take naps than spaniash). People who also have an intense 8hours day job from 7am to 3pm they also take naps, because they wake up quite early and the social life starts at 6-7pm.
Bonus: we don't add chorizo to the paella. The chorizo is mostly for the bbq
The response in twitter was very funny
Paella is originally from Valencia, but prepared all over Spain, and that leads to some local variations and creative results. International exposure to tourists and foreign cooks has created an even bigger variety of paellas.
But since some years ago, there has been a growing group of Valencians that have been very outspoken (with varying levels of seriousness) about what goes into a paella, and what makes it just an "arroz con cosas" (rice plus things).
They even successfully lobbied to have a correct paella icon in unicode! https://emojipedia.org/shallow-pan-of-food/ But, to great jest, a lot of implementations got it wrong (only apple, twitter, and emojipedia get it right in the previously link).
Supposedly, paella just adds chicken, rabbit, green beans and habones (big white beans) to a saffroned rice.
You should try it here in Germany, I was astonied the first time I saw them adding mayonnaise to the paella.
And the sauce in Catalan is allioli, alioli is the Spanish transliteration.
In Spanish doesn't exists the termination -ll and it is pronounced -l
The meal ticket thing I understand.
First, siesta is not dead. However, it is considered mostly a holiday luxury or reserved for small shops. It is normal in the extremely hot summer, after lunch we stop for 1h or so. While I do not do siesta, I would say about half+ of the people I know do it (holiday times). I would also say it is highly coupled with the summer heat wave though, in winter not so many people do it.
Then, late lunch. First off, Spain is actually in the "wrong" time zone. We are at the same longitude as UK but it's 1 hour later here. What this means in practical terms is that when it's 2pm here, it is in 1pm relative to the light-time/circadian clock.
However that still does not totally explain the really late lunches. The main reason for that is that we have "almuerzo" at around ~11am (note: the word "almuerzo" in some zones in Spain is "lunch", and in some others it's a mid-morning snack, or second breakfast as I like to call it. I mean here the mid-morning snack). It depends on the job, on the person and on many things, but it's not uncommon that it consists of a mid-sized sandwich of Spanish bread. This [random] image is a quite accurate picture of the places where almuerzo is had and on the type of almuerzo we eat: http://cdn.traveler.es/uploads/images/thumbs/es/trav/2/s/201...
So as you can see, we have a different, important course around 10:30-11:30 that makes us not remain hungry until lunch. Some people prefer lighter snacks of course. Also, breakfast is normally light as we don't have to worry about hunger since we have our almuerzo later on. Normally you'd combine breakfast and almuerzo; if you have too much breakfast then you have a light almuerzo or nothing at all, and the same otherwise.
BTW, that's the half-size "bocadillo" there ;)
Note that eating schedules may also be different from the Anglosphere. It took me a while to get used to a light meal around noon and a heavy meal around 17:00, which seems more common in the US and Canada. In Mexico the big meal of the day is around 14:00 and you might have a lighter meal, almost a snack, around 21:00 before bed.
Going home for lunch to eat with your family is a bit of an old-fashioned custom in Mexico, but I hear some people still do it. None of my coworkers in the tech sector did, though. We were all mostly young too.
Globalisation makes it inevitable, of course, but does Monday-Friday, 9-5 really make sense? Why not 8-6 Monday-Thursday with a three day weekend? We developers are often lucky that we can dictate our own hours and experiment with this, but I'd be fascinated to see an entire nation adapt to it and see the effects.
I would push back on this thinking that Globalization itself is inevitable. We have seen the reaction to this thinking in recent years -- you end up with Trumps, and Mays, and (almost) Le Pen's.
Greeks are a prime example -- despite the intense crisis and austerity measures, the country still values its lunch and coffee breaks, despite how much we here in the west criticize them for "being lazy"
Right, and their economy is in free fall. I'm not saying you can't do it, but that cost to doing it is ever-increasing.
It's just a different cultural value -- not every culture values the green dollar as much as America or the UK or likewise. Is it the best for your GDP? Probably not, but it's honorable. "Cash is King" is not something you hear many Greeks say about one another
Cash is king because you can still use it in times when the banks/ATMs only allow you to withdraw 300 euros.
Lenders who issue loans to organizations who won't ever be able to pay them off aren't a group I care very much for protecting, either. They were sophisticated investors who knew the risks. Greece is a sovereign state, and its first obligation its to its people.
Past Greek governments sure looked like they loved other people's cash a lot for having borrowed so much of it.
It's funny how that distaste for money and accompanying virtue signaling only managed to manifest itself once it was time to pay back all the borrowed cash.
Therein lies the distinction. The government of course loves the money. That's why the people are fed up with the greedy politicians and bankers.
> It's funny how that distaste for money and accompanying virtue signaling only managed to manifest itself once it was time to pay back all the borrowed cash.
It's funny how this statement proves you have absolutely zero knowledge of the culture and are projecting your own pessimistic views on people and societies onto one you know very little about.
As an aside, our unemployment is a funny number in that it doesn't include people who have given up looking for work. I think that category is the highest it's been in a while, or in US history. I'm not sure if Greece calculates it in the same manner.
I would love to hear from a Greek on this.
It's admittedly a very biased source, but I was following mr. Varoufakis writing/interviews back when the negotiations were being held and my understanding is that the "intense crisis" is, at this point and with the policies in place, mathematically impossible to fix (with really dire results for the country and people). If that's true then I can definitely understand the Greeks wanting to at least have their coffee breaks...
I am Greek
You seem to suggest that the Greek work ethic is, in part, responsible for the crisis - if so, when that ethic became commonplace? And how come it formed in the first place? And why didn't it disappear naturally?
I'm asking this, because in my country - a post-Soviet one, after 50 years of nominally communist policy - we used to also have little to no respect for work. But that was because there was little correlation between your work and the money it got you. Once we started getting all capitalist in the 90's that started to change and by today most of the society understands that if you want more money you need to work harder.
The Crisis is a big debt snowball that shouldn't have been allowed to happen, kind of similar to the American housing crisis where people who should have never been getting $500,000 mortgages were given $500,000 dollar mortgages then the world was shocked when they somehow managed to default, and meanwhile you had corrupt Wall Street bankers betting that these people would default.
Similarly, you hand a country who has been in borderline poverty since the formation of their autonomous modern nation all this money, then are surprised when their corrupt politicians and banking institutions (as well as your corrupt Wall Street institutions like Goldman Sachs, who helped these corrupt bankers hide their debt) mishandle it.
Then of course the IMF took advantage of the situation, and it turned into basically one big, as Americans would call it "poor tax" where you take advantage of someone who is already down. (Hey this guy can barely pay for his bills at it is, lets fuck him over and charge him 25$ dollars to cash his 300 dollar paycheck -- like this, but on a country level. Somehow that moderate amount of debt turned into 137% of GDP after it snowballed and stupid ass Greek politicians kept accepting these stupid packages with stupid terms /endrant)
My suggestion about the Greek ethic was a sarcastic one, I put it in quotes, apologies if that didn't come through the text. Many people think just because you value work/life balance that you are somehow "lazy". I think Americans are seeing this now with millennials who demand they have adequate work/life balance (and good for them). It's always been a common adage that Americans live to work and (most European countries) work to live. I don't think this is necessary unique to Greeks, it just so happens we are in the crisis and it's an easy target to point the finger and just say "well if they just weren't so lazy!"
Globalization doesn't have to mean homogenization, though. It's interesting to think about alternative possibilities that are not bound up with the centralization of wealth as a condition of production.
You're making the mistake that 40 hours is just 40 hours. Business work schedules are about being available during the week, not about working for a fixed amount of time.
There is no one reason why not. For some people it's because they need to work the same schedule as the people they regularly interface with. For some others there is no problem and they do work that schedule. Just depends on the requirements of the job, really.
No one complains, people just burnout and move on in 1-2-3 years. No one gets overtime. It would be nice to have an open discussion with HR or whoever but its a sensitive topic, in this culture you are not "allowed" to tell how much you actually work...
I guess its a "dirty little secret" but 9-5 does not exist anymore (honestly probably never did, at least in my field).
Incredibly, some people (mostly business/marketing, not engineering!) still make themselves work through lunch and stay later. No idea why, but I and others are able to leave after 8 hours so it doesn't affect me.
"9-5" may be rare, but it exists.
Because the deal for us engineers is that there's not enough of talent and companies fight for people. We're doing the same you described in your post, except the business/marketing have short lunches and work late. There's many people waiting to take their place, where you must spend great effort to hire a good engineer.
If you work 9 to 5 you are literally viewed as a "lazy one". During interviewing process its often a red flag if a person is not willing to put in "extra hours" unpaid.
The system is broken...
My schedule has caused no one any problems.
Bigger companies aren't as "cool", but the pay is pretty good and the work life balance is unbeatable.
There's some value to both approaches, but a lot of startups rely on young people being willing to buy into an endurance culture and just working them into the ground, while (as you say) exhorting them to keep their salary details secret so they feel like they're beating the market or on a fast track to success. This secrecy doesn't benefit anyone except the employer.
One hour break for lunch is the norm. May be two, but it's not very common.
There is an exception here: in summertime, a lot of companies reduce the working hours from 8 to 7 hours. They start at 8am and leave at 3pm. The sum of these hours must be distributed along the rest of the days of the year. So you work 7 hours in summer, and 8 and half the rest of the year. This summertime schedule comes from the days when Air conditioning systems did not exist, and literally working in Spain in the afternoon is impossible.
It's really funny to read about Spanish topics from a poorly informed journalist...
Nowadays this 3 hours break mainly affect the small shops instead of offices/big companies.
And, being honest, was quite useful since shops closing at 8 pm allow people doing their shopping chores when leaving the office/school/uni...
Edit: My English... U_U'
True, the smallest ones are open between 8am and 7pm, but they're loosing market share in favor of mini-markets, which are usually open from 7am to 9-10pm.
And if that's not enough there are liquor stores and petrol stations, both of which are usually open 24/7.
BTW I live in Germany now and still do a daily 30 mins siesta after lunch.
In stead of starting at 6:00 one could start between 5:00 and 7:00. Then have a break between 11:00 and 13:00 for 30 min or 3 hours, whatever the fuck you want.
This is of course assuming we would allow people to enjoy life (An Utopian idea most people would fight against)
First, of all, there's nothing "mad" about it. As if the 9-5 (or 9-8) schedule religiously held everywhere, and first created for factory workers, is "rational".
>After starting work between 8 and 9 a.m., hungry workers hold out for a lunch break scheduled as late as 1:30 or 2:30. As if in compensation for this long wait
Nothing particularly strange about this either. In lots of counties people eat lunch later, or much later, than 12:00, and dinner much later than 7-8. Usually it has to do with hotter climates (which Spain, Greece, Mexico, Argentina, Middle Eastern countries, etc qualify for) and longer, sunnier, days.
>Most stores and many businesses close down until the late afternoon, before a final burst of office hours between 5:30 and 8 (or sometimes 4 to 7). Spaniards then head home at an hour when most people in other countries are cleaning up their dinner dishes, rarely getting food on the table any earlier than 10 p.m. This pushes bedtime past midnight for many.*
And that's a problem because?
Being keen, I turned up at 8.30am and then waited for an hour for someone to arrive. The office was then closed and everyone turfed out from 12pm-2pm, but the working day didn't finish until around 7pm.
I did find myself at a bit of a loss as to what to do after bolting my lunch in an anglo-saxon 45 minutes or so.
Catalonia is an region of Spain.
When I moved from the UK I was shocked that 9-5 was not the norm, in both places the schedule was more 9-7 with the same amount of lunch time as in the UK and far more pressure to stay on later than 7.
I have a 1 hour lunch break, and nobody take 'siestas' in my city regularly.
I forgot to add that Catalans, myself included, have a lot to learn from other Spanish regions: e.g. in Madrid there is commercial freedom, so shops can chose when they can open, without the permission of the feudal^W local government.
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