You can pick 30, 45, or one hour but the end of your work day is adjusted accordingly. Don’t have to go at the same time everyday but can’t work more than 5 hours without a lunch, so it has to be between 3 and 5 hours after the start of your workday.
I’m in the public school system. We technically get 30 mins, but because the days are usually quiet for us maintenance folk, we tend to…stretch that truth a little, if you catch my meaning 😉
No set time or duration. Sometimes I eat at my desk if I’m busy, sometimes I have a meeting with external folks over lunch that takes as long as it takes, and sometimes I take a 2 hour boozy lunch with colleagues and don’t come back to the office. And everything in between.
My hours aren’t monitored, just my work output, and sometimes lunch is part of that output.
It was always an hour when I was in the office, and I’d often leave and eat with colleagues at a restaurant. Now, I’m mostly working from home, so it’s less defined.
I think an hour is fairly standard for most salaried jobs. When I worked retail in school, it was 30 minutes.
As a salaried, office job don’t have any official lunch breaks. Employees manage their time and will schedule their own time to eat lunch between meetings or whenever they want. This has been the norm at every job I’ve worked. If you want to take a 2-hour lunch you can, but it’s on you to make sure your work gets done and you’re not missing important meetings.
Insurance stuff – we don’t have a set lunch time. People break whenever works for them. I take a full hour, from 12 to 1, some of my coworkers do less, once in a while more. Mostly it just matters that we get our 7.5 hours of actual working time in so folks adjust the length of their lunch for that.
An hour, usually around noon. I can kinda go whenever I want, but I need to work it out with my coworker so that one of us is here. I don’t think she’s realized yet that I always take the later lunch because that means there’s less time in the day when I get back. Plus, if I need to run an errand over lunch, I know she’s not waiting for me to get back. I can take a bit more time.
No standard. Some people take an hour from noon to 1, some people wait until 1 or 2, some only take 30 minutes and others take over an hour. I often either don’t eat lunch or I take like 20 minutes.
No set time or duration. By law, I have to be allowed to take at least 30 minutes somewhere in my day, but I work remotely and no one is monitoring my time on my computer or anything. I’m salaried and work on billable hours so as long as my work gets done and I show up in meetings where I’m expected, no one cares that much about that kind of thing. Most of my company is hybrid and it’s kind of a similar deal–no one is paying much attention to people coming and going.
Union worker at a public-facing government office. My lunch is typically 11am-12pm and half of it is unpaid, the other half is my 2-15 minute breaks stacked on it.
I just don’t take lunch so I can get out of there earlier. Technically though, lunch could be as long as you want as long as you work your appropriate hours and it doesn’t interfere with meetings or other responsibilities. I work in academia.
I’m an engineer for the government. We choose whether we want to take a 30 or 60 minute lunch break. Most people schedule theirs within an hour of noon, but honestly, I just take it whenever I want. If I have a meeting at 1 PM, I’ll take lunch a little earlier so I’m not rushing to make the meeting, for example.
I’m a farmer, I work on my own, and I take my lunch in a cooler or drive back to the house. My lunch break is whenever I get really hungry, and lasts however it long it takes me to eat, drink a soda, and smoke a cigarette.
When I was in software in DFW and Silicon Valley, it was whenever you didn’t have meetings scheduled for however long you wanted. With gym and eating, around 1.5 hoursish.
Im an administrative assistant and I get an hour. Sometimes I don’t take it and leave work at 3 instead of 4, but I take it 90% of the time (except on Thursdays when I go to class instead)
There isn’t really a rule. I usually take an hour at 1 pm. The coworker I work most closely with just works straight through the day with no breaks so he can leave an hour earlier. This sounds like hell to me but it takes all kinds.
Sometimes 10 minutes, sometimes I don’t return to the office. It’s a salaried position in corporate setting. Nobody is punching a clock, we just get our work done
In my last job, the Army, it was an hour and a half, from 11:30 to 13:00. Longest lunchtime I’ve ever had. It was acceptable to make the people who didn’t live in the barracks work through lunch as they had a monetary allowance for food but barracks personnel got free food at the chow hall and we had to make sure they got time to go to the chow hall to eat. I rarely made people work through lunch although I myself usually did.
The production floor people get a half hour. When Covid started, the company split the production breaks into two groups (so roughly half the number of people would be in the breakroom at once). No one has bothered to end that (even though we’re no longer worried about Covid, it’s still convenient for things like less crowding for microwaves and whatnot). So, group 1 goes at 12, and then group 2 goes at 12:35 (to give a 5-minute gap, so the first group can clear out of the breakroom before the second group gets there)
I’m one of the office people, though, so I am not stuck on the production workers’ schedule. I take my lunch a little after 1, because I like it when the breakroom is empty. In theory, we only get a half hour, too, but most of us skirt that a little…lol
I don’t have a ‘lunch break.’ I’m salaried and expected to do 40 hours of work/week, so I usually eat at my desk as opposed to stopping and having to be in the office longer. I’ve always done this.
When I work remotely, I’ll usually do the same. Again, I’d rather just get my work done and have more time in the evening instead of a break midday.
I’m an analyst at a bank. We need to take at least a half hour break. Beyond that it doesn’t matter as long as we’re not away for hours all the time, but we don’t get paid on break.
About a half hour to an hour, if I’m so inclined (it’s not heavily enforced, so a shorter lunch means I leave earlier), and it’s roughly the middle of the work day when I get hungry (usually around 11).
It was 30 minutes, but the walk to the lunchroom and back took about 5 minutes each and you couldn’t use the bathroom whenever you wanted to you had to do it at lunch. So I had about 15 minutes to eat something.
The time varied depending on “the needs of the business”. Between 11-1:30 and I worked 8:30 to 5.
I have had jobs where we got an hour, a half hour, and eat as you can while you work. Hopefully, lunch comes at or near the midpoint of my shift, so 3am was lunchtime at one job while 3pm at another.
Rule on paper is 1 hour, no set time so flexibility is needed if it interferes with any meetings or tasks that need to occur.
However my specific area is really flexible and no one really cares how you do it as long as the work is done timely and correct. I often take “longer” lunches to work out because I know I can finish my stuff daily in good time before the day ends.
There’s no set time or duration, as long as your work gets done, you’re reachable when you are supposed to be, and you don’t miss meetings you can pretty much do what you want & come/go when you want….
Rigid schedules and set break times are seen as only appropriate for hourly folks (think help desk), once you get beyond entry level you get treated like a responsible adult….
I work in commercial composting, riding on a garbage truck collecting compost from commercial and residential customers. We technically get a half hour unpaid break, but no one takes it. We all eat on the road as time allows.
Pretty much as long as I want. No one cares where I am or what I am doing as long as my product is good and finished in time. What this usually actually means is I’m eating in my office while working…or on Reddit. I work in the business of flying.
There are plenty of workdays where I’ll scarf down a sandwich at my desk. There’s also plenty of Fridays where my boss will say “let’s go to this dive bar for lunch, bring your laptop just in case” and after two hours and a few beers it ends with “see you on Monday” (There have been plenty of times where we did have to bust out or laptops and get something done at said “lunch”).
My personal favorite “Friday lunch” is “let’s have your 1:1 over lunch at a golf course” and we have our “meeting” over the course of 18 holes.
I work in the logistics and supply chain industry – specifically I work on the tech side of things in the analytics space.
Usually at 12, though much of admin and things takes it at 11:30 or 12:30. Lunch is 30 minutes on the clock. I work in education so we who are in with kids all day take it during recess
No set time or duration. A lot of us eat at our desks, sometimes I work through, sometimes I watch an episode of something on Netflix (headphones on). My office mate and I occasionally go out for lunch, but it’s rare. We’re just too busy.
I can go when I want and I always choose 2 pm. That way when I come back there’s only 2 hours left. (I get an hour and I work in the financial industry).
I’m gov’t but we fall under the same standards as ATC controllers, so we don’t get a lunch. We are authorized two 15 minute breaks, but during our breaks, we are still responsible for the area we are working.
Now…we aren’t busy all the time, so when we have downtime, we can go grab something. But if we get a call for an outage, we have to drop everything and respond.
We live in Florida we have zero laws that say we are allowed a lunch break or any break for that matter. So if the company is gracious enough to give you any breaks they hardly ever include an actual lunch break. Maybe a fifteen minute break every few hours if you’re lucky. If you are at one of those upper class fancy companies that do give lunch breaks they are usually 30 minutes. Most people just eat at thier desk or between assignments or while sitting on the side of the road for construction workers.
We get 30min, whatever time we can make it work. Majority of us don’t have time to take a lunch though. Healthcare/hospital day shift. Night shift is more likely to have/make the time for lunch.
For hourly workers California mandates lunch break of min 30 min after 6 hours. This is followed in film/tv tho lunch is most often 1 hour. A typical day starts at 7am so lunch would be 1-2pm.
I work for the my states finance department, currently my lunch is 30 minutes from 12_12:30. Beginning October they’re adding an extra 30 minutes to our work days so our lunchbreak will get an extra 30 minutes too!
I get 2 breaks that I usually get to choose when I go each time. One is 20 minutes and the other is 30. I cannot combine them to have one longer break. I work in manufacturing.
I get an hour, state law says it needs to start within 6 hours of being on the clock. Pretty sure that law exists so you can’t decide (or be forced) to work without a meal break and take off an hour early.
In my state we are required to take our lunch break within the first 5 hours of when we started working so there’s no set time, we just have to do it by then
We stagger lunch hours at my job, so there are at least 2 people there at any given time. There are only 6 of us. Home is 5 minutes away, so I go there.
I work second shift at an assisted living facility, 2:30 – 11:00 PM. I don’t have a set time when I take my lunch, but I coordinate with others so only one of us is away at a time and it usually ends up being about 6:30.
State law only requires me to be given a half-hour, which is (barely) enough, but my department recently extended it to 40 minutes. That’s nice, though I wouldn’t want it to be much longer than that — not because I wouldn’t appreciate the time myself, but because it would mean the time others are away on their own lunch breaks would also be an hour, and that would stretch everyone a bit thin.
I work out of a fire station on an ambulance, and we can have lunch whenever we want for however long we want as long as no one calls 911. Unfortunately, people call 911 for very non-emergency reasons like knee pain for 3 weeks that they could schedule to see a doctor for, or go to Urgent Care. Sometimes, we eat a pack of PB & crackers while we’re responding because a 12 hour shift without lunch is hard.
I can take lunch at any time (except at the beginning or end of my shift to come late or leave early), and it’s 35 minutes unpaid. I additionally have 2 15-minute breaks that are paid.
Most places are 30 min or an hour but my last couple jobs I picked my own breaks. I worked in tv so there was a lot of down time for me. We had set times when we were doing live programming so you had to be there but the rest of the time we were super flexible. I went and grabbed food whenever and would wander off at time to talk to my wife for 10 or 20 minutes. So long as we had someone there and we got all our work done we could structure it how we like. It is unusual for jobs to be like that so I always feel lucky to have it.
Whenever I want, as long as I want, wherever I want. But realistically, I’m usually eating at my desk and relatively quickly. Because I have things to get done. Maybe once a month or so I’ll have lunch with others in the cafeteria (the food is good) but usually it’s just something I brought from home.
Hourly at big-box retailer: they let us choose whether we want to be scheduled for 30 or 60 minute lunch, and the scheduling software assigns a specific time but in actual practice it’s pretty flexible, as long as there is coverage for the department.
We work 2 six hour shifts per day at my work place. We eat whenever we want for as long as we want, so long as we have time. If we’re busy during the six hours, it’s our responsibility to eat before or after.
Per company policy and state law: 30 minutes unpaid for every four hours worked, beginning no later than the start of the fifth hour.
Per my timecard: 12:30-1pm daily marked as “unpaid meal period”
Per reality: Anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour at whatever time I think of it, usually still at my desk, or an hour cut off the start or end of the workday for appointments or ennui or whatever. My official hours are 8-5 which includes one hour unpaid in there somewhere no matter when I take it.
Most jobs I’ve worked start at 8 a.m. and end at 5 pm and you get one hour for a meal break. You also get a 15 min morning break and 15 min afternoon break which are optional and you get paid weather you take them or not.
I have a staff position with a small symphony orchestra. I get a paid hour for lunch everyday, and I usually take it at 12. On days we have after hour events, I’ll come in in the afternoon and my lunch hour becomes a dinner hour that I’ll take around 5.
If you’re paid on an hourly basis and subject to US overtime rules, it’s generally a 30 minute lunch if you work in an administrative capacity, it’s usually taken around noon. If you’re working in a continuously operating environment, like manufacturing, it’ll be scheduled around the process and the availability of the relief staff. That was always something that had to be actively managed when I supervised an aseptic pharma production process.
1hr lunch but it’s generally frowned upon to actually take the whole hour. Lunch at whatever time we want. I usually skip lunch(actually just eat at my desk) and leave at 4pm instead of 5pm.
I’m a software engineer. Neither of those are defined. The rules here are to hit 40 hours each week. Other than attending meetings, they don’t care how. I’m an early riser and they’re fine with me starting 1-2 hours earlier than everyone else. My lunch is also a little early (11am) as a result.
30 minutes and the time varies. Teachers eat lunch when their class has lunch aides have to be squeezed in around when the class can reasonably be conducted with less help. The class’ lunch and recess times are not it, neither is PE or music. We try to have them in the window between 11 and 1, but it’s not always consistent.
Salaried tech professional. No scheduled time; I intermittent fast four days a week, so I don’t take one Monday through Thursday. I generally do a small working lunch Friday. I’ll sometimes cut out a little early sometimes if things are slow to compensate for it.
Technically we get a half-hour lunch and two 15-minute breaks, but most of us just take an hour lunch. We can take it whenever. I work 10-6 so I normally take mine around 1:30-2.
30 min barely enough time to catch my breath and eat lunch. Took me 8 minutes to get to the break room and 8 minutes back to my desk. 14 minutes was hardly enough time 😭
Officially, 1 hour and you can take off any time between 11-1. But in reality no one cares, just take lunch working around your meetings and other work. I generally don’t even take a lunch and just get an hour back in my day.
My 1st job at a grocery store as a box boy in ’74 we sometimes had 60 minutes. I’d ask one of the lady checkers to join me at The Sizzler across the street. “Dutch” of course. Nothing weird. I’d end up spending two hours worth of pay.
My state law says 30 minutes minimum. At various places I have worked, they adjust start and end times for a 30 or 60 minute lunch, each place having their own rules.
1 hour. We are ideally supposed to take lunch between 11am and 1pm.
We do a lot of regional day travel though and can build the lunch into our return trip, or take lunch upon return even if that is later than 1pm.
If we ask permission, we can occasionally use the hour early in the day or late in the day for a doctor’s appointment.
My office lunch time is “when I want to take it” and the length is “don’t abuse it” So if it goes 1.5 hours no one will sneeze at it so long as my work is getting done.
Today I got to the office at 9:15, ate at my desk at 12:30 and left the office at 2:40. I just got home after picking my son up at school and am about to log on for another hour and a half or so.
All these big jobs in the comments. I work at a smoothie place. I take a required 30 min lunch, no shorter no longer if I work 5 or more hours. Otherwise, no breaks.
Whatever you want or need. No one cares as long as your work gets done. If enough people are in the office (generally Monday through Thursday; no one comes in Friday if they can help it) then my work caters lunch and that generally starts at noon and goes until people stop showing up to get food, then the leftovers get packaged up for whoever wants to take them.
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An hour. I work in fundraising. Usually noon but also whenever you want
Mine was 45 minutes long, but it depended on the day since I worked in retail.
One hour at 12:00. I’m a dental assistant at a community clinic.
1 hour.
I have an hour. If I don’t take said hour, I get to leave early. I work in IT.
Officially it starts at 11:20 and goes until 12:02 where I work.
Public school teacher, 30 minutes.
Technically, 30 min at 12/1230, but I’m in the field, so it is lunch when I get it and isn’t very strict.
30 minutes, taken around the midpoint of the shift. That’s usually around 10AM for morning shifts, 6 PM for swing shifts or 2 AM for graveyard shifts.
Half hour unpaid. Industrial manufacturing
You can pick 30, 45, or one hour but the end of your work day is adjusted accordingly. Don’t have to go at the same time everyday but can’t work more than 5 hours without a lunch, so it has to be between 3 and 5 hours after the start of your workday.
I’m in the public school system. We technically get 30 mins, but because the days are usually quiet for us maintenance folk, we tend to…stretch that truth a little, if you catch my meaning 😉
No set time or duration. Sometimes I eat at my desk if I’m busy, sometimes I have a meeting with external folks over lunch that takes as long as it takes, and sometimes I take a 2 hour boozy lunch with colleagues and don’t come back to the office. And everything in between.
My hours aren’t monitored, just my work output, and sometimes lunch is part of that output.
It was always an hour when I was in the office, and I’d often leave and eat with colleagues at a restaurant. Now, I’m mostly working from home, so it’s less defined.
I think an hour is fairly standard for most salaried jobs. When I worked retail in school, it was 30 minutes.
I can take 30 or 60 minutes between 11 and 2. I do 11:30 to 12:00.
As a salaried, office job don’t have any official lunch breaks. Employees manage their time and will schedule their own time to eat lunch between meetings or whenever they want. This has been the norm at every job I’ve worked. If you want to take a 2-hour lunch you can, but it’s on you to make sure your work gets done and you’re not missing important meetings.
Insurance stuff – we don’t have a set lunch time. People break whenever works for them. I take a full hour, from 12 to 1, some of my coworkers do less, once in a while more. Mostly it just matters that we get our 7.5 hours of actual working time in so folks adjust the length of their lunch for that.
In health care? Technically? 30 min to an hour (depending on how your schedule is set). In reality, a lot of the time it’s “lunch break, what’s that?”
I teach music lessons. My shift is 3-9pm and if it’s fully booked, I don’t get a break
No set time or duration. I manage my time as I see fit. Which I love.
30 minutes. Medical administration
An hour, usually around noon. I can kinda go whenever I want, but I need to work it out with my coworker so that one of us is here. I don’t think she’s realized yet that I always take the later lunch because that means there’s less time in the day when I get back. Plus, if I need to run an errand over lunch, I know she’s not waiting for me to get back. I can take a bit more time.
I work in IT and I have freedom over how I spend my hours. I usually work through lunch so I can be done at 3 and not 4.
No standard. Some people take an hour from noon to 1, some people wait until 1 or 2, some only take 30 minutes and others take over an hour. I often either don’t eat lunch or I take like 20 minutes.
No set time or duration. By law, I have to be allowed to take at least 30 minutes somewhere in my day, but I work remotely and no one is monitoring my time on my computer or anything. I’m salaried and work on billable hours so as long as my work gets done and I show up in meetings where I’m expected, no one cares that much about that kind of thing. Most of my company is hybrid and it’s kind of a similar deal–no one is paying much attention to people coming and going.
Union worker at a public-facing government office. My lunch is typically 11am-12pm and half of it is unpaid, the other half is my 2-15 minute breaks stacked on it.
I get 1-15 minute break and 1-25 minute break for my 10-hour shift as a dumb grunt in a warehouse
I just don’t take lunch so I can get out of there earlier. Technically though, lunch could be as long as you want as long as you work your appropriate hours and it doesn’t interfere with meetings or other responsibilities. I work in academia.
1 hour. There’s no set time.
At my workplace, it’s an (unpaid) hour.
I’m salaried so my lunch fits in between my conference calls and I usually take an hour unless I only have 30 minutes before the next call.
ETA: I’m an analyst in the Financial industry
I get 30 minutes, manufacturing. Usually about 5-6 hours into my 12 hour overnight shift, depends on when someone is free to cover my position
Who takes lunch? Lol I’m salary so I just eat at my desk and leave earlier
I’m an engineer for the government. We choose whether we want to take a 30 or 60 minute lunch break. Most people schedule theirs within an hour of noon, but honestly, I just take it whenever I want. If I have a meeting at 1 PM, I’ll take lunch a little earlier so I’m not rushing to make the meeting, for example.
I’m a farmer, I work on my own, and I take my lunch in a cooler or drive back to the house. My lunch break is whenever I get really hungry, and lasts however it long it takes me to eat, drink a soda, and smoke a cigarette.
When I was in software in DFW and Silicon Valley, it was whenever you didn’t have meetings scheduled for however long you wanted. With gym and eating, around 1.5 hoursish.
Im an administrative assistant and I get an hour. Sometimes I don’t take it and leave work at 3 instead of 4, but I take it 90% of the time (except on Thursdays when I go to class instead)
There isn’t really a rule. I usually take an hour at 1 pm. The coworker I work most closely with just works straight through the day with no breaks so he can leave an hour earlier. This sounds like hell to me but it takes all kinds.
30-45 minutes depending on how busy we are but minimum is 30 minutes.
I work in government. At my workplace it’s an hour, but no one is keeping track of it.
My husband also works in government, and at his workplace it’s very regimented. It’s like elementary school with adults.
I don’t often take lunch breaks, per se. I’ll often eat at my desk or in an airport or with a client (I’ll cater in for long mid day meetings).
If I’m just sitting at my desk all day, though? I skip lunch more often than I eat it.
Sometimes 10 minutes, sometimes I don’t return to the office. It’s a salaried position in corporate setting. Nobody is punching a clock, we just get our work done
Mailman 30 minutes unpaid. But most of us can elect to not take a lunch because we just want to go home
In my last job, the Army, it was an hour and a half, from 11:30 to 13:00. Longest lunchtime I’ve ever had. It was acceptable to make the people who didn’t live in the barracks work through lunch as they had a monetary allowance for food but barracks personnel got free food at the chow hall and we had to make sure they got time to go to the chow hall to eat. I rarely made people work through lunch although I myself usually did.
One hour, usually starting around 11:30
30 min. The time depends on meetings.
IT, I get 1 hour. Mine is at 11 AM, but my team’s lunch breaks are staggered so we always have people available
1 hour.. I used to work retail and it was 30m there
I work at an electronics factory.
The production floor people get a half hour. When Covid started, the company split the production breaks into two groups (so roughly half the number of people would be in the breakroom at once). No one has bothered to end that (even though we’re no longer worried about Covid, it’s still convenient for things like less crowding for microwaves and whatnot). So, group 1 goes at 12, and then group 2 goes at 12:35 (to give a 5-minute gap, so the first group can clear out of the breakroom before the second group gets there)
I’m one of the office people, though, so I am not stuck on the production workers’ schedule. I take my lunch a little after 1, because I like it when the breakroom is empty. In theory, we only get a half hour, too, but most of us skirt that a little…lol
I don’t have a ‘lunch break.’ I’m salaried and expected to do 40 hours of work/week, so I usually eat at my desk as opposed to stopping and having to be in the office longer. I’ve always done this.
When I work remotely, I’ll usually do the same. Again, I’d rather just get my work done and have more time in the evening instead of a break midday.
I’m an analyst at a bank. We need to take at least a half hour break. Beyond that it doesn’t matter as long as we’re not away for hours all the time, but we don’t get paid on break.
State government. I get an hour, some only take 30 minutes.
An hour but it’s not a paid lunch so I skip it.
I can eat whenever I want, bathroom whenever, walk around whenever.
No set time or duration. I have a standing 30-minute block on my calendar a little after the midpoint of my working hours.
12 PM. 1 hour.
No set time but I keep it to 30 minutes. Sometimes 45 if I’m having a good conversation.
About a half hour to an hour, if I’m so inclined (it’s not heavily enforced, so a shorter lunch means I leave earlier), and it’s roughly the middle of the work day when I get hungry (usually around 11).
It was 30 minutes, but the walk to the lunchroom and back took about 5 minutes each and you couldn’t use the bathroom whenever you wanted to you had to do it at lunch. So I had about 15 minutes to eat something.
The time varied depending on “the needs of the business”. Between 11-1:30 and I worked 8:30 to 5.
Phone company.
I have had jobs where we got an hour, a half hour, and eat as you can while you work. Hopefully, lunch comes at or near the midpoint of my shift, so 3am was lunchtime at one job while 3pm at another.
You can take 30 minutes or one hour but it’s unpaid. Some people take a shorter break so they can leave earlier.
What break?
Rule on paper is 1 hour, no set time so flexibility is needed if it interferes with any meetings or tasks that need to occur.
However my specific area is really flexible and no one really cares how you do it as long as the work is done timely and correct. I often take “longer” lunches to work out because I know I can finish my stuff daily in good time before the day ends.
I’m in IT.
There’s no set time or duration, as long as your work gets done, you’re reachable when you are supposed to be, and you don’t miss meetings you can pretty much do what you want & come/go when you want….
Rigid schedules and set break times are seen as only appropriate for hourly folks (think help desk), once you get beyond entry level you get treated like a responsible adult….
It’s whenever I have a break. It’s usually a half hour.
I work in commercial composting, riding on a garbage truck collecting compost from commercial and residential customers. We technically get a half hour unpaid break, but no one takes it. We all eat on the road as time allows.
I work construction, but I get paid piece work, so I take breaks whenever I want.
Pretty much as long as I want. No one cares where I am or what I am doing as long as my product is good and finished in time. What this usually actually means is I’m eating in my office while working…or on Reddit. I work in the business of flying.
No set time or schedule.
There are plenty of workdays where I’ll scarf down a sandwich at my desk. There’s also plenty of Fridays where my boss will say “let’s go to this dive bar for lunch, bring your laptop just in case” and after two hours and a few beers it ends with “see you on Monday” (There have been plenty of times where we did have to bust out or laptops and get something done at said “lunch”).
My personal favorite “Friday lunch” is “let’s have your 1:1 over lunch at a golf course” and we have our “meeting” over the course of 18 holes.
I work in the logistics and supply chain industry – specifically I work on the tech side of things in the analytics space.
Usually at 12, though much of admin and things takes it at 11:30 or 12:30. Lunch is 30 minutes on the clock. I work in education so we who are in with kids all day take it during recess
No set time or duration. A lot of us eat at our desks, sometimes I work through, sometimes I watch an episode of something on Netflix (headphones on). My office mate and I occasionally go out for lunch, but it’s rare. We’re just too busy.
(I work at a non profit)
My teachers’ union makes sure we are guaranteed a 30 minute duty-free lunch.
30 minutes
Technically 30 minutes unpaid but we get to combine it with our 15 minute paid so 45 minutes- healthcare
I work in a factory lunch from 11 to 11:25
I can go when I want and I always choose 2 pm. That way when I come back there’s only 2 hours left. (I get an hour and I work in the financial industry).
I’m gov’t but we fall under the same standards as ATC controllers, so we don’t get a lunch. We are authorized two 15 minute breaks, but during our breaks, we are still responsible for the area we are working.
Now…we aren’t busy all the time, so when we have downtime, we can go grab something. But if we get a call for an outage, we have to drop everything and respond.
We live in Florida we have zero laws that say we are allowed a lunch break or any break for that matter. So if the company is gracious enough to give you any breaks they hardly ever include an actual lunch break. Maybe a fifteen minute break every few hours if you’re lucky. If you are at one of those upper class fancy companies that do give lunch breaks they are usually 30 minutes. Most people just eat at thier desk or between assignments or while sitting on the side of the road for construction workers.
We get 30min, whatever time we can make it work. Majority of us don’t have time to take a lunch though. Healthcare/hospital day shift. Night shift is more likely to have/make the time for lunch.
I get an hour because I schedule an hour. We don’t get paid for our lunch.
For hourly workers California mandates lunch break of min 30 min after 6 hours. This is followed in film/tv tho lunch is most often 1 hour. A typical day starts at 7am so lunch would be 1-2pm.
I worked in aerospace and I didn’t have a set lunch time. We just took lunch whenever and kept it under 2 hours.
30min
E R. 12 hour shift. 30 minute break, not guaranteed
No set time or length – just get your work done, and don’t miss meetings.
1 hour but you choose when you take that hour based on your work schedule
30 minutes. I time it with my wife. We both work the same shift at same hospital.
30 minutes, depends on when I go in. I’ll take it 4.5-6 hours in.
30min
Usually starts around 11:30, if I get a lunch break.
1 hour unless overtime is approved. Logistics.
I work for the my states finance department, currently my lunch is 30 minutes from 12_12:30. Beginning October they’re adding an extra 30 minutes to our work days so our lunchbreak will get an extra 30 minutes too!
30 minutes which is required for hourly employees under Colorado law
I get 2 breaks that I usually get to choose when I go each time. One is 20 minutes and the other is 30. I cannot combine them to have one longer break. I work in manufacturing.
Anytime I want- 7/11
An hour and a half. No set time. We can pretty much take it when we want.
Just whenever and for however long.
People only care if you get your work done here, not how long you’re at lunch.
I actually skip it most days so I can leave work a little earlier than I otherwise would. But also end of day times aren’t set either.
What is lunch?
I get an hour, state law says it needs to start within 6 hours of being on the clock. Pretty sure that law exists so you can’t decide (or be forced) to work without a meal break and take off an hour early.
Typically half an hour, staggered so the office stays staffed.
Lunchbreak? What is a “lunchbreak”? lol
My lunches are paid. I can eat, leave my office, run errands, etc, as long as my QC work is done.
Half hour unpaid.
Hourly worker in healthcare. I take it at 12:30.
1/2 hour within 5 hours of your start time. Most usually take it halfway thru their shift.
30min.
Doesnt matter if I work 8hrs or +16hrs. My lunch is only thirty minutes.
1030-11am
In my state we are required to take our lunch break within the first 5 hours of when we started working so there’s no set time, we just have to do it by then
I most always eat in my office and take about 20-30 minutes.
We stagger lunch hours at my job, so there are at least 2 people there at any given time. There are only 6 of us. Home is 5 minutes away, so I go there.
I work second shift at an assisted living facility, 2:30 – 11:00 PM. I don’t have a set time when I take my lunch, but I coordinate with others so only one of us is away at a time and it usually ends up being about 6:30.
State law only requires me to be given a half-hour, which is (barely) enough, but my department recently extended it to 40 minutes. That’s nice, though I wouldn’t want it to be much longer than that — not because I wouldn’t appreciate the time myself, but because it would mean the time others are away on their own lunch breaks would also be an hour, and that would stretch everyone a bit thin.
Teacher. 25 minutes.
I work out of a fire station on an ambulance, and we can have lunch whenever we want for however long we want as long as no one calls 911. Unfortunately, people call 911 for very non-emergency reasons like knee pain for 3 weeks that they could schedule to see a doctor for, or go to Urgent Care. Sometimes, we eat a pack of PB & crackers while we’re responding because a 12 hour shift without lunch is hard.
12pm-1pm. 1 hour unpaid
I stop seeing patients between 1-3. I usually take 90 mins for lunch. The other remaining lunch break is either to see overflow or catch up on notes
I can take lunch at any time (except at the beginning or end of my shift to come late or leave early), and it’s 35 minutes unpaid. I additionally have 2 15-minute breaks that are paid.
Union Grocery store…
After 4 hours, unpaid 30 min lunch. With a paid 15 min break 2 hours on either side.
Most places are 30 min or an hour but my last couple jobs I picked my own breaks. I worked in tv so there was a lot of down time for me. We had set times when we were doing live programming so you had to be there but the rest of the time we were super flexible. I went and grabbed food whenever and would wander off at time to talk to my wife for 10 or 20 minutes. So long as we had someone there and we got all our work done we could structure it how we like. It is unusual for jobs to be like that so I always feel lucky to have it.
Whenever I want, as long as I want, wherever I want. But realistically, I’m usually eating at my desk and relatively quickly. Because I have things to get done. Maybe once a month or so I’ll have lunch with others in the cafeteria (the food is good) but usually it’s just something I brought from home.
-college professor
I work remotely, I usually take 15 or 20 minutes when I can during the day.
30 min unpaid, depends on when we get in, usually try and set it for the middle of the shift. I’m in retail.
30 minutes, whenever I feel like it. I can take longer breaks if I want, but then I have to stay later to make up the time.
30 minutes and not a minute more. Unpaid.
1/2 hour some days an hour others
Currently 30 minutes at noon.
Hourly at big-box retailer: they let us choose whether we want to be scheduled for 30 or 60 minute lunch, and the scheduling software assigns a specific time but in actual practice it’s pretty flexible, as long as there is coverage for the department.
We work 2 six hour shifts per day at my work place. We eat whenever we want for as long as we want, so long as we have time. If we’re busy during the six hours, it’s our responsibility to eat before or after.
Per company policy and state law: 30 minutes unpaid for every four hours worked, beginning no later than the start of the fifth hour.
Per my timecard: 12:30-1pm daily marked as “unpaid meal period”
Per reality: Anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour at whatever time I think of it, usually still at my desk, or an hour cut off the start or end of the workday for appointments or ennui or whatever. My official hours are 8-5 which includes one hour unpaid in there somewhere no matter when I take it.
Most jobs I’ve worked start at 8 a.m. and end at 5 pm and you get one hour for a meal break. You also get a 15 min morning break and 15 min afternoon break which are optional and you get paid weather you take them or not.
I have a staff position with a small symphony orchestra. I get a paid hour for lunch everyday, and I usually take it at 12. On days we have after hour events, I’ll come in in the afternoon and my lunch hour becomes a dinner hour that I’ll take around 5.
If you’re paid on an hourly basis and subject to US overtime rules, it’s generally a 30 minute lunch if you work in an administrative capacity, it’s usually taken around noon. If you’re working in a continuously operating environment, like manufacturing, it’ll be scheduled around the process and the availability of the relief staff. That was always something that had to be actively managed when I supervised an aseptic pharma production process.
Nursing.
It’s a half hour unpaid and whether or not you get to take it depends on the unit, the culture, and your patients.
A lot of the time it’s 10 minutes to slam down whatever you can. One day last week I didn’t manage a bathroom break until then 11th hour of my shift.
I’ve also worked in areas where you could count on an uninterrupted lunch if you wanted it.
11:22 for 30 minutes. Can you tell I’m a teacher? 🙂
11-11:30 when I’m in the shop.
If I’m in the field, I usually skip it and leave a half hour early if I’m working by myself.
Outside of my first job, lunch breaks have been “whenever you can take it, and don’t fuck around too long.”
1hr lunch but it’s generally frowned upon to actually take the whole hour. Lunch at whatever time we want. I usually skip lunch(actually just eat at my desk) and leave at 4pm instead of 5pm.
Freight Broker/Logistics
30 minutes at noon.
I’m a software engineer. Neither of those are defined. The rules here are to hit 40 hours each week. Other than attending meetings, they don’t care how. I’m an early riser and they’re fine with me starting 1-2 hours earlier than everyone else. My lunch is also a little early (11am) as a result.
No real set times, but we get an hour when we do take it. I normally eat at my desk and/or keep working.
I work in automotive repair and it’s not the easiest to plan for downtime
30 minutes for my hospital shifts and 1 hour for clinic.
I take the latest allowable time at my job, 2:30pm, so that when I return it’s as late as possible, 3:30pm. I eat around 12-12:30 at my desk though.
For me it’s 30 minutes whenever I want. Usually at 1pm. Nothing is standardized where I work.
30 minutes and the time varies. Teachers eat lunch when their class has lunch aides have to be squeezed in around when the class can reasonably be conducted with less help. The class’ lunch and recess times are not it, neither is PE or music. We try to have them in the window between 11 and 1, but it’s not always consistent.
Salaried tech professional. No scheduled time; I intermittent fast four days a week, so I don’t take one Monday through Thursday. I generally do a small working lunch Friday. I’ll sometimes cut out a little early sometimes if things are slow to compensate for it.
We don’t have a set time. We just take lunch when we can.
Technically we get a half-hour lunch and two 15-minute breaks, but most of us just take an hour lunch. We can take it whenever. I work 10-6 so I normally take mine around 1:30-2.
I can take either a 30 or 60 minute lunch between 11-2
If I take a 30 minute lunch, I can leave 30 minutes “early”
11:48.
24 minutes.
30 min barely enough time to catch my breath and eat lunch. Took me 8 minutes to get to the break room and 8 minutes back to my desk. 14 minutes was hardly enough time 😭
Officially, 1 hour and you can take off any time between 11-1. But in reality no one cares, just take lunch working around your meetings and other work. I generally don’t even take a lunch and just get an hour back in my day.
I work for myself at home. I eat when I want but it’s always while working.
30 minutes around 12:30pm. I’ve had other jobs where it was 15 minutes.
11:30 and it was approx an hour.
30 minutes.
My 1st job at a grocery store as a box boy in ’74 we sometimes had 60 minutes. I’d ask one of the lady checkers to join me at The Sizzler across the street. “Dutch” of course. Nothing weird. I’d end up spending two hours worth of pay.
Teacher—25 minutes at my desk. Luckily my planning backs up to lunch so I have an hour and a halfish if I’m not using planning to work.
The what
I’m salaried so it’s never come up — I just eat when I’m ready.
For specifics you can read this: https://www.lni.wa.gov/workers-rights/workplace-policies/rest-breaks-meal-periods-and-schedules
My state law says 30 minutes minimum. At various places I have worked, they adjust start and end times for a 30 or 60 minute lunch, each place having their own rules.
Hospital RN. 30 minutes. Can be from anywhere between 1030-2. We all have to take turns/ stagger our time.
An hour anytime I want. Client meeting lunches have no time limit.
1 hour. We are ideally supposed to take lunch between 11am and 1pm.
We do a lot of regional day travel though and can build the lunch into our return trip, or take lunch upon return even if that is later than 1pm.
If we ask permission, we can occasionally use the hour early in the day or late in the day for a doctor’s appointment.
“Industry” is too wide a berth…
My office lunch time is “when I want to take it” and the length is “don’t abuse it” So if it goes 1.5 hours no one will sneeze at it so long as my work is getting done.
Today I got to the office at 9:15, ate at my desk at 12:30 and left the office at 2:40. I just got home after picking my son up at school and am about to log on for another hour and a half or so.
I work in IT for a logistics company.
All these big jobs in the comments. I work at a smoothie place. I take a required 30 min lunch, no shorter no longer if I work 5 or more hours. Otherwise, no breaks.
We break at whatever time we want and get either a 15 and a 30 or we can take a 45.
I’m salaried, so my lunch break is anything from 15 minutes eating at my desk to two hours of eating a nice meal and fucking off.
My normal lunch time is “whenever I feel hungry”.
Whatever you want or need. No one cares as long as your work gets done. If enough people are in the office (generally Monday through Thursday; no one comes in Friday if they can help it) then my work caters lunch and that generally starts at noon and goes until people stop showing up to get food, then the leftovers get packaged up for whoever wants to take them.