Privacy on my break at work

On ear headphones, on silently if you wish.

OP, just nicely but firmly tell your coworkers that you’re sitting in this area to get away for a bit and while you love the chats at your desks, you need some downtime. In other words phrase it in a “it’s me not you” way.

if they continue just pick up and leave with a breezy “oh I have to make a call” and move your stuff.

if that all fails find yourself some catalogs for random mlm sales and the next time they sit down say “oh great now that you’re here I can tell you about these fantastic new products I’m selling” I’m afraid you’re going to have to really sell this one (pun intended).

Or if that doesn’t work, then pull out a bible and ask them to pray with you…

You get the idea right?

I might own several of them 🤔 🤣🤣

tough tits for them - what you are saying is that OP should sacrifice her quiet time because some knobs can't take a "no"? bollocks to that.

I agree: use your words.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, it's a pretty basic adult skill to be able to politely communicate with people and ask them not to do something

And this is it in a nutshell. As I said upthread, my son's nursery was teaching toddlers to five year olds this basic life skill.

I am absolutely gobsmacked that so many adults on this thread genuinely seem to think it is unreasonable to expect professional working adults to be able to do this.

Yes, it does do harm to create a culture where adult professionals cannot deal with simple interactions by themselves but need management to step in on their behalf. Yes there is harm to that.

If OP's colleagues actually took offence to what she said and that had consequences for OP, then OP has bigger problems. With petty bullies looking for offence like that, you will inevitably get on their wrong side at some point. Luckily most people are not such psychopaths and the idea that one should deal with all social situations by assuming the other person is a vengeful psychopath is not a workable one and is certainly a harmful one. You should not be advocating for it.

Yes, there is. But if that person does turn "unreasonably arsey" then it clearly becomes a manager and an HR issue.

At which point that person looks like a total dick, if their only defence is that they couldn't leave someone to eat their cheese and pickle sarnies in peace for an hour.

No, of course I don't think people should 'never say anything at work that might risk not being what the other person wants'. But in answer to your point about reporting 'any other colleague problem', I'd say there's always potential for the other person to turn unreasonably arsey, because sometimes this is in fact what happens. And sometimes it just makes sense to be pragmatic and weigh up potential gain vs potential hassle in the future.

I don't think it would be any easier or harder than reporting any other colleague problem to a line manager or HR. Why wouldn't it?

If I follow your logic then you should never say anything at work that might risk not being what the other person wants, in case it upsets them, because you might have to talk to a manager and they might not believe you.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, it's a pretty basic adult skill to be able to politely communicate with people and ask them not to do something.

If there are official signs up, then the company has to take.some responsibility for enforcing the policy surely? I'm not suggesting that is down to HR, it might very well not be part of their remit, but the company cannot simply say it is up to each individual to tackle the issue. Yes ideally OP could say something but equally she might not want to, in which case the company is obliged to act.

If it works, @bluetonguegiraffe, then great. But I’ve worked in enough offices to know that minor things can easily get blown up out of proportion, even if it’s just turning into office gossip.

I'd hope that if I was unwittingly disturbing someone and they said, “Sorry, do you mind if I just get on with XYZ?” or similar that I wouldn’t take offence. Unfortunately not everyone is like that.

Perhaps instead of focusing on “But why does OP need someone in authority to get involved?”, it would be worth looking at the question from a different angle. Does it actually do any harm for an office manager figure to send a quick email saying “We have a designated quiet area - please respect it”?

I do think one of the things that has gone wrong with society is that we expect someone in Authority to manage all social issues, rather than ourselves. Society actually functions better when individuals themselves are prepared to politely enforce accepted social boundaries. Such as saying, ' Its the quiet area.'

I have just started working in quite a big office, and also prefer to go off and read in peace on lunch. I worry my colleagues will think I’m standoffish but we talk on the phone to customers all day and I don’t want to sit and chat about work when I’m on lunch! I don’t mind sometimes, and do want to get to know my colleagues so sit with them sometimes but mostly I like to get a little peace and read or go in my phone, feels like a proper break. Someone has only come and sat with me once, brought smelly food with him so that was really annoying but there’s enough small spaces to get away to that it’s only happened once luckily. OP I feel your pain 😂

If you're not comfortable just being honest and saying you just want to read your book and be on your own, get some over ear headphones. They work in the gym, put these on and no one bothers you!

I fucking hate this. Many of the offices I've worked in have nowhere to eat your lunch other than at your desk. I wish I had a pound for the amount of times another colleague has stood looming over me gabbling away whilst I'm trying to eat (and enjoy) my sandwich/salad or whatever. Or they pull up a chair and plonk themselves next to me. I don't want to eat my lunch with someone else gawping at me and I don't want to try and swallow great mouthfuls of it so I can respond to them. No matter how uncommunicative you are, or how pissed off you look they just don't get the bloody message! Personally, if someone else is eating my first reaction would be to say "oh sorry I'll come back when you've finished your lunch". Unless a shared lunchtime has been clearly and mutually agreed I wouldn't dream of imposing on someone trying to enjoy their food/break.

It can be hard to even politely point out at work that you might have different preferences and needs without being thought unfriendly, different, weird or difficult. Many larger workplaces are set up assuming people want to socialise in their lunch breaks. But surely headphones send a definite message.

I really feel for the OP here. Down time at work is precious, especially when lunch break is only 30 minutes.
I have a really stressful and intense job, I need those 30 mins to rest and just eat to recoup some energy!
There's a lady in my department at work (lovely btw), but she thinks nothing of regularly coming into my office (I'm alone in an office) whilst she knows I'm on lunch and trying to catch up with my online banking and online shopping whilst trying to actually eat my lunch. One day recently, she spent literally the whole 30 mins going on and onnnnn about her cat.... I just don't care about her cat.. I don't mind animals but I don't expect to spend my whole lunch break captive in my own office whilst she babbles on about it! I showed her no indicators that I was interested, asked nothing about the cat and just gave a couple of police "aha.." give of verbal nods to be police. Grrrrr. Why don't people have social awareness in these kind of situations?!

There’s a massive difference between expecting HR to double up as cleaners or canteen managers and suggesting they just might help with upholding something the company has instituted. Regardless of whether it’s part of disciplinary policy or not.

I’d chat to HR and say you need some quiet time at lunch to destress and decompress and your finding it’s too busy to do that at the moment, they might be able to find you a space where you can go for a quiet chill. I had the same issue at my work and HR were happy to help

completely failing to recognise that for many people this would be an absolute last resort rather than their first thought

The first thought should be to say to the colleagues, ' I prefer to lunch alone as I have personal stuff I need to get done in my lunch hour.' OP does not appear to have done this.

Exactly. @CantHoldMeDown has assumed this is not an official policy on the basis that OP hasn’t raised a grievance - completely failing to recognise that for many people this would be an absolute last resort rather than their first thought. But even if it isn’t carved in stone into the company handbook, surely someone in the company must have designated this area a quiet area - otherwise why would there be signs? It would take seconds to send an email saying “Please can everyone respect the quiet area and save group chats etc. for the main canteen”.

Ms Award-winning HR Manager has made sure to tell us she and her team are far, far too busy to deal with such minor trifles. But somewhere along the line she’s forgotten what the H in HR stands for.

Get some big noise-cancelling bluetooth headphones. You can play anything you like (including neutral white-noise) but if anyone intererupts you you can say you are listening to a podcast you need to know about before a meeting this afternoon/event this evening/whatever so sorry can't chat today.

As others have said, big headphones. I’m a nurse and there are tons of staff where I work. I’d say half of us put headphones on in the (large) break room which is pretty much our signal to be undisturbed. We all do a very people intense job where we talk non stop all day to our colleagues, patients and rellys at the bedside. Breaks is our decompress and listen to crap music/TV/Tiktoks for half an hour in peace time.