About breakfast at work

[WishingILivedOnAnIsland]

Every day without fail one of our senior administrators comes in on time, gets herself settled, then spends 10 minutes in the kitchen constructing a complicated bowlful of breakfast. She takes the bowl to her desk and slowly eats in the open plan office until around 9:30am. She then signals the start of her work day by returning her bowl to the kitchen. Anyone who approaches her regarding work prior to The Bowl’s Return is met with a withering look and an ‘excuse me I am eating my breakfast’ as though they’ve walked into her own kitchen out of hours and demanded a favour.

I’m her manager and I’m starting to get complaints. Both about her commandeering an additional 30 odd minutes break, and also about the tart rebuke she gives anyone who dares interrupt her morning ritual.

Here’s the thing- I don’t really care that she does this as in every other way she is a sensational employee. She is a proud set-in-her-ways kind of person and wont respond well to negative feedback. It would be a disaster if she quit and we had to replace her with a mediocre employee whose only advantage is that they eat their breakfast at home.

So AIBU to let this breakfast nonsense play on? My colleagues seem to think so and are salty with me for my inaction thus far.

Not me - I'm on a day off

As the average office-based worker is productive for around 3 hours of an 8 hour day (Bureau of Labor Statistics) I suspect all her colleagues have equal amounts of downtime but never recognise it.

The rudeness is an issue.

I would tell her she's welcome to eat her breakfast in the office but she should have it finished before the start of her working hours.

She is not refusing to work though, just refusing to talk to people, which is understandable if she is eating!
In my office lots of people work while eating breakfast or lunch, but it is considered bad form to interrupt them, we send an instant message instead or wait until they are done,

Not everyone wants promotion @FrancisCrawford.

I wouldn't give her any options regarding a later start time. It'll cause an absolute ball ache for you - 'can I start later/ earlier because Joan does'. If you don't have that kind of flexible working in place already don't offer it to this woman, it'll breed more resentment.

Urgh. Why do people think it is impossible to treat adults as individuals? If an adult can’t accept that another adult might have a different working pattern, then they need to go work for themselves and not pretend they are mature enough to work with other grown ups.

Hate people who do this so unprofessional. If you can't eat breakfast before you arrive grab a cereal bar or something to eat on the way in.

I worked in an office where there was a member of staff who came in every morning, logged on, then disappeared making a hot drink, then sat drinking the drink whilst supposedly reading emails, as soon as she had finished the drink, she went outside for a fag break, on returning to her desk she would then ring her son to make sure he was up for work, then she went for a wander round the office supposedly checking stationary supplies but in reality gossiping & snooping with other teams. The whole day was like this, she took more sick leave & time off than the rest of the team together, was constantly low level stealing things like post its & pens, made all her phone calls on the work phone. Her manager was terrified of her because she was friends with top management & any hint of being told off would lead to her running to the overall manager complaining that she was being bullied. She caused so much trouble within her own team that everyone was wanting to be moved to other teams. No manager had the balls to stand up to her & make her do what she was paid to do, all the time she worked at our office the atmosphere was terrible, other branches knew what was happening & our office ended up with a bad reputation, all because of one member of staff. You need to stamp on what this member of your staff is doing, because today it's 30 minutes a day, then it will start being another 10 minutes while she washes her dish & makes a drink, it is already causing problems because other members of staff can't speak to her about work matters during her breakfast. If you don't want to speak to her about this, why not start arranging team meetings from 9.00 to 9.30 so she can't use this time for breakfast or something else that means she has to change her routine?

Because despite starting at the correct time, at least some of these employees apparently can't finish their own work in a timely manner and the breakfast-eating employee picks up their slack.

Other possibilities:

They have more work to do than her.

Waiting until the hallowed ritual was over before receiving information reduced the available time frame for completion of work.

She has to be subject to the same rules as everyone else, so either you stop her or you let everyone else down tools for thirty minutes at the start of their working day.
You’re the manager, manage your staff.
I’m not surprised your other staff are angry, I’d be looking for another job in those circumstances too.
Is little miss cornflake worth losing the rest of your staff? Or are they mediocre?
I’m tending to agree with others, you’re a poor manager.

I’d tell her in the nicest possible way you have no issues with her eating, but her colleagues must still be able to interact with her during her breakfast, if she can’t adjust to that, there will be a blanket ban on eating at desks.

@Alsohuman I'm allowed to use my phone. Reactive job, I can't answer calls if there aren't any! However I do need to be sat at my desk in order to answer them (and not eating...)

@Nat6999, no idea why you bothered typing all that because the two situations aren’t remotely comparable. Did you RTT?

@YesQueen, I think you meant to @ someone else! 😉

FrancisCrawford you've hit the nail on the head, but I am sure the OP will not see or understand that and will just make more excuses.

If I worked in your office I’d be organising a silent protest. 9am would roll around and we’d all produce bowls of cereal at our desks. No work would be done, no telephone calls would be answered, until our revered leader returned The Original Bowl and then we’d all follow suit in one orderly uniformed line, and then finally the day could commence. This would be repeated every day until the office breakfast policy was overhauled.

That would be fine as long as you and all your colleagues don't ever have time that breakfast lady doesn't have - smoking breaks, tea breaks, calls to nanny/builder/mechanic, quick trip to post office, 5 minutes extra at lunch because there was a queue somewhere. And obviously you wouldn't expect her to help you with your work or ever stay late when shit hit the fan.

OP I agree with you in that you need to address the rudeness but not necessarily anything else as you've already said that the rest of the team enjoys flexibility too. It may be that somehow you need to get the point across that either everyone enjoys flexibility or no one does to the wider team while also acknowledging that rudeness to colleagues is not OK and will not be tolerated.

I used to work somewhere where my manager had a similar approach. I used to come in early, often more than an hour early, as it suited me to be honest and is just my personality. I'd clear out the shared inbox, eat at my desk, get a lot of the routine stuff done. My manager used to come in late almost every day but often worked until late at night and took plenty of work home. We were in total harmony. The issue we had was a colleague of mine who came in late, spent ages talking to people and making personal phone calls, would disappear off to other teams - none of this would necessarily have been a problem - but she used to bitch and whine that she was overworked and had to stay late and try and give me all the shit work to do while she got on with her 'important work'. Luckily she moved elsewhere and we were all able to carry on as we were. Some of the posters on this thread would have kittens at what we used to do in quiet periods - long lunches, mid morning coffee, everyone free to pop to the post office when there was no queue etc, but of course it balanced out during busy periods when we would routinely work crazy overtime and log in remotely.

I now work somewhere where I start to the minute and there is no flexibility whatsoever. The flip side is I'm paid for quite literally every minute I'm there. If I'm there 17 minutes late, I get paid an extra 17 minutes.

She is not refusing to work though, just refusing to talk to people, which is understandable if she is eating!

If they are approaching her with work based issues and she is effectively telling them to go away as she is having her breakfast as the OP states, then she is not working. She isn’t merely unable to speak because she has a mouthful of muesli.

If they are approaching her with work based issues and she is effectively telling them to go away as she is having her breakfast as the OP states, then she isnotworking. She isn’t merely unable to speak because she has a mouthful of muesli

I wonder if this huge deal around breakfast is one of those face book/blog detox healthy breakfast juice plus/mlm nonsense?
Seems to be a thing on facebook for all those idiots selling shit. People paid to work but promoting other "work" ...

@Alsohuman - "@Nat6999, no idea why you bothered typing all that because the two situations aren’t remotely comparable. Did you RTT?"

Who made you boss of the internet? I thought @Nat6999's post was interesting and in my opinion WAS comparable.

OP are you happy for everyone in the office to copy the sacred breakfast ritual and be unavailable to all staff and clients for the first half hour of the day? If not, are you prepared to explain to the others that only the favoured one is permitted to do this and why?

Exactly and are all members of staff permitted to be rude to others because their breakfast/lunch/cup of coffee/smoking ritual has been disturbed by someone else with a legitimate work query.
I think if you looked into this a bit more you'd find out she isn't just rude during the first half hour - it will be a general attitude to the others. Does she suddenly start being nice and helpful at 9.30 or what?

The colleagues should accept that she actually starts at 9:30 and keep their noses out. They sound jealous and petty
Why does she get to start at 9.30 and the others have to start at 9? If work starts at 9 she should be ready to work, especially as others may need her to be able to get on with their work. If she's so amazingly fantastic etcetc and always gets her work done then maybe she doesn't need to stay late etc... but not sitting around taking the piss at the beginning of the working day.

Most of the posters here: their offices sound completely miserable.

Not that I'm condoning this woman's rudeness to other employees.

But if you can't have a laugh and an occasional cup of tea, in your working day, then that sounds soul destroying.

Wishing I hope you read and take note of the post FrancisCrawford made at 12.22, you have already admitted in your opening post that your colleagues think you are being unreasonable for not addressing this and are being 'salty' with you as a consequence.

Wow senior management and sort out the problem at the same time. Tell your team that you are adopting Agile practices which means you need a 15 minute get together at the start of each day to look at what's got to be done and share out work. Get together starts at 9.00 or 915