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.

MerdedeBrexit I was referring to those defending and singing Breakfast Brenda's praises and indicating her colleagues are workshy, jealous, time wasters rather than anything from the OP who as you rightly note has not returned to the thread since Wednesday.

@mrstwiddle you made me laugh with that!
We’ve got a girl in the office who brings soup in her metal Thermos flask and the clanky sound it makes as the metal spoon hits it is enough to set you on edge!
I think as a manager you need to step up and either say a no food policy while working or perhaps let someone else do the job as it’s not fair.

I used to work in a team of six, three of whom would come in together 15 minutes late, having all been to the gym together, proceed to all go and prepare breakfast and protein shakes in the kitchen for the next 15, and then all sit and eat their breakfasts whilst explaining the nutritional value of it all to anyone who would listen. They would raise eyebrows at me leaving on time to go and get my train home.

@RedDogsBeg I'd be fascinated to know what field you work in? Is it common there for an employee's above average performance to be recognised by the arbitrary (probably illegal) dismissal of two adequate employees?

I've found that good employees create employment, not the other way around. For example last year my breakfast enjoying employee (completely based on her own initiative) decided to create a client database that would prompt our staff to get in touch with clients at key moments in their business lifecycle. This initiative alone has generated extra work to the value of many times her salary. & Certainly many times the value of 30 minutes a day. Last month she decided to negotiate with an existing supplier and reduced an ongoing cost by about 15%. Again, her idea. No one else had thought to do it. Above and beyond her job.

In terms of favouritism - yeah I guess she's a 'favourite' in that I value her above other employees in similar roles- but I'm not teaching seven year olds here, I'm running a business. Some employees have more value than others, it's not cronyism or deference to recognise that, it's just basic commerce. To answer some questions below- she is paid more than others and has been promoted many times.

I've found these responses really interesting and they demonstrate how diverse various workplace cultures can be, thank you to the people who spent time commenting.

I can't believe a bowl of breakfast generated 500 comments, it's hilarious.

The more I read the more I love my flexible little office where so long as you do your hours and work nobody gives a damn. Sometimes we leave early sometimes we leave late. Sometimes we have a good old chat sometimes there’s a deadline and it’s nose down crack on. I often spend the first bit easing into the morning but rarely take lunch. Oh and once or twice have worked up to flipping midnight if needed so the boss tends to just leave bus to it.

@WishingILivedOnAnIsland I’m actually glad to hear your employee is compensated better in acknowledgment of her good work. And you’re right: some employees are definitely worth more than others to an organization. I wonder why some posters are having a hard time understanding that. Good luck in your convo with her though! :)

So pleased you came back @WishingILivedOnAnIsland. As a graduate of the same school of management as you, I’m intrigued as to what you’re going to do now.

So are you actually going to speak to her about her rudeness to other colleagues or not?

I don't really know why you came on Mumsnet asking for advice because it seems to me you have no intention of pulling Brekkie Brenda up on her piss taking because she's such a fantastic employee.
She's paid more than the others AND she gets an extra 30 minute break every day where others aren't allowed to disturb her?

What concerns me is that some people are apparently struggling to believe that there can be any middle ground between micromanaging everyone down to the last second and not trusting anyone with any leeway, and just letting your employees do exactly as they please and not bothering yourself to do anything about it if they upset their colleagues.

Alsohuman you have been focusing on the "unpaid 30 minute break" bit throughout and have ignored the part where this employee is being rude to other staff and, more particularly, the part where the OP said she was extremely set in her ways and unable to take criticism on board. Do you think that telling an employee that they must be available to help their colleagues during working hours without having a bad attitude amounts to "treating her like a child"? Would you not take a dim view of someone who you couldn't give feedback to for fear that they'd throw a tantrum and hand in their notice?

@CheckingOutTheQuantocks, I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else. My comments have focused on effective management styles.

Wishing the field I work in would not carry two adequate employees when their work could be done better and faster, all whilst still over achieving in their own role, by one sensational employee.

So to sum up.... if you are a junior/ lacking experience or knowledge, arent great at your job or arent a favourite then its 9-5 and best manners towards other employees..... but if you are bringing in the bacon for the company, have experience, know what you are doing, just have a totally brass neck or are a favourite employee then its cereal city and flexi hours as suits and you can be as rude as you like as piss everyone else off while they work their asses off trying to make their way to the top. Yup! Sounds about right!

Alsohuman you made a comment to the effect that approaches that differ from your own amount to treating people like children. I didn't see how that related to this particular situation. What do you have to say about the employee's poor attitude towards her colleagues and her colleagues' subsequent discontent? Do you think that they're necessarily being petty and jealous or is it possible that they have a genuine grievance? Would you indulge an employee who was unable to take negative feedback and was likely to quit if she was told to stop glaring at people who ask her to do work stuff while she's sitting at her desk during working hours?

How would I have dealt with it? In a team I managed it probably wouldn’t be an issue as the concept of protected time would be part of the culture.

I managed a team at one point with several Australian workers. They came in, sorted out their breakfast, settled down with it, checked their personal emails and Facebook, took their crockery back to the kitchen and cracked on with their work. Not one person complained. Ever.

That was a hardworking perfectionist team who set themselves high standards, never missed a deadline and added huge value to the business.

But apparently because I allowed the team to work in the way that got the best from them I was a crap manager. Who knew?

None of that is an answer to any of the questions I put! Notwithstanding the fact that your management style is so great that you have never had to settle any complaints within your team, the OP has to deal with this situation. Since it has arisen, how do you think it should be dealt with? I ask again, if you can imagine some impossibly unlikely scenario whereby you had an employee who wasn't able to take negative feedback and would quit her job if she received any, how would you handle that? Just saying that it wouldn't have happened to you because you're too good a manager isn't especially helpful.

It’s not my problem, is it? Why the aggression?

It isn't any of our problems except the OP, but we've all been commenting on it because we were invited to do so. I think that the employee in question needs to be spoken to and told that, while there is no issue at all with her work, or with her eating at her desk, she needs to dial back the rudeness and be available to help her colleagues when required. I was merely interested in what you thought she should do, or what you would do in that situation.

I also can’t believe so much angry (and petty) discussion has been generated by breakfast. Good work, Mumsnet.

I can well believe this is not a reverse. I worked in a team where one staff member was allowed to bully the others because she had such a wealth of knowledge and experience in the role. One team member moved departments, two left, and still she remains and is allowed to be as idiosyncratic as she wishes. Ask yourself this OP - could she function as a one person team? If so, let all the others go and put all the responsibility onto her. If not, then you need to stop her from being able to hold court, isolate what it she she does better than other team mates, get her to train them in those aspects, and then you will feel less afraid of tackling basic behavioral issues with her.

If brekkie Brenda was doing this and it wasn't affecting others other than they were jealous I would think it was fine to let it continue as she is a good employee.

But she is affecting others work as they can't speak to her during that time which will be stopping them from being able to do there work. And she is being rude to them which isn't good for office relations or moral. This will also lead to others taking the p.

If you were a manager in my work allowing this I would think less of you as a manager and my work environment no matter how good brekkie Brenda is the rest of the time.

I work in an environment which is very flexible and also acknowledges that if you do your job, you can have more time off and in my line of business it's pretty obvious.
I really wouldn't bother with that - tbh, I don't understand that rigid approach to work time unless you are working somewhere in a factory where everything is timed. In an office - you have a workload, if you do it, why should you not have more free time?

This annoys me greatly. I always make sure to have breakfast at home and to leave on time to arrive at work to start when I am expected to. It's not hard. I am really annoyed when people come and waste that 30 mins or so. It's rude, displays poor time management and is stealing company time.

Alsohuman but how would you have tackled it if one of your team members had started being rude to people approaching them with work-related questions and had started to cause bad feeling in the team?

It's great when everyone's on the same page and an approach works for the same team. But by the OP's admission, that's not the case here. Are you one of those who has assumed that the colleagues approaching for help/answers/advice must be badly organised or that their queries are pointless and they shouldn't be bothering Breakfast Brenda? What if actually they are ahead of the game and organising their To Do lists and priorities and identifying their key queries for the next day before they leave each evening, so they're ready to catch the colleague they need (BB for the purposes of this) first thing the next morning...but oh, they can't, because BB has the shutters drawn until at least 9.30, possibly longer?

Are you assuming that BB's colleagues in the team are all useless and rubbish and have no right to feel disgruntled because they must be wasting even more time themselves on fag breaks and personal calls so you would brush aside their concerns? But what if they're actually all pretty competent and doing a good job, just maybe not as skilled yet in using their initiative as BB can be? The OP doesn't say they're rubbish - are their concerns about lack of equity and perceived favouritism automatically illegitimate just because they didn't happen to save 15% last month? What if one of their concerns is because they don't want the reputation of their team to become one of being unapproachable and inflexible?

If you were in the OP's position, Alsohuman, as opposed to being in the very different position you were actually in, how would you tackle this situation?

I find it odd that OP’s team is at odds with the culture she encourages. She’s said the really doesn’t care but her other reports do. How is it that there’s such a mismatch and the complainers don’t understand the culture she’s trying to foster?

My approach I guess would be to bring up culture and management style in a team meeting. I’d explain that I treat people as self motivated adults who can be trusted to do the job without being micro managed. That I was interested in results and, so long as those are achieved, the time spent doing that and how it’s organised are irrelevant. I’d also point out that the team should be able to accommodate different styles of working and that freedom is available to all its members.

Just absolutely wrong for people to be eating breakfast in an office,plus that attitude that goes with it. People would have been severely dealt with in my office days if anyone ate a kind of meal in office hours.

It doesn't matter how brilliant a person is regarding their job,they should have more respect for themselves,and all others in the office. If I was in your high position,I would not let this issue slide,as it's affecting other people in the office,and that's not fair to them.