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.

Toilet breaks are a basic human right though, eating breakfast at work isn't.

Yeah I’m always a bit at anyone who thinks any member of staff is indispensable. Maybe if they’ve actually split the atom or discovered DNA or similar.... An administrator in an office.... not so much.

Sounds like an annoying situation.

It’s important to pick your battles when managing a team and not feel pressured to react each person who has an issue with another. People can be irritating, that's life. As someone else notes the people complaining about this might well be attending to their own non-work related tasks during the day too. You don't want to get into that level of micromanaging.

I think it’s about outcomes, ie is this person getting their work done. If the answer is yes, which you say it is, I don't think you need to be laying down the law by saying she needs to come in early if she wants to eat breakfast at their desk.

Loads of people eat breakfast at their desk in my office and its a non-issue. No one cares. As long as you are still available for work.

In your place, if push came to shove, I would probably say something along the lines of '"It's completely fine to eat breakfast at work but it’s not an official break, like lunchtime, so you still need to be available for work requests."

Agree- pick your battles, don’t micromanage .... but withering looks and obstructive behaviour have no place in the modern workplace. Actually flexible working rights make it easier than ever now to request adjustments which suit your lifestyle. If this woman is absolutely determined that she needs an uninterrupted breakfast for half an hour each day then she could simply request a later start and have her breakfast out of the office. Sorted.

"I love it, it's the lowest stress, most relaxed job I've ever had smile"

Wow. I couldn't love a job where I had to be at my seat all the time. It goes against H&S guidelines for one thing: you're supposed to take a break from the computer regularly and you're supposed to walk around a bit.
I'm glad you like it though; emergency call handler must have been tough.

"I guess if this carries on the people you manage will go over your head."

But that's ridiculous. Going over your boss's head should only happen when you've exhausted all other options and there's a serious problem, which there isn't here. I can't imagine any senior manager being interested in this kind of thing.

"So if complainers see a colleague getting half an hour extra breakfast break a day and go to a senior person because the OP is turning a blind eye their cards will be marked? Right."

Their cards wouldn't be marked where I work, but the senior person would be annoyed at having their time wasted by such a non-issue and the complainer would be seen as a whingeing busybody.

That was what I meant by “marked cards” @Gwenhwyfar.

Oh, marked cards for me is a bit more serious, like a black mark against your name that will be remembered. I don't think it'd be like that in the places where I've worked, but you'd definitely be seen as a bit of a time waster.

I remember talking to someone who was a CEO of a small company and he spent a hell of a lot of his time dealing with complaints by senior people that more junior people had better parking spaces than them. So silly and pointless.

Brekkie Bren could be run over by a bus tomorrow and would have to be replaced. OP it’s never a good mindset as a manager to feel anyone is irreplaceable. It really isn’t. Particularly IME if anyone in the team is trying to convince you that they are

If you really believe she is, then clearly knowledge isn’t being cascaded effectively and staff aren’t being trained up in their skills set. You need to look at your management if you genuinely believe she’s irreplaceable. It’s not a great way to run a business.

If a person went over a managers head where I work then the senior managers would have to look at the reasons why. If they felt the colleague had a justified grievance (and favourtism is a justified grievance) then the manager that had failed to address the issue could expect to either be warned, either formally or informally, disciplined or even if it was warrented demoted or sacked. Until it had been investigated there would be no card marking.

And to sit at your desk not working for 30 minutes a day because you are eating breakfast is a piss take.

@Gwenhwyfar we get breaks of course so between breaks I'm at my desk for 2.5-3hrs max. Yeah it was thought, perhaps that's why this seems so low stress? Provided we do our job, what we do between calls isn't monitored

"we get breaks of course so between breaks I'm at my desk for 2.5-3hrs max"

That seems a lot to me. In my jobs I've been able to walk around to stretch my legs e.g. to the printer, to reception to get someone, to accounts to hand in a form, to the post room or just for a walk. But, you're happy...

"If a person went over a managers head where I work then the senior managers would have to look at the reasons why. If they felt the colleague had a justified grievance (and favourtism is a justified grievance) then the manager that had failed to address the issue could expect to either be warned, either formally or informally, disciplined or even if it was warrented demoted or sacked. Until it had been investigated there would be no card marking."

Then the senior people where you work are obviously not very busy. They have time to 'investigate' something so petty?

Actually they are very busy but they take grievances seriously and actually hear them out rather than assume they are petty and be dismissive. That way they can make an informed judgement and behave like a manager is supposed to. They would also be less than impressed if the team woth one exception were mediocre and quite rightly the manager would be pulled up fo failing to correct this.

I don't think having breakfast at your desk is a problem (unless it's kippers), but if I didn't want to be interrupted, I would go away from my desk. I occasionally have a bacon roll at my desk but I'm usually checking email while doing it. (I did discover last week that holding a half-eaten Magnum seriously impedes my typing speed, though.)

That doesn't mean it's okay to interrupt me just because I'm at my desk - a colleague tried to ask me a question the other day when I was on the phone. When I turned and gestured at my headphones, he tried again, instead of saying, "oops, sorry, when you're free..." as most people would. It turned out not to anything important - if we'd had a priority 1 outage just come through, an interruption would be expected. Other times, I will say things like, "I need to finish this first, then I can think about it," or, do you need an answer now, or can it wait till after the meeting/this afternoon/tomorrow /next week?" I usually can move things around, but sometimes we need to negotiate, as our priorities don't always match. I try not to be too rude, though. I think there have been times when I have failed, but usually not.

I think there are a number of things I would look at.

Other than team feeling, does it have an impact on productivity? I'm not saying that an sense of team isn't important, because it definitely is, but if there are any more tangible things, like deadlines being missed, data missing from reports, procedural errors - that can make a more measurable problem.

She doesn't take well to negative feedback - can you frame it in a more positive way, more constructively? I think she should be made aware of the discord she is causing -maybe she will have other ideas on how to resolve it, without pissing people off further. Maybe the issue is her colleagues' perception, but it's not beyond her powers to change things to improve their perception. (It sounds like it's not just their perception, but she may see it that way.)

Do people really need to ask her questions at that time? Some things are urgent, but others can wait. Sometimes, asking other colleagues is a shortcut, because it's quicker than looking through documentation or working it out for yourself. We all do that sometimes, and there are also aspects of social interaction and bouncing ideas off others, but that doesn't mean it's essential, especially not with that person at that particular time.

I agree that no one should be indispensable - but I also know that even if everything someone knows is documented, so others can pick it up, there will always be some people who are more thorough in their work, better at seeing links across

different areas of work, better at remembering that something is like a problem that happened last November, better at finding information...

Then the senior people where you work are obviously not very busy. They have time to 'investigate' something so petty?

Someone not working for 30 minutes every day and being very rude to colleagues is not 'petty'.

Someone not working for 30 minutes every day and being very rude to colleagues is not 'petty'

This. She's being paid for 10 hours a month she isn't working. I'm sure she could get some good stuff done in that 10 hours.

"Someone not working for 30 minutes every day and being very rude to colleagues is not 'petty'."

Complaining about the details of a colleague's working pattern and then about your own manager is really petty. Is none of anybody else's business.

"She's being paid for 10 hours a month she isn't working. I'm sure she could get some good stuff done in that 10 hours."

She gets more done in the hours she does work.

She gets more done in the hours she does work.

That's likely not to be quantifiably measurable, rather a feeling. However she would get more done in the hours she works if she did her full hours.

It's not really pretty of her colleagues. I'm assuming you would be fine with all of them taking off 10 hours a month too for the same pay?

"However she would get more done in the hours she works if she did her full hours."

Not necessarily. A lot of people I know take non-official breaks in order to be more productive when they are working.

"I'm assuming you would be fine with all of them taking off 10 hours a month too for the same pay?"

As others have mentioned, lots of employees take time off for various things, smoking, personal phone calls, whatever. This woman just does it in a more obvious way.

Bit unusual if they all took up to 10 hours a month off though.

That's likely not to be quantifiably measurable, rather a feeling

Where do you get that from? It could easily be quantifiably measurable.

One PA in my team will format 4 reports in the time another can do 1. That’s easily measurable.