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.

I bet they spend at least ten hours a month making personal phone calls, dealing with personal emails, on the internet, etc. Nobody notices because they haven’t got a bowl in front of them.

I really thought we’d got past this petty clock watching culture and judged people’s performance on which they achieve at work. It’s profoundly depressing that so many people think the complainers are right.

If the scenario that several posters have created is correct- that Breakfast Brenda is superwoman who turns round work far more efficiently than the rest of the workforce, who are all mediocre and keep
Interrupting her precious breakfast with unnecessary questions, then it really would be a good idea for the OP’s manager to get a handle on what’s going on. OP is clearly not managing well. She has already told us that it would be disastrous if Breakfast Bren were to leave. This is no way to be managing. All team members need to be skilled up to the appropriate level so they can carry on with tasks independently, and to avoid the office needing knowledge and skills that only one person can supply them with. It’s a very outdated approach. No one should be indispensable to the point that their leaving would be a disaster. Certainly not for administrators fgs! As I said earlier they’re not splitting the atom!

The breakfast is the smallest issue. The obstructive behaviour and rudeness to colleagues is a bigger one, and the fact the OP believes BB to be irreplaceable the biggest one of all. I would be wanting the OP to manage her team a lot better than this

Good thing she doesn’t report to you then @Gatoadigrado. Are you currently using some of your ten hours a month while you’re at work?

Would be a damn good thing - OP needs to up her management to get her office into the 21st century and more productive.
Yes.

Yea we got one of those and leaves early come and go when she pleases but then got the cheek to moan when I got a diabetes appointment and going to be in late.

Would be a damn good thing - OP needs to up her management to get her office into the 21st century and more productive.
Yes

Funny how you suggest other posters are extrapolating and creating situations but you know exactly what’s going on

Can’t help thinking this post must have hit a nerve!

Jacques- did you miss the bit where the OP said it would be disastrous for breakfast Brenda to leave?
Poor management to believe that one person in a team is irreplaceable- shows a lack of training/ teamwork/communication of key skills and knowledge.
Not extrapolating, going by what the OP actually says

Jacques- did you miss the bit where the OP said it would be disastrous for breakfast Brenda to leave?
Poor management to believe that one person in a team is irreplaceable- shows a lack of training/ teamwork/communication of key skills and knowledge.
Not extrapolating, going by what the OP actually says

No. I read it. It’s very possible for it to be “disastrous” for one person to leave and not be anything to do with management.

Some people are just better at their jobs. It’s not unusual.

of course some people may be better than others. It doesn’t have to mean the efficient running of an office is dependent on one administrator and that it would be a disaster for them to leave. First sentence describes something usual. Second describes a poorly managed set up.

Gatoadigrado talks a lot of sense! I'm astounded by the number of posters who think Brenda's obstructiveness and rudeness is acceptable. The issue isn't the breakfast FGS. Doesn't matter how well you treat people like adults in a workplace, there will always be some that behave like children or inappropriately. Managers should still be able to have adult conversations with their staff about issues. OPs description about how Brenda will react to constructive criticism does not describe someone who behaves like an adult in the workplace.

Also agree that having a senior administrator who is so indispensable that it would be disastrous to the business if she left is poor management. A heart surgeon I could understand, but not a bloody administrator!

So administrative skills are something any idiot can achieve to an excellent standard, are they? Not a concept I’m familiar with. I’ve worked with some shit hot administrators and I’m in awe of their skills, they’ve made my life easier on numerous occasions. You can train some people (me) until the cows come home and they’d only ever be mediocre at best.

Why are people so reluctant to acknowledge this woman - breakfast foible apart - is the highest performing member of the team and adds value her colleagues don’t? Probably because they’re too busy clock watching.

I don’t think it’s that the business is dependent on her exactly. But they can highly value the significant contribution she makes, that’s above and beyond her colleagues.

Everywhere I’ve worked, this is the case. Some people perfectly ok at doing their jobs. Others shit hot at doing their jobs and add a huge amount of value.

It’s not possible to train everyone up to the shit hot standard because not everyone has the same ability and drive. Losing an employee like this will be a big blow to the business and regretted.

I’m not sure why this is so controversial on here. It’s just a fact of life where I work.

RainbowPanda - exactly.
You also have to wonder what happens when Breakfast Brenda takes her annual leave....
Either: the office doesn’t run efficiently because BB is indispensable and the rest of the admin team are so mediocre - ie: poor management
Or: things run perfectly smoothly - in which case you have to wonder why the OP is so scared of/ in thrall to Breakfast Bren. Again, not a sign of great management.

If I had to hazard a guess, I suspect it’s the latter... hopefully if the office is really so at sea when BB isn’t there, it would have been picked up by now....

You must be heading rapidly towards your ten hours by now @Gatoadigrado ....

Why? - you counting Alsohuman? Get yourself into the modern workplace

I’m out of any workplace, thank you. I’ve done my 44 years. The workplace you describe is far from modern, in fact it’s antiquated.

If you don’t deal with it you risk losing the other people in your team. Do you want to be the manager with the high staff turnover?

Pick a moment and have a word.

I never questioned whether you’re in work or out of it alsohuman, but thanks for letting us know you’ve clocked up your time

I'm fascinated by the bit of information that hasn't so far as I can see been really thought through. OP said that Brenda's income is such that she doesn't need the job. We've also been told that she has a long commute to get to work, and that she's fantastically productive and inventive at finding new ways to improve the running of the business. So what we have here is someone who's incredibly committed to this job, to the extent that they keep doing a long commute to get to it, and do it without needing the money. Yet people keep saying 'she'll leave if she's not appreciated' - will she? I don't think so. I think she sounds incredibly emotionally bound up in her job, to the point she wouldn't want to go - presumably as such a nine day wonder she'd easily get a different job.

So OP shouldn't worry about putting her nose out of joint so that she leaves - she may huff and puff, but she clearly cherishes this job too much to walk out. You have more power over her than you imagine, OP.

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.

If this is evidence of Breakfast Brenda being so special I'm afraid I'm underwhelmed. Sounds fairly standard in the places I've worked where employees are expected to use their initiative and I'd actually question the calibre of the rest of your staff and managers that no-one else thought of doing either of those things. Increasing profit and reducing costs are a core element of any business every member of staff should be working towards including managers and directors.

This thread is painful.

There is nothing - nothing! - Brenda can do that matters more than the fact that she eats breakfast at her desk. This is the ultimate, irredeemable sin.

Look, I get it, it's not the breakfast, but the unwillingness to deal with anyone during the time. That's unacceptable.

But, my God. Some posters one here are way more (over) invested in this than the OP. If she has any sense, she's well shot of the thread.

As for everyone else, just agree to disagree. You're not going to change each other's mind at this point, no matter what sort of piercing argument you put forward

RedDogsBeg

Newsflash: ‘Member of workforce does their job’.

"As for the breakfast eater WTF I wouldn't have got away with any of that crap in any job I've ever had"

I WOULD have got away with it in most of the jobs I've had and I'm nowhere near as proactive a worker as Breakfast Brenda :)

What a bizarre problem. How many of those expressing outrage spend half of the day at work texting /browsing the Internet and social media /online shopping /zoning out? I've seen a lot of that over the years in offices. Maybe the woman takes a shorter lunch break? Also, you should enforce 1h lunch break every day and leaving at 5pm (or whatever contractual time) sharp if you're going to start micro managing and policing people's meals.

As long as you are happy if everyone else starts doing the same thing, it's fine.

^^ this