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.

You need to deal with this. It's ridiculous. She is totally taking the piss. She's coming in at 9 and then spending 10 minutes faffing around in the kitchen making a bowl of breakfast. Then she goes to her desk and spends 20 minutes eating it. Who on earth needs 20 minutes to eat a bowl of something? She's rude to colleagues who need to communicate with her about work. She then wanders back into the kitchen at 9.30 am to take the bowl back and then starts work.

Absolute piss take. If she came in shortly before 9, grabbed a bowl of cereal quickly and ate it fairly quickly while getting on with reading e-mails etc and stopped bloody eating to answer queries from colleagues - then perhaps you could let it go.
This bizarre breakfast ritual has to stop.
Just tell her for goodness' sake. It stops. She can eat breakfast at home or she can eat something before 9 am. But at 9 am she needs to be working like everyone else not performing the liturgy of the porridge oats.

If others are taking the piss by having too many cigarette breaks etc then they should be spoken to as well. Ludicrous idea to let her get away with this behaviour just because others may or may not be making 10 minutes of personal calls during the day.

What this boils down to is an argument between people working in very different cultures. On the one hand there’s the rigid, rule keeping disciplinarian workplace where presenteeism is a given. On the other, there’s the culture that treats staff like adults, trusts them to manage their own workload and focuses on results.

Which is yours, OP?

It’s not the eating breakfast at work that’s the problem it’s the not working in work time. Does she adapt elsewhere by not taking lunch or something or is she actually getting an extra 30mins?

I usually get breakfast in work but eat it whilst doing admin tasks or other work. I would also respond to colleagues politely if it was in work time.

I’d monitor and asses how much time shes actually taking then deal. Perhaps introduce time sheets to asses efficiency?

In that case then it's the rudeness that needs to get sorted.

The breakfast is fine, but you do need to remind her that her start time is 9am. And if someone needs a query answered while she's having her breakfast on company time then it's unacceptable to be rude to anyone in the company.
Or she's got the choice to move breakfast to 8.30-9.00 and eat it away from her desk if she wants peace and quiet.

It's not hard to eat breakfast at home if she starts work at 9! Plenty of people manage to do it and sort out little ones, school runs and get themselves to work. I do it every morning so there's no excuse.

And your comment about smoke breaks/personal calls - plenty of places don't allow either. Where I am, if you want to smoke, you do it before/after work or on your designated break.

With modern office technology being away from your desk needn’t mean being unable to read and respond to emails or even phone calls.

In fact, if she tried giving me a withering look and an ‘excuse me I am eating my breakfast’, she'd discover in no uncertain terms that I couldn't give a shit.

Same here WorraLiberty, she'd get an equally tart reply back from me if I was on the receiving end of one and if Wishing as a manager can't see the problems that would cause then she really isn't cut out to manage.

Yes she definitely shouldn't be so rude to other employees. That's obnoxious.

In respect of the breakfast itself, honestly I do think you're going to have to deal with the other smoke breaks, coffee breaks etc if you say anything to her. It's generally better to have a culture where people can have that flexibility as long as it doesn't result in anyone getting lumbered because of it, but the reality is that certain things have to be in place for that. It sounds like maybe they aren't anymore in your office, and that's partially her own fault for being rude of course.

What would happen if you were to point out to the complainants that other employees also have latitude for breaks etc?

I get what you’re saying about not wanting to nit pick but it will become an issue the more pissed off the other colleagues get. As PPs what if everyone decided to take a 30 min break as soon as they started work at 9am? If you’re prepared to let one without complaint you have to be prepared to let others.

I work in an office environment too and it’s common to eat breakfast at desks, but I would still be working and letting others approach me while I did so. Can you have a quiet word explaining that your happy for her to continue her routine but that as she starts work at 9am she must be approachable by others from that time aswell.

She's taking the piss
I am salary (so not hourly pay) but I have to be at work and logged in for exact times.
I cannot go 30 seconds over my 30 min lunch or it's late. Or log in 15 seconds late. If I went in personal time and wandered off for 30 mins to eat breakfast I would be on a disciplinary!
Fair enough some places are more laid back but it's not fair she is just randomly taking an extra 30 min break every day

Where I work people often eat breakfast at the desk ,, the spoon banging pisses me off the most

Sorry but you are wrong here, unless she makes that 30 minutes up, ie has a 30 minute less lunch break, and if she does let staff know. I would also be telling her to eat her breakfast away from her desk, ie in the kitchen. You must be prepared to treat all employees the same, so if I was in that office and nothing was being done I would also be eating breakfast for 30 minutes

She IS eating in the kitchen @Chloemol!

Oh god I hate wishy-washy managers who email the whole team with a generic reminder about everything, because they don't have the backbone to pull one member of staff aside.

Everyone else knows who the email is aimed at and it generally whooshes over the head of that person anyway.

Amen to this. I worked thankfully for a relatively short time with the greatest piss taker I have ever seen. Her hours were 8 to 4. At 8.30 she was still outside the door smoking. Anything up to an hour was then spent in the canteen. When she got to her desk the personal phone calls started interspersed with many more smoke breaks. And so on and so on.
The manager of the team would make wishy washy comments at team meetings about time keeping, while never once taking the situation In hand. As a result we all completely lost respect for him, and got out of there asap.

OP, I would observe what else is going on with others on the team - is there any other time wasting behaviour there that needs to be addressed?
I certainly don't think it is acceptable for her to be snippy to people and that is something that should be nipped in the bud.

With modern office technology being away from your desk needn’t mean being unable to read and respond to emails or even phone calls.

Not everyone works in an office with a desk, though. Which is why different environments require different styles of management.

I'm a retail manager and while plenty of my staff arrive early to have coffee/eat breakfast, there's no way they could do so after we open the doors to customers. They also couldn't just wander off whenever they fancy to make a phone call. If everyone decided they were going to have breakfast at 10am, for example, who's going to run the shop?

People do go upstairs to make tea/coffee/go to the toilet and I have no issue with people checking phones while they're waiting for the kettle to boil, for example, but beyond that it's just not possible. It's not an environment where people can just do what they want in that respect, unfortunately.

Sorry, she’s not!

I think it’s the length of time she’s taking that’s the problem. 30 minutes is way too long. If someone was making a 30-minute personal phone call or taking a 30-minute smoke break, that would be considered taking the piss.

You can't have one rule for one employee and one rule for another.

Half an hour is taking the piss and creating resentment.

Stop people eating at their desks................ problem solved.

Fair enough some places are more laid back but it's not fair she is just randomly taking an extra 30 min break every day

I wonder how things like this work when interviewees ask if the job could possibly be condensed into 3 or 4 day weeks to facilitate families, and are told no it's a full time.position only, and then it turns out that actually it could be as the world load is doable in less time just the previous employees took the mick and padded out the time?

I think there's two types of work. Shift work, or getting stuff done. If she's paid to do a shift for a set number of hours then she's taking the piss. If she's paid to do a job that specifically means getting stuff done, and staying until it's done, then she can do what she likes as long as she's performing.

I'd hate to have a manager who clock watches and nitpicks. I regularly turn up late, eat, go out for coffee, take personal calls but nobody is picking me up on it because we it's a professional environment and the work is done. When there's a lot on I'll be there early, stay late and not eat lunch. It's give and take.

You haven't said what kind of culture you work in OP. If, for example, you're public sector with flexi time, she is probably logging on when she arrives and eating her breakfast effectively in work time. Two and a half hours out of her contracted hours when she is firmly telling everyone she isn't available for work. That's not really on, unless you are equally flexible with everyone else.

She has a choice, eat breakfast in her own time, or expect to be disturbed.

I'd be very annoyed by your poor management of the situation. You are probably causing mayhem by your failure to ensure everyone is treated the same. It doesn't matter how exceptional she is in her job in other respects, she is being allowed to get away with working 1/2 hour less each day. Your staff will soon be very disgruntled and lose respect for you due to your failure to manage effectively and for possibly allowing discrimination to take place.

My last 3 jobs, and my Dh's and probably 20 people that I know: everyone eats at work. Breakfasts, snacks, lunch. Cups of tea and someone's birthday cake. Constantly.

Although I've always turned up early.

Not working for 1/2 an hour though is .

I'm surprised everyone is calling the op a bad manager. did everybody miss the bit about if she did say something and lost said employee, she would be impossible to replace?

That is common, with brilliant, but tricky staff.

that is a problem, as a manager ,to the op.

If she wasn't rude no one would notice. Tell her she needs to be more client oriented and needs to manage expectations.

Ask her to come in earlier than she does so she can ear breakfast and finish it before her start time