Taking the piss - Lunch break

[DeedlessIndeed]

Okay, so work for an organisation where contracted for 37.5 hours a week + a 30 minute, unpaid lunch break each day.

Everyone works remotely, but visits clients etc in pairs most days.

A couple of members of the team have started to take extended lunch breaks together, when they are working together. This isn't everyday, but fairly routine.

Other team members annoyed. Nothing has been formally raised to management and due to nature of role its easy to falsify timesheets to say a client visit ran over etc.

Today it happened again, it was noted that they took at least a 1hr 30 lunch break.

The staff are mixed, one is a great worker, great attitude etc and gets job done. One has got good experience but hit and miss when it comes to hitting targets. The other is in probation, but has shown good promise.

If report to management likely result is cracking down on flexibility to role, which would impact whole team.

The AIBU (i know, not really an AIBU)

1. Should team report to management?

1. What is likely outcome to the staff? Only can prove most recent incident.

1. Should all staff members involved be treated the same?

I’d keep out of it. I’d hate to work with clock watchers. At our place we do the job and try to cop a break in the middle of the day. Sometimes it will be longer, others shorter but it tends to balance out.

I’d keep out of it. Where I work, anyone falsifying their timesheet is dismissed. They can and do pull data from IT, estates, colleagues to audit the info recorded on a timesheet if there’s any concerns about it and they always dismiss if they find fraud. Bit silly of them really if that’s what they’re doing.

You should focus on the outcome, not the process. If the work gets done to a high standard surely that’s what matters?

If their work or their clients are suffering because of their extra hour of lunch here and there, then it becomes an issue to raise with them and their manager.

Are they making up the time?

I wfh and am contracted 35 hours pw. I can have as long a lunch as I like and take as many breaks as I like as long as I get the work done and work at lease those hours.

If I have got this right, these are some type of community carers who are visiting perhaps elderly, vulnerable and dependent clients in their homes to assist with personal care/food prep/toileting etc?

And each visit is allocated a time slot of perhaps 15-30 minutes?

And these two chancers are deliberately rushing and cutting short these visits thereby accumulating an extended lunch break ?

And people are queuing up to tell you to mind your own business? You have an obligation to report safeguarding concerns which may impact your clients. This is a safeguarding issue.

Report them.

This seems like a major reach with a lot of fabrication and speculation thrown in! All of a sudden OP's colleagues are feckless care workers neglecting their clients to get a nice long lunch 😂Have I missed something in the OP that indicates this? I'm guessing the "visits clients in pairs"? Even so, seems a reach.

mind your own business would be my advice

Have you even read the post? There was no mention of care work, 15 or 30 minute appointments. In fact OP said the job is flexible and some of it is WFH. It also has targets, doesn't at all sound like community carers.

Are you more senior than these colleagues or are you there peer? If you are more senior and part of your role is people/performance management then it seems appropriate to raise.

Where I work post people are contracted 37.5 hours per week and over 90% of weeks I work over those hours however some days I don't take lunch and on other occasions I take a longer break. If lunch breaks were enforced to 30 minutes myself and probably others would feel less inclined to work the extra hours when needed.

If it's not your job to check their lunch break and it's not impacting you i'm not sure why you would tell the manager unless they are leaving children unattended / doing something dangerous.

Maybe they aren't taking lunch breaks on the other days or working longer hours to make up the time?

It depends on the impact they are having on anyone else.

If they are short changing clients in some way, either by not giving them the time they've booked for or by inflating visit times so the client is charged more etc. Then report it.

if it's just 'it doesn't seem fair to us' then I'd not bother.

I might give myself a longer lunch break every now and again, though

Sorry had to laugh at this post, you think community carers are swanning off to take hour and half luxury lunch breaks? They have a tight schedule to keep, have to sign when they arrive and when they leave the clients house, most don't even get paid for travel time and are only paid for the time they are with the clients.

Oh god don't be that person who reports them

Are you sure they are only logging lunch as 30 mins? You mention the team has flexibiility so does this include longer lunches?
Our team works flexibly so we all work 7.5 hours a day but start , finish and lunch times vary. Sometimes we work longer days , sometimes shorter.
What you are describing is a more rigid way of working.

Personally I wouldnt mention it.
Its a management issue IF they are breaking the rules or falsifying timesheets.
They also could be discussing clients / work for part of their meeting.
Or they might be trying it on.
You could ask your manager if its ok for you to take longer than 30 mins for lunch and see what shes says as a way if finding out if long lunches are actually ok?
Its good team building to go out to lunch with colleagues occassionally but really all of the team should be invited.
And to answer Q3 yes all team members should be treated the same but sometimes managers are biased.

What are you talking about?

OP hasn't said anything about care work or vulnerable clients.

We all WFH and sometimes if I've had a really busy/ stressful day, I'll take longer breaks the next day - it's part of managing the workload.

Main thing is that if they are getting the work done and clients are not being short changed. There are also some advantages to have a newer worker spend more time with a more experienced one (hopefully they might be talking about work related stuff during some of the lunch break).

Does it affect you? It might, and if so and to a considerable effect such as you not being able to do your own job like them holding up the chain of work for instance, then think about complaining.

But if you're pissed off because you can't get away with it or don't want to take long lunches, then I'd advise you to button it.

I've been at work a long time and I can guarantee you that you do things that piss others off and wouldn't look that great under the microscope.

I am a manger, have 15 people on my team, i had an issue whereby a certain member of our team was obsessed with shite like this, over Christmas some people don't bother using annual leave, its slow and we work from home, i don't care, i see it is a wee bonus for everyone, i am not expecting people to be working, there's literally nothing to do. I always just said check your emails once a day with a baileys in your hand and we are good.

He used to on his own time off he booked on annual leave sometimes call people over Christmas just to check if they were working and available!!

he would also be type to worry about lunch breaks, he also had a wee notification thing set up, so when peoples colour changed on teams he would know what time people logged in at.

He would regularly report such petty nonsense to me, and i just ignored it, i ended up having to have a strict conversation with him about HIS BEHAVIOUR and tell him to basically mind his own business, and that it was downright weird, to worry about himself and no one else. I hated it myself, if someone was monitoring me at work who wasnt my manager id crack up, even if my manager was strictly monitoring me id have a word with them to tell them to wise up.

Where does it mention WFH?

She says it's remote working.

Be good if the OP could clarify 😊

Well, she won't be a carer if she's a remote worker...

Nor me. My management style was pretty laisez faire - as long as the job got done I really didn’t care about clock watching. I’d have taken a very dim view of being told about this and I’d be watching the member of staff who raised it like a hawk.

I won’t embarass you by telling you what I do for a living but rest assured I’m very well aware of how community care works and how a service likes this needs to be managed to protect service users 🙄

Unless their wages are coming out of your pocket I’d leave it, life’s tough at the moment, take the longer lunch break, who knows what tomorrow brings?

What ARE you talking about? There are community carers country wide, particularly in rural areas who work remotely in clents homes. They may or may be be required to attend base every day depend on the area tbey’re covering or the shift they’re covering.