Over Overtime

-photo by Marcin Wichary

I've just received, through three layers of managerial strata, (three strata of management? managerial strata? Is layers of strata redundant?) a policy directive.

Please make sure you are taking and putting in for 30-45 minute lunch breaks. Our workday is scheduled to start at 9AM and salaries are based on a 36.25 hour work week (9AM-5PM, 45 minute lunch). Please make sure you take the allotted time for lunch. We've seen slower than usual trade volume, and overtime is something that is being closely scrutinized.

This was, by the way, received via Blind Carbon Copy (pop quiz: who thought the acronym for "carbon copy" would persist through the electronic age? bonus Al Gore joke: How is Al Gore using e-mail to save the planet?*)

So, receiving the memo via bcc I can assume a few things:
(1) I am not the only recipient
(2) I am not allowed to know the other recipients
(3) The other recipients are not to know me

Rhetorical question: If you had just been passed a note and were aware of the preceding statements regarding that note, would you, or would you not, conclude that you were involved in a criminal conspiracy?

YOU WOULD.

Or, at the very least, an international spy ring operating in enemy territory (everybody wave to the Chinese hackers who are right now copying blogger's source code).

You would not, in all probability, conclude that you were a valued member of a TEAM of PROFESSIONALS built to COOPERATE.

So, to...honor... this request, sent by some anonymous supervisor somewhere up the corporate ladder, and carefully stripped of all details of origin, I will (I know, I know, you're shocked) take a thirty-minute lunch break everyday.

I may take my book and head out to the park to read. I may wander around the city and enjoy the sunshine (or rain, as the case may be). I may sit at my desk staring blankly at my computer screen, catatonic.

Or, I might just take my lunch break at 4:30PM.

I haven't decided.
-t

---