No one has time to answer the phone. Nothing is getting done on time. No one has a chance to flee and plop down. So people gulp down a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and the darn jelly dribbles onto the stack of papers falling off the desk. That’s better than on the shirt, like last week.
Hurry up fellow time-pinched Americans, we have nothing to lose but our appetites.
How bad is the lunch squeeze?
So bad that more than half of the nation’s workers spend 15 minutes or less on lunch. So bad that nearly two-thirds of us skip lunch once or twice a week. So bad that four out of ten workers eat lunch at their desk or on the go. So distressing is this situation that nearly half of all workers say a quickie lunch makes them more stressed out.
These gastronomically upsetting figures come from a recent nationwide survey done by Market Facts Inc., a marketing research company in suburban Arlington Heights. Louisville-based KFC was the sponsor, and you can guess why it is interested.
Oppressed workplace munchers, what are we to do? Though they do nothing to alleviate the underlying problems, Jeffrey Mayer, a Chicago-based guru on beating the clock, has some ideas: Avoid lines, says Mayer, who typically grabs a yogurt and bagel on the run. Eat when nobody else is there. Find places with fast service. Make lunch a working meeting so you can stretch it. If you eat by yourself, relax with a book, or newspaper or (phew!) some work.
That’s a laugh: Try this. You are in a high-anxiety, high-heartbeat meeting. Nobody is smiling. Business seriousness grimly fills the room. What do you do? You tell a joke, an icebreaker, a mood relaxer, an emotional change-up pitch. Nothing nasty or wild. Just something to put it all into perspective.
We are advised by Rabbi Barry Schechter that such an act has solid Talmudic and workplace reasoning behind it.
“There is a story in the Talmud about a rabbi who, before he taught his students, would begin with a joke,” says Schechter of Congregation Kol Emeth in Skokie.
Before he was a rabbi, he was an economist, pining away in large buildings where a smile was a mirage. And before he was a grownup, he heard jokes in his native England from his father. The ability to tell a joke has stayed with him, and he has purveyed the quixotic talent before numerous audiences.
Nowadays, he is especially convinced that there is a need for humor in the workplace because of the heightened tension and job-related tunnel vision. He will be talking on humor in the workplace at 8:30 a.m. Nov. 13, at the Selfhelp Home, 908 W. Argyle St., on Chicago’s North Side.
When he tells people that he tells jokes, they often laugh. His response: “I say, `That is half my job. I am a semi-success.’ “
Members only: While pumped up about how good things have gone lately, organized labor occasionally treats itself to a dose of reality about how far it still has to go to get back on its feet.
This happened at a recent meeting between Chicago union officials and AFL-CIO officials involved in promoting more organizing efforts. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney has urged unions to spend 30 percent of their budgets on gathering new members.
But the local figures disclosed at the meeting fall far below. Overall, Chicago unions spend about 10 percent of their money on organizing. And that figure is pulled up by several relatively big-spending unions, since many spend little if anything.
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The leaders are the Service Employees International Union, about 15 percent; UNITE, the garment trades union, close to 20 percent; the United Food and Commercial Workers, close to 15 percent; the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, 10 to 15 percent. The rest range between 0 and 5 percent.
Chicago Federation of Labor officials called the meeting a “wakeup call.” The situation is “a little bit better in Chicago than elsewhere, but not much,” says Richard Bensinger, head of organizing for the AFL-CIO.
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Stephen Franklin can be reached at [email protected]