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Report on Business: Globe Careers
Why can't we make a break for it?
KIRA VERMOND
SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL

03/26/2003
The Globe and Mail
Metro
C2
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Thank goodness Jim Beam came to its senses last year when it scrapped its washroom breaks policy. Imagine, a policy telling grown men and women how often they could piddle.

Maybe the Kentucky bourbon distiller's human resources department had sentimental hankerings for elementary school rules when it issued the policy, which stated that employees would be reprimanded if they took more than one unscheduled washroom break per shift. Or maybe it actually thought that certain employees were slacking off. In any case, only after the media pulverized the company to a fine mash did Jim Beam management rethink its decision.

But this story has me wondering: Do coffee breaks, washroom breaks, lunch breaks and heck, even just walk-around-the-office-and-destress breaks have a place in our lives any more? Read some of the recent studies on the subject and you might start wondering, too.

In the United States, a full 40 per cent of full-time employees surveyed in 1999 by the National Restaurant Association said they do not take a "real" lunch break. One-third of the respondents said they skip lunch altogether once each week.

And despite what we'd like to believe about the rest of the world -- that there are still places where people take long breaks during the work day -- that reality is quickly changing. A report from Reuters Business Insight last year suggests that throughout Europe, the long leisurely lunch is being whittled down to a hasty sandwich eaten at a desk.

In many Canadian provinces, the government does not provide for mandatory coffee breaks. It's up to individual employers to offer them. Both in Ontario and British Columbia, employees get a 30-minute unpaid meal break for each five hours they work. Many states south of the border don't have any laws governing meal breaks.

Breaks are important for emotional and physical health, as prolonged stress and tension can lead to serious problems such as clinical depression, anxiety, ulcers and heart disease, the Canadian Mental Health Association says. Even stepping away from the desk or work area for a few minutes to grab a glass of water or use the washroom can make even the most stressful project seem a little more palatable on return.

But just sit in a food court in one of Toronto's downtown office towers and study how people take their morning breaks. You'll learn a few interesting things.

For example, only a very small minority of people actually sit down to drink their coffee, perhaps 2 or 3 per cent, by my calculation. Of those who do sit, most still have half-filled cups and barely consumed muffins when they pack up to leave. Most breaks last 15 minutes or less, unless people are actually working at the table. Those breaks last almost three times longer.

A registered massage therapist who works down the hall from one such food court, at a storefront business where walk-ins are welcome, says the most popular service is the 20-minute massage. Alas, even relaxing is measured by time.

And that's what our aversion to taking longer breaks seems to be about: Time. We either think we don't have enough of it, or we worry about wasting it. According to Statistics Canada, 75 per cent of parents with children under 15 feel the weekdays are not long enough. Even prisoners are reported to say they feel they have inadequate time to get everything they want to get done each day. Prisoners, for Pete's sake!

Where does that leave the rest of us?

While we might abandon taking breaks so we can complete a mountain of tasks each day, worrying about our image is also important, it seems. Consider the Ontario-based manufacturer that discovered a sizable portion of the employees who went outside for smoke breaks were faking it. According to Nora Spinks, president of Work-Life Harmony Enterprises, who worked with the company, these fakers apparently felt smoking was one of the only legitimate reasons to take a break.

Talking to former smokers revealed that few take breaks any more because, as one put it: "What else are we supposed to do? Walk around? People might start to wonder why they're so busy and we're not."

Image aside, the comment reveals something more fundamental about how we view fluid, free time. Doing nothing is scary. Being bored is to be avoided. We no longer feel we're able to sleep when we're sleepy and eat when we're hungry. The natural rhythm of life changed that day in 1876 when Seth Thomas introduced the first wind-up alarm clock. Suddenly we had no excuse but to be on time.

As Kerry Daly, co-director of the Centre for Families, Work and Well-Being at the University of Guelph, said: "Somehow we've lost the art of being unstructured."

But is slow always beautiful? Not necessarily. Even slowness advocates such as historian Stephen Kern, who wrote the book The Culture of Time and Space, admits that sometimes speed is necessary to function in this world. And we wouldn't have it any other way. "The historical record is that humans have never, ever opted for slowness," he writes.

It's just a matter of finding the right balance.

So we might willingly eat lunch at our desks, drink our coffee on the run and squeeze in 20-minute massages, but take away our rest time? Give me a break.

globecareers@globeandmail.ca

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