A smug middle-class tosser mansplains.

[hirez]

I don't know if it's some manner of snobbery-related false consciousness or (more likely) a complete inability to function like other people, but I must admit that them there poll results make for somewhat uncomfortable reading.

The lunch one isn't too much of a surprise, given that A Works with A Canteen is the sort of quaint affectation that one might see on an Ealing Comedy about people in flat caps waving spanners at that mythical creature the 'shop steward'. Or if not Ealing then BBC Light Entertainment from the seventies where everything was brown. I'm not about to advocate passing out AK-10x rifles in order to demand the return of Luncheon Vouchers (Although they actually never went away. I was presented with the things when on a learny-learny course the other year. I fully expected Dick Emery to lurch out the staff entrance of the M&S podule in Liverpool Street and set about me with a handbag), but I think that whole keyboard/sandwich thing is pretty fucked up. I recall it being seen as freakish behaviour from those bloody city types with their mobile telephones, rather than the norm.

For me, meals in front of the telly are just, ugh. Perhaps because I didn't have to deal with the 'please may I get down from the table?' malarkey - I recall blank incomprehension when relatives tried that. But then I tend to do blank incomprehension rather a lot when confronted with other people's expectations of arbitrary power structures. Perhaps because I don't think telly's that interesting by comparison. Perhaps because I am a grown-up and I have the choice between table and telly. Who can say?

There's a lot more wrapped up in this stuff than I envisaged. Interesting.

Comments

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

My work has a canteen, so I have proper meals, but I have them as a takeaway at my desk.

My evening meal (when I haven't been working late and already had a sandwich, piece of cake and gin inna tin on the train home) is on my lap on the sofa, but the TV is not necessarily on. It might be the radio. But this is because my dining table has on its surface two filing cabinets, a printer and a stack of magazines, and under it are the paper and plastic recycling boxes and the cats' litter tray - so not conducive to civilised eating arrangements.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

The actual thing might just be too much stuff in too small a space. That's certainly my excuse.

[andrewducker]

My work has a canteen in pretty much all of its offices, but sadly the one in my particular office is rubbish. I do prefer to use one if possible though, so I can spend half an hour away from my desk.

Evening meals are mostly spent watching TV together, sometimes spent chatting at the table. We pause TV a lot to talk about both it and other things though.

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

I work for a fancy small business run by people who like to keep their techies happy. It's sort of a long narrow open-plan office space with a mini-kitchen (fridge, sink, microwave and toaster oven and, mysteriously, a panini press) and counter at one end. The fridge is kept stocked with a variety of juices, waters, occasional sodas, and beeeeeeeeeeeeeers, not to mention actual food.

I mostly go over and forage around in there until I find something I want to eat (which is kind of difficult as I'm the office vegetarian and they like to fill it with various sliced meats), which I eat at my desk while reading internet tank game forums.

[perlmonger.livejournal.com]

I'd guess the werking from home thing affects our lifestyle choices [hem]. Also there are cats. Always there are cats. There's one on my desk right now, trying to stick its tail up my nose as I type.

[meltie.livejournal.com]

I work in a small business based in the 1980s, in an awkward open-plan office from the 1990s. All pine and putty, with crumbs everywhere.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

That sounds repulsively familiar.

[janey-m.livejournal.com]

I don't get the "wanting to waste valuable time in the middle of the day" thing by leaving your desk spend valuable time eating somewhere else when you could be using it to get on with far more important stuff. But I've never got the concept of not spending the entire working day working. I'd much rather do that and have less to take home.

[andrewducker]

Any work I don't do at the end of the working day gets done the next day. It most definitely doesn't get taken home with me.

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

I went to talk to a small Danish software company, sometime late last century, out in the burbs south of Copenhagen.

When it was time for lunch, all 15 or so of them went off to the dining room, where the company chefs served up a 3-course meal they'd just cooked, along with wine and beer for those who wanted it. We sat and ate and nattered for an hour, and returned to our complicated discussion of data structures refreshed and happy. Very civilised.

When left to my own devices I'll eat a speedy lunch at the kitchen table, or maybe at my desk. But since I abandoned wheat, lunch tends to be far more plate-based, so it's usually the kitchen. One-handed lunches all seem to require a wheaty carapace of one sort or another.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Civilised indeed.

HPLB still seems to have a canteen, though I suspect the quality still slides towards School Grub. It really does make a positive difference to the day to go somewhere else for an hour and jabber about things that are only tangentially work-related with people from overlapping teams.

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

I suspect that different bis of the industry have very different attitudes to time.

If one is in a bit which is trying to do good stuff in whatever time it turns out that takes, one will feel much happier to spend that hour than if one is in a bit which is forever deadline-bound and harried.

[meltie.livejournal.com]

That sounds familiar.

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

I had much the same experience working for a similar company but in Nørrebro. It was rather nice to escape the screens for half an hour and talk about stuff.

[sarah-mum.livejournal.com]

I do try to escape the office for at least part of my lunchhour. Not least because mine is out of synch with everyone else's and so being at desk, even with fork or sandwich in hand, apparently means I am available to do/fetch/find/record something. The desk I eat at is usually in the 'spare' office.

Old fashined upbringing for me involved eating at the table, which was a handy way of actually having time to talk to the rest of the family. Of course, on a practical level, you'd catch hell if you ate on the sofa because you might spill something on the draylon or the carpet.

I had a few years of living with a partner who got fed a substantial cooked meal in the middle of the day, and whose only intake at home was liquid or inhaled, so that solo evening meals were the norm and eating them on the sofa was too, since what was the point of having a table to eat at? I'm sure that was not good for my digesion or wellbeing.

So now, having a properly laid table from which to eat a properly cooked meal is a daily habit and a Very Good Thing. Even in the most cramped and reduced circumstances I hope I'd still be doing that.
It has so much to do with actually appreciating food as something more than fuel. Facing your partner and talking can change the entire converstion - have you ever noticed how different a conversation had in the car can be?

As you say, there's a lot more to it than what's for tea.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

Old fashined upbringing for me involved eating at the table, which was a handy way of actually having time to talk to the rest of the family.

When you grow up in an emotionally abusive household, that's a million miles away from being a good thing.

[sarah-mum.livejournal.com]

Given the first part, that would apply to pretty much everything domestic I guess.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

Pretty much, but I have a feeling that I would have ended up without a domestic bone in my body regardless.

[sarah-mum.livejournal.com]

Oh, and just for added fun: Beakfast in Bed, why in the name of anything holy is this considered a treat?
Crumbs in the bed, spilled tea and the general association with hospital. No ta.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Quite so.

There is scope for a sequence of spirited deconstructions of things or experiences that the industrial-entertainment complex tell us are good things:

Having someone who wants to be your lover chase you down the street and/or break in to your house.

(The breakfast in bed thing I coincidentally attacked in a story the other week)

Bathing by candlelight.

[sarah-mum.livejournal.com]

You know about the stealth poison of bathing by candleight, don't you?

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I fear I do not. EXPN?

[sarah-mum.livejournal.com]

Apparently, right, plastic baths don't need to actually be on fire in order to release some rather nasty chemicals. Tealights in tin holders on the bathside will produce enough heat to add nasties to the bathroom air.
Combined with a relaxed and probably deep-breathing body, horizontal and at fume level this is a recipe for hospital or even a Jonathan Creek plot.

Of course, this is a hazard easily avoided with a proper enamel roll-top.

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

Or if one uses proper candlesticks.

[quercus.livejournal.com]

We have (sadly still unplumbed) copper. Put the tea lights underneath it and your bath stays warm!

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

I've never got that either.

I admit I have on occasion sat up in bed with a good book, a cup of hot chocolate and a small piece of cake. But that's a nightcap.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Like I say, I live in a studio flat. I have a bed and a chair. I have no table. I have no choice.

[the_axel]

Our house is currently in a massive state of renovation craizness and we don't have a dining table_[1].

So our choices for eating in the house are on the sofa or at our desks. The sofa makes the_siobhans back hurt if she sits for more than 15 minutes, so that really isn't an option.

However, we do in fact have A Works with A Canteen.
And around a thousand of the people that work in the building are in a unionized department so they have Shop Stewards too.
Although no flat caps, spanners or brown overalls to be seen.



[1] Unless you count the old army trestle tables in the back garden, which I don't. Especially with it being cold & dark out there.