The Value of Lunch

Our HR Director asked our 35 employees to complete an anonymous satisfaction survey, and the results were striking.  There was plenty of expected feedback, but some genuinely new things, too.

One new thing, was that the monitors in our new office weren’t all working up to employee expectation. This is not in and of itself interesting, this problem can be solved for $1.50 on Amazon.

Another new thing was, more than one person said they feel too busy to take a bathroom break.  This is not in and of itself interesting, either.  Obviously nobody here is overworked to the point of being unable to use the bathroom, and to complain that they are, is… a lot.

BUT!  What I do have to self-reflect on is, why did nobody feel comfortable saying to me or HR or our Directors or our VP “hey this monitor is janky, can I order a new dongle?”  Why did none of the new people say” I’m having a hiccup around time management and expectation, can we talk?”

I think part of this is not being in the office.  Lots of these 35 colleagues have never met me more than once.  They hear the most-disaffected of their colleagues voicing fear or whatever over slack.

And in the office, everyone can see that I model behavior like, taking lunch.  Going for a walk.  Our office is on the water in Brooklyn, and I love getting coffee from Blank Street and staring at the river.  And by the way, I did when I was starting my career too. And a few days a week I walk two blocks to Love & Dough and get their GLuten free pasta.  I sit there with a book and read for 30 minutes.

And so I think being in the office would actually help people see that “hey the boss takes lunch, I can too!”

But whatever the cause, and however self-reflexively I roll my eyes over the idea that people are saying they’re afraid to go to the bathroom, it is 100% true that I need to do a better job letting them know they can ask me for advice.  So I need to hear that, absorb it, and model the idea that it’s a good thing to take lunch.