[Reportage- lunch series part IV] No peace at lunchtime

[한겨레] A Korean proverb says don't bother anyone while they're eating, but workers still have to deal with interruptions at lunch

by Choi Yu-bin, staff reporter

"I just wish I could have thirty minutes to relax and eat my meal."

Lee Jin-han (50, not his real name) is the manager of a post office in a small town in the countryside. He and his two employees take turns eating lunch, one at a time. They bring side dishes from home and scoop rice out of the cooker in the office. Since there is no separate break room, one employee eats lunch in the office while the other two work. There are few things worse than trying to inhale lunch in ten minutes, worried that the smell of the food will bother your coworkers. The hour-long lunch break that the higher-ups in the postal service ask them to abide by is out of the question.

"I didn't know there were so many people like me," Lee wrote to the Hankyoreh in an email. "I've been working at the post office for more than twenty years, but not one time have I been able to relax for an hour over lunch."

After reading the feature story "Say Hello to Your Lunch," Lee and many other readers shared their experiences and opinions on the Hankyoreh's website, SNS, e-mail, and comments on portal sites.

Many individuals complained about company managers who prevented them from spending their lunch the way they like. One reader (id: Ikh0127) wrote a post on Hankyoreh SNS about three kinds of bosses one should avoid at lunch time: "bosses who tell you to bring over a report as soon as you finish eating, bosses who talk about work on their cell phone while you are trying to take a break after lunch, and bosses who smile while you are eating with them but then start nagging you on the way back to the office."

Most readers agreed that they felt uncomfortable during their lunch break. "Since I am an irregular worker dispatched from an outsourcing company, I can't relax even during lunch since I have to squeeze in with the regular employees," said one netizen at a portal site (id: ferr****). "I'm so nervous that I can't even pay attention to my food. I would feel more comfortable just eating a plain bowl of soup somewhere else. If I'm a second late finishing my meal, they start giving me dirty looks. Shouldn't people be allowed to eat in peace?"

Another netizen (jiji****) responded by saying that "People ought to be able to have lunch in peace, but bosses and work get in the way."

Workers from a variety of fields had lots of complaints about how they don't have enough time to eat lunch.

"I'm a female cook in my fifth year at a restaurant, but I still don't get the four main kinds of insurance. I work 12 hours a day but I only get 5 minutes for lunch. I just wish I had half an hour to shut the door and eat in peace." (id: sllv****)

"When there are a lot of customers, I eat lunch sometime between 4 and 6 pm, and often when we're busy I have to gulp it down in five minutes. Hair stylists often talk about having to 'gulp down' their food." (id: dmsp****)

"I'm a man working in the kitchen at a family restaurant. On busy days, I get to work at 8 in the morning and the only thing I eat is a seaweed roll while I'm cooking between 5 and 6 in the evening. I don't go home until 10 or 11 at night. Can't tell if I'm human or an animal." (id: dbsw****)

"I work at a mobile phone store. When I go out for lunch, I put the phone on call forwarding. Without fail, someone calls while I'm eating. They're like, what kind of telecom closes for lunch, when are you coming back, how much longer do I have to wait? (id: 6769****)

"My job is picking up medical waste. I go to work around 3 in the morning and get home around 3 or 4 in the afternoon. Eating lunch is a challenge. I always have a stomachache." (id: sjoj****)

There were many readers who said that they could put up with inadequate lunchtime if only they were paid a decent wage. "I would skip dinner too if they paid me enough," wrote someone with the id "hib1****." "As the provider for my family, I don't need to eat as long as I know that my wife and kids are enjoying a good lunch and dinner."

A user named "topsegi" called for more government oversight about whether companies were observing break time regulations. "If the Ministry of Labor would just inspect businesses to see if they are obeying the law, Korea would become a decent place to work," the user said.

Experts agreed that there is an urgent need to correct the tendency for companies not to give their employees the full lunch hour.

"While the law states that people who violate break time regulations can be sentenced to up to two years in prison and 10 million won (US$8,840) in fines, in reality such sentences are rarely seen," said Song Yeong-seop, a lawyer with the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU). "The government must make more convictions and force companies to provide adequate compensation when employees are forced to work through during their lunch period."

"The prevailing attitude is that there is no clear distinction between work and break time, and employees have no choice but to work extra hours," said Lee Byoung-hoon, a professor of sociology at Chung-Ang University. "We have to change the culture at workplaces so that employees are clearly guaranteed their break time."

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[Reportage- lunch series part IV] No peace at lunchtime