So…initiating my own occupy movement to take back lunch breaks might be a little over-the-top, but people don’t call me intense for nothing!

In leadership workshops, we often discussed taking care of our physical selves, and managers nodded in drone agreement that exercising and eating right would increase our energy and productivity. But getting a “connected” workforce to disconnect from work long enough to eat lunch seemed downright blasphemous.

I read a business article yesterday about how more workers are recognizing the need and value of taking a lunch break to eat, read or rest. It’s less about what you do during your lunch break, but what you are not doing-working. I don’t know about the rest of the world that read the article, but I laughed out loud. Think about what I just wrote: “Workers are recognizing the need and value of taking a lunch break.” It’s ludicrous that we have to remember the value of eating and taking a break.

I asked Lexi’s friends in first grade what their favorite part of school was. You already know what they said. Lunch. Lunch is the best part of their day. Why? As they told me, “it’s the part of the day where you can just sit and talk with your friends since you can’t just do that in the classroom while you’re working.” And… “because we get hungry.”

Why do we bother to hire consultants and trainers to facilitate leadership workshops? We should just all take a field trip to the closest elementary school, and a group of six year olds would reveal the universal principles about leadership and collaboration.

Please don’t think I’m coming from a position of authority because I taught leadership classes.

I’m speaking from the experience as a Recovering Non-Lunch Eater. For me, productivity and effectiveness were all about efficiency. Why eat when I could send more emails, return more calls, complete more tasks? Lunch was for sissies that couldn’t make it through the day without eating. Yes, I thought that, and I was irritated when other people told me about their “no shop talk” rule during their lunch break. What? You’re sitting in the break room. How can I not violate your space and ask you about work?

I’m an idiot. I admit it now. And while I’m saddened by how I looked down at colleagues who took breaks and ate lunch, I am even more saddened that my “work ethic” prevented me from having lunch with my daughter at school, which was less than a mile from where I worked. I recognize that many parents don’t have the luxury of eating lunch with their children due to legitimate work demands, commute distances, etc…but I didn’t have those excuses. It took me 4 minutes to drive to her school. With her shortened lunch period last year, I could have gone and returned in 30 minutes.
 
And she asked me to have lunch with her, but I was too busy.

Too busy to take 30 minutes of an 8 hour day to sit and listen to my daughter share what she had learned and done during school. If I think about it too much, I want to weep.

But I am a learning mom. And I have learned my lesson. In this season of not working, I am going to have lunch with her every day I possibly can. School started last week, and my husband and I are going to meet her for lunch. She might not talk to us. But it doesn’t matter. It’s just about our presence.

Working parents, even if you can’t eat lunch with your child(ren) because of distance, take a lunch break. Don’t look behind your shoulders to see who is judging you for it. Don’t listen to any of the comments of people-like me- who once said, “It must be nice to have so much free time…” Grab a book or a magazine. Better yet, grab a pen and some paper and write your child a note telling them while you couldn’t have lunch with them, you were thinking about them.

It might not be Occupy Wall Street, but I’m guessing the impact on your life and your children’s would be even more significant.