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Comment by CalRobert | Hacker News Reader

Your lunch break should be a break, not time you're forced to spend with your colleagues.

I agree! You're welcome to do whatever you want. But I am a friendly person and find it easy to make friends with my co-workers and we don't even talk about 'work' most of the time. I still have lunches with my colleagues from years ago that live in the same city, even though we don't work together.

Not every perk is about oppressing your freedom or exploiting your time and labor.

You're still welcome to ping people on Slack during lunch and see how they like that. More often than not though, I think you'll find that they're going to respond to you once they're back on the clock. It's fine if you're a friendly person, but I think you underestimate how much social pressure is involved in talking to people during their lunch break. The only reason I really engage in conversation while eating lunch is because the alternative of "I'd rather just enjoy my food and save the work talk for work time" is a faux pas.

I'm pretty pro wfh, but for a lot of people (myself included), the value of a slack conversation is less than a in-person conversation, so as a recipient I'm less likely to make time for it. That doesn't reflect on the worth I put on the person, but rather the type of communication.

For me the main problem is that going out for lunch in person with coworkers (even ones from other departments I've never met) is completely fine and I like to do that (when I was in the office I did that 3-4 days per week) but when I am having lunch at home I don't like it at all. I can't put my finger on it but it always feels like useless smalltalk and not making any connection where in person that works quite well. And I'm neither pro-office or anti-WFH or even someone who doesn't make friends online... but going out for lunch or a beer or just an afternoon coffee break is something that I can't reproduce via video/audio.

I fully agree, though this is highly team-specific. I've been on teams where I'm delighted to socialize with my coworkers for an hour most days, but I've also been on teams where I desperately needed 'me' time.

Most people are not forced to have lunch with their colleagues, a lot of people enjoy doing so however.

I always went out by myself when I wanted to eat alone, or sat at my desk with headphones in watching Youtube and eating.

You can communicate with people to help them understand you'd like your break to be a solitary one.

Yes, however, even if you're not talking shop, you might build relationships at lunch time that pay off later.

We're a social species. Building relationships is something we do. Is it work? Yes. But it's also something we need to do.

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