This is an interesting thing that happened to me today at work.
For context,
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I generally don't take my lunch breaks in full, if at all. It's an unpaid 1 hour lunch break. The industry I work in is very demanding. I, and 95% of my coworkers, eat food at their desk while working for a lunch break. Management knows this. It's not contested by anyone in management for obvious reasons (free labour, more productivity). I know, I know, bad habit. That's not the point I'm about to try to make.
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Last Friday, my partner sprung it on me that his grandmother from a state away and his mum and dad would be coming over and staying a few days. Late notice. I asked the head of my department to take my lunch break (keeping in mind I rarely take a break at all) at the end of the day to be home a bit earlier to start cooking and cleaning, etc. This was fine. I didn't eat lunch throughout the day (not a big deal for me, I'm fairly small and only ever have something little for lunch) and I left around 40 minutes early, so still not my full break time.
Today (Friday), exactly one week after point 2, I asked to leave 10 minutes early in order to make a personal appointment; this would account for 10 minutes of my unpaid lunchtime which I rarely take. The appointment was just up the road and started at the time I would finish work. I was granted this 10-minute request, though not without this comment from the head of my department:
“Work hours are work hours, with no exceptions. Make your appointments outside of work hours. You went home early last week, too.”
Now, this is a fair point – work hours are work hours. However, this came from my department head, who then literally went to an appointment at her kid's school for an hour in the middle of the day today. “Rules for thee but not for me.” Furthermore, my department head sits across the hallway from me – she witnesses me working through my lunchbreak every single day, but me utilising parts of my unpaid hour lunch at the end of a work day, on occasions, is apparently not acceptable.
There's nothing in my contract that dictates what time of the day I can choose to take my lunch break. Technically, if I wanted to, I should be able to leave the office for my 1 hour lunch break 1 hour prior to the time work ends. But if I started doing this, I'd likely get reprimanded, or a new policy would come in whereby a lunch break can only be taken between X and X hours.
I know a lot of you will comment that I should just find a different job. That this isn't a healthy work environment. But I actually like the company I work for. It's just dumb situations, comments, and expectations like this that irk me. It's ridiculous that the benefits I am providing to the company by working through my lunch breaks are diminished if I ask to use part of my unpaid lunch hour at the end of the day instead of in the middle of it.