Followup on my "lunch with co-workers" posting of last week

[rhu]

I want to apologize for the tone of my "lunch with co-workers" post last week. Reading Joel's blog post got me fired up with one of those "Yes! I'm not the only one who feels this is important!" feelings, and I shared while still overenthusiastic at finding a fellow traveler.

But I think I came across as smug and know-it-all. I was proselytizing. And, as several of you pointed out here on LJ and over there on FB,

I was wrong.

So, sorry for those noses that I put out of joint.

Comments

[jeffurrynpl.livejournal.com]

Wow, I missed the original post. Yesterday I turned down lunch with three of my co-workers because one of them positively reeks of cigarette smoke. If it's a choice between breathing and camaraderie, I'll choose breathing every time. He's a nice guy otherwise.

[cnoocy]

I think it's a valid point that lunching together can be a delicious part of a healthy work environment, but as you have realized, it's not the sine qua non.

[twe.livejournal.com]

Eh, I don't each lunch with my co-workers mostly because we like to eat at different times of day, but several of my co-workers have been friends for decades.

[diceytillerman.livejournal.com]

Here's another thing you may not have thought of: sometimes, in work places as well as other group settings, people comment on each other's food. Some amount of this is okay, depending on various factors, but some amount or type can be unwelcome -- and frustratingly hard to make stop. If you read my blog, you may know where I'm going with this: it's a fatpol thing. Fat folks' food choices are often commented upon repeatedly and unwelcomely.

It's never happened to me in a work setting, but I've heard from tons of people who have experienced it. It's just another reason why a person might better be able to eat lunch outside of a group, or away from specific people who claim commenting rights.

(I'm sure it happens to other people and groups of people too. This is just my area of knowledge.)

[cnoocy]

A variant of that is actually an occasional factor in my own avoidance of social lunch-- I don't want to lend tacit support to people's comments about their own food choices, but I also don't want to get into a full anti-dieting conversation with them either.

[diceytillerman.livejournal.com]

Fabulous point.

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

I don't think you came across that way, but I don't think team lunches are as common as you seem to think.

[rymrytr.livejournal.com]

It just goes to show you Andy Gee, that you are human after all.

As a Fence Rydr, I agree with you in principal and disagree in part. This is what makes for good conversation. There in, you have done a good thing!

In all my vast work experience (Logging; Mining; Fruit Orchards; Packing Houses; Security Guard; Pumping Gas; Store Detective; Warehouseman; Boeing; Structural Steel (Boilermaker's Union Local 104) and County District Court,) the situations varied.

In some, we all ate together and at the same time. Working at Diamond Fruit in Hood River Oregon, on Second Shift, we had many "pot luck" like lunches. A varied group of Asian, Hippie, Farmer and Transient peoples, (there to work the "fruit season" only) willing to share and willing to allow those who did not wish to share.

As a Security Guard, whose job was to drive his vehicle up to the front door of your Urban Business along Old Hiway 99, South of Seattle, flash a light in the front window, slip a dated piece of paper through the cracks between the front doors, (saying that I was there and your doors were locked [and saying nothing about the other three sides of your building which we never say])and speeding on to the next client, I ate my lunch alone, in my vehicle.

In the Court System where I was the only male (other than the Judge) among 10 women, I often ate alone. We had two assigned, 30-minute lunch times, in order to keep the Front Counter open to the public. At "first lunch" I wanted to avoid the complaining about Management, the complaints about the ignorance of the Lead Clerk and the ongoing melodrama about this Public Defender or that Prosecutor, etc. At "second lunch" I had little to add to conversations about family, husbands, kids, headaches and the "curse".

So don't beat yourself up! In a specific situation, you would be absolutely right! In others, it wouldn't "wash". :o)

I for one, admire your intelligence, your dedication to your family and to your calling. I find your posts most pleasing. When one admires another, one makes allowances for those occasional, emotional outbursts that endears us to each other and sends up a flag saying: "I am a member of the Carbon-Based Life Forms that inhabit the 9th Planet." [Before someone reminds me that the Earth is 3rd, I must say that I often forget and refer to the "incoming" order, as seen from space. And I refer them to The 12th Planet (http://www.sitchin.com/) by Zecharia Sitchin.]


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I may be old, fat, ugly and white, but I can still think outside the box. :o)