I guess the title says it all, but let me elaborate by saying that I don’t like so-called working lunches. They really don’t work for me. When it’s lunch time, it should be time to unwind, eat some food, shoot the breeze. You know…LUNCH TIME, as in time to take a break.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t get paid during lunch time, so am reluctant to continue working. Also, not being Superman, I tend to get tired and need a break in the middle of the day. Usually, I get that opportunity, but recently was at a workshop where the facilitator hosted a working lunch. If I’d had enough advance notice, I would’ve made plans to be elsewhere during lunch, but I was stuck there, working while I ate. Of course that’s not all bad, but lunchtime, or any meal time, should be a time for people to relax a little and read, or talk, or just sit and stare into space. There should be nothing wrong with staring into space; it’s the final frontier and I think we all feel a little wistful about that.
It says something about our culture that lunch time is regarded as yet another opportunity for “productivity”. What’s next, a working bowel movement? Oh wait, that’s already happened. A while back, I heard a guy in a public restroom talking work on his phone in a stall. Imagine the horrific background noise that the person on the other end had to endure. “Joe, was that our stock price tanking, or was that you? Where the hell are you anyway?” It could give “trickle down” a whole new meaning.
Back to the theme here. I just want to keep taking my lunch time as guaranteed in the Constitution (it has to be in there somewhere since the Founders probably had plenty of working lunches putting the Constitution together and thus got sick of them). It’s all a part of trying to slow this culture down a bit so that it doesn’t go completely nuts.
J.R. Herman 
AMEN!!!!!