A strange legacy — the 30-minute lunch break

Sometime in the early nineties, at an industry event, I started chatting to a couple of young techs. After the usual niceties we got onto the subject of employers. Turned out they worked for the last remnants of what had been Datronics Inc. They were in the repair facility. Quietly, I asked them if they had a 30 minute lunch break. Startled, they replied “how the heck did you know that?” Chuckling to myself I just said “Have I got a story for you”.

In the mid-seventies Datronics Inc sold and maintained a vast selection of 16 bit minicomputers, peripherals, data entry systems, terminals and more. To support this, in Crows Nest at 84 Alexander St they operated a component level board repair facility. Core members of the crew were Spot, Fish, Reg and myself (if you don’t know who they are I’m not telling).

Each lunchtime (1 hour) we’d wander out onto Willoughby Rd and buy something for lunch. Often a chicken sandwich from the corner store nearby, but occasionally we’d head to the Stoned Crow wine bar for a rump with Salad ($1.75) and ciders. After a while someone piped up with the information that if we continued this habit we could be spending up to $1,000 per year on lunch. Crazy, considering we were only getting paid around $8,000 per annum.

Reg piped up one day that the Crows Nest Hotel was doing steak sandwiches for $0.95. So we began the habit of heading there regularly for lunch. Turns out in one hour we were only drinking 2 or 3 schooners. So keeping track of whose shout it was next time became a point of debate.

The easiest answer seemed to be to make sure we drank 4 schooners each visit. That sometimes took just an hour, other times an hour and ten minutes. After a while we were managing 4 drinks in under an hour. On finishing 4 drinks early one day the consensus was we should just have another schooner to fill in the hour.

Over the following weeks the drinking drifted out to 5–6 schooners over lunch and taking up to an hour and a half for the lunch break. When we returned to work we each retreated to our respective corners, setup a machine on test with suitable displays then slumped in our chairs napping.

As you’d expect, this behaviour did not go unnoticed. Eventually, realising that this wasn’t just a short term change in our habits, our manager hauled us into a meeting room. Closing the door, he let us have it. After the rant he moved onto how things would change. We were presented with a choice. We could keep the one-hour lunch break but start work 30 minutes early and finish 30 minutes later — 8:30am — 5:30am. Or we could drop to a 30-minute lunch break and keep the normal hours of 9–5.

You know which option we chose. I am staggered that it became law for ever in the business.