With the average break now down to 35 minutes, the days of a long, leisurely lunch are long gone, writes Róisín Ingle
It was Gordon Gekko, a character in the 1980s movie, Wall Street, who led the campaign for its abolition - "Lunch is for wimps," the ruthless broker declared.
Now it seems the rest of us are coming round to his way of thinking. A new survey shows the average Irish lunch break is 35 minutes, four minutes shorter than it was when similar research was conducted two years ago. In Northern Ireland, lunchtime lasts an average of 33 minutes, while in the UK a break of just 27 minutes is the norm.
The demise of the traditional lunch hour means the kind of alcohol-fuelled business lunches beloved of some are no longer on the menu, even for the most senior workers. Although it may seem hard to believe, only 1 per cent of those surveyed for the Eurest Lunchtime Report said they took an alcoholic drink on their break, indicating that booze-filled lunches are a thing of the past.
At Dobbins restaurant in Dublin, which for years has played to the most leisurely lunches in town, staff say their customers are still spending an average of one hour over their meal but they have noticed that lunchtime diners are in more of a hurry than before.
"Customers are looking at their watches much more during lunch," says Ignatius Bellmont, restaurant manager. "There are an increased number of requests for more speedy service. Some customers are telling us before their companion comes that they don't want the person they are eating with to know that they are in a hurry. That is a recent thing."
Even in the past year, workers in delicatessens and sandwich shops, which have sprung up all over the country in response to our quick-fix approach to lunch, have noticed a change. "People used to come in and sit for 40 minutes or an hour, now the majority who sit down are tourists," says Beth Quinn, manager of Phresh on Poolbeg Street, Dublin. "It takes three minutes to toast a sandwich but many customers now say they don't have the time."
She has also noticed that customers spend much of their break in the bank, the chemist or the supermarket. "People are sorting out their whole lives in a lunchtime so it's no wonder they only have time to pop in and grab a quick sandwich to take away," she says.
The numbers who leave the workplace for a hot meal during the day also appears to be down. Domini Kemp of the Itsa Bagel chain in Dublin says its new self-service salad bar would not have worked five years ago when people wanted to sit down to eat.
"Lunch is no longer the big meal of the day," says Kemp. "Workers are under savage pressure these days and want their demands met during their precious lunch hour which is fast decreasing in length."
According to Ann O'Mahony a director of La Crème, part of the Premier Recruitment Group in Dublin, increased work pressures and a more flexible approach by employers are the reasons why lunch time is getting shorter.
"Nobody is standing over your desk saying don't take an hour for your lunch, but there is an implicit understanding that a 30 or 40-minute break is more appropriate," she says. "On the other hand, employers are more flexible about letting people out for some fresh air or a quick cup of coffee in the afternoon, so this can make up for the shorter lunch break."
One of the more curious results of the survey is that 5 per cent of respondents said they managed a nap during lunchtime - where they went for their forty-winks wasn't recorded. In the 1970s when Barney Whelan of Safe Food worked in the ESB in Dublin's Fitzwilliam Street, his colleagues thought nothing of nipping home for a fully cooked dinner to their homes in Blackrock or Churchtown at 1p.m. "They would be stuck in traffic if they tried to do it now," says Whelan who rarely has lunch, preferring to work through before relaxing over dinner.
Another man who regularly works through lunch is Brody Sweeney, the founder of the O'Brien chain of sandwich shops which now has 60 branches in Dublin and more across the world. "I think lunch breaks are an awful waste of time," he says.
Gordon Gekko would be proud.