let's do lunch?!

Yeah, so, sorry for the tardiness in posting. Been a busy couple of weeks. So, here we go...


This whole thing of meeting people for lunch. I just do not seem to get it.

You see on television, especially soap opera type shows, and in the movies, people going out for lunch together during the workday. In some inconceivable way, they manage to do this and lead fulfilling, successful careers.

Yet, somehow, whenever I have attempted such endeavours, the day is lost. Not necessarily a bad thing. However, for me, meeting people for lunch is at least a two hour affair. If not at least a full-half-working day. (Conceptualise that one!)

How can people "do lunch" regularly and still keep their jobs? Obviously, I need to live in one of the many alternate dimensions or universes where time moves at a slower pace, but people move at the same pace we do here.

However, the intrigue of a soap opera life would just knock the crap out of me. All those affairs, murder plots, diabolical corporate takeovers, having a relationship with your half-sibling and not knowing it, gorillas kidnapping my wife? Just not my cup of tea, as they say.

Even just going to lunch with co-workers? How can you go out and get your work done?


Oh wow!?


I started this post on Friday, then I had some tasks away from home and did not get back to it right away. I tried to re-engage on Saturday, got busy again and had to let it sit. Sunday, holy mac! I was away all day, some Scouting stuff, some personal stuff, then the day was over.

Now it is Monday. Afternoon. Again, I was swamped all morning and now, I appear to have a window to get this done. We will see if I can finish this. It has been too long since I yammered on the interweb.


So, where was I?


Oh. Yeah. So. Going out to lunch with co-workers. In the past, when I have had clock-jobs, I have gone out for lunch with my fellow cubicle-internees. The typical process is as follows.

Getting there: approaching a half hour to get to the rendezvous. Sit down and order: near on another thirty minutes. Scarf down the vittles and settle-up, another one-forty-eighth of the day. Get back to our boxes, same as the first leg. So, as much as two full hours and probably longer. Why were we never fired for job abandonment?

That is just going with co-workers out for a generally crappy lunch. Now, if you try to organise with someone who works a different clock-job from you.....All I can say is that it is a huge production to figure it all out. Actually, I can say more...


Who are you going out to lunch with? Are they near your pen, or is their labour-preserve situated in a geographically distant workforce terrain?

Far away? Do you meet near their work-zoo or yours? Do you meet somewhere in the middle where there may be a strange and unknown resto-topography?

Nearby? Are their any neutral feeding grounds where you would not be encroached upon by either of your fellow inmates?

Or perhaps, you work in a desolate wasteland and have no choice but to forage afar regardless, thereby forcing you to search for a culinary safe-haven away from your natural territorial range?

Driving? Do you pick-up, get picked up, or converge upon the kill separately? Is traffic a bear? (ha!) Is parking a whole new adventure?

Walking? Are environmental conditions going to affect your temporary exodus? Does a straight-line walking distance deceptively appear shorter and faster, but only leaves you stranded in the middle of a multi-lane migratory route hoping that the lights will change soon, and long enough, to favour the boldness of your fitness-minded choice to hoof it?


So, now that all that has been weighed, measured, and most likely found wanting in the end, you are at your pasture. What now?

You can see the table you want, you can smell whatever is wafting out of the kitchen. Ah, but here is the catch. Were you far ahead enough of the other grazers that you are at the head of the line? Are there any free tables? Sadly, the usual result is the need to wait and fidget for an indeterminate time.

When, finally, you have been allowed to get your place at the trough, the often agonising process of getting service begins. How attentive is your keeper? How overwhelmed are they? How quickly can you decide on your consumables?

Get through all that have you? Now what? There is of course more. How long is it going to take for your slop-buckets to arrive? Is it the right slop-bucket? Is your water dish getting emptied faster than it is being replenished? Oh, have you managed to keep your appetite? 

Now, after scarfing down your sustenance, you need to pay the piper. Right? I have, at times, had to wait longer to pay for my sins, than it took to gobble down my Reuben sammy, fries, and paltry dill pickle spear in the first place.

At this point, is generally the easiest part. Hacking your way back to your corral. Or? Is it? Really? You may need to consider if anyone is still at the maze. If it is not quite that late, is it late enough that it would be really obvious you have been on the feed-bag for a really long time? Could it be better to slink back to your personal hovel and just show up the next day brighter and earlier before first viewing? Take that chance to catch up and mull over a hard to question cover-story?


At this point you are probably rethinking how much you really enjoyed that so-so sandwich with the incorrect, and store-bought, condiment that was slathered all over, despite your request to have it on the side. That is why the universe invented Tupperware in the first place. So, you can bring stuff from home and munch away at your homemade hay bale.

So, I no longer "do lunch", unless I am on holiday, vacation, visiting, or plain dodging responsibility. I just do not have a watch with enough hours on it.


You know, what started as something pithy and a bit innocent, really turned in to a bitter monologue about being co-opted by living to work instead of working to live. I wonder if there really is some deeper subtext here? Nah. Maybe... Nah. Well... Never mind, I am too tired and hungry from this whole thing. Want to go out for a bite to eat? blbbl