I’m sitting on a patch of grass, on the edge of the parking lot of my office building. My building is one of many neighboring office buildings, and my friends work nearby. Paul works directly across the street, Dan works around the bend in the road, and Friend organizes food trucks to come visit.
It might not be a glamorous area of town, and my building might be the plainest vanilla box you’ll ever see, but it takes me 15 at most to get here every morning, and there is plenty of free parking.
I took off my long sleeve shirt and am sitting in the sun in a tank top. Of note, this would have probably (or definitely) gotten me fired from last job. It is 70 degrees, bright blue sky, and I’m eating roasted red pepper hummus and carrots. A few of my coworkers are walking laps around the complex for exercise. The interstate is buzzing along behind me, and although that could be an annoyance, I’ve gotten rather fond of the noise.
At my last job, I was only allowed 30 minutes for lunch, on a good day. It is hard to drive to Wendy’s and back in 30 minutes. The job before that, my bosses liked to discuss cases at lunch, and lunchtime was not my own time, and the places we ate would have put me to sleep for the rest of the day if I’d actually eaten it. Work lunches were simply part of the job, and I think that is reasonable in certain professions like small law firms. I did lose ten pounds in the 18 months I worked there, as a side note.
Having control over my own lunch is an amazing privilege that I try to never take for granted. I go to lunch whenever I want between 11-2, and I live in a place where the weather often lends itself to sitting in the sunshine. My coworkers like to pick on me because I eat a turkey melt on an English muffin every day. But it is a privilege, and I am going to enjoy it, because it makes me happy.
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