Friday, June 16, 2006
Wanted: Faster “fast food”
byLunch hour? Bah hamburger! Two studies show that more American workers are squeezing more work into their day and shortening up their lunch “hour.”
According to the studies, one by Impulse Research/KFC and another by Steelcase, and an ABC news report, 55% of the American workforce takes less than 1 hour for lunch, which is a 14% decrease (to 31 minutes), compared to a decade ago, when the average lunch break was 36 minutes.
As reported by Heather Nauert in an ABC World News Now podcast, the main reason cited is a changing work environment, and skipping lunch is part of a bigger trend.
Essentially, Americans work very hard and very often, 270 more hours of work per year than the French, 500 more hours of work per year than Norwegians, according to the ABC report.
And in a case of shameless self-crowing promotion, KFC announced as part if its study that it just happens to have a solution, the new Famous Bowls, which their PR folks proclaim “provides lunch-starved Americans with the perfect all-in-one, remedy to their usual rushed and unsatisfying lunchtime routine.”
Amidst that “fowl” hype are a few other tasty nuggets of research findings:
- More than 60 percent of America’s office workers consider the 60-minute lunch to be the biggest myth in office life
- 58 percent of Americans admit to eating lunch at their desks while continuing to work
- More than half of American office workers multitask even during lunch—by eating, running errands, shopping online and checking e-mail at the same time.
Chances are, you may be reading this while you eat at your desk. And now you only have 29 minutes left of your average 31-minute lunch “hour.”
