(Almost) No Free Lunch

There Is (Almost) No Such Thing as a Free Lunch

The other day, a French acquaintance of mine realized she was suffering from culture shock. She lives and works in Paris; the clash of cultures was coming at work, where she deals with large numbers of international students, including many North Americans.

“They come to my office between noon and 1, and when I’m not there, they complain. It’s lunchtime! Where do they expect me to be?”

But it makes sense that they would come up then, I replied, because that’s when they’re not in class. Why didn’t she just take her lunch break a little later?

She stared at me like I’d just suggested selling her kidney on the black market.

“Because it’s lunchtime.”

I thought she was being too inflexible. She thought I was being a barbarian. We agreed to disagree.

Lunch break here is far more sacrosanct than at any office job I ever had in the US. When I worked in the States, a co-worker and I might go out and eat together every couple of weeks, but it was pretty unusual for me to eat outside of the building. I usually ate sitting in front of my desk. In principle I was on lunch break; in practice, eating in the office meant that I was available to answer questions, check email, answer the phone– in short, keep working.

Here, many of the people in my office eat lunch at restaurants. One of the reasons for this: titres restaurants, or restaurant tickets. These are coupons designed to subsidize employees’ lunches. They come in different denominations, normally between 5 and 8 euros each, and the employee receives one for each workday. The coupons are partially subsidized by the employer, between 50 and 60 percent; the remainder of the tab is paid for by the employee. These charges are taken out of the paycheck automatically, so the employee never sees the money. Restaurants will have signs posted to indicate that they accept these coupons. In Ile-de-France, the region in which Paris is located, nearly 39,000 restaurants accept these titres, according to the Commission Nationale des Titres Restaurant (CNTR).

The coupons function like cash at restaurants. The legislation governing how titres restaurants are to be used limits one per person per meal, but the use of more than one is officially tolerated.  This allows some flexibility. One of my friends, whose coupons are worth about 8 euros apiece, brings her lunch one or two times a week, which lets her use the extra tickets to go out for a nicer lunch. Many restaurants offer lunch specials, multi-course meals that usually run from 12 to 30 euros, depending on the restaurant. So if she brings her lunch on Monday and Tuesday, she can sit down at a proper restaurant to an appetizer, main dish and dessert, a real lunch break.

The world is changing, of course. Twenty percent of titres restaurants issued are used at fast-food restaurants, according to the CNTR. It’s no longer a given that a worker will leave the office and linger over a multi-course lunch. But with 45 percent of the coupons still used at traditional restaurants, the real lunch break is in no imminent danger of disappearing. And I hope that it doesn’t. I’ve found that this time makes a real difference. After consciously tuning out work for an hour, I feel more refreshed. When my brain has a chance to turn away from work and focus on something different, it’s almost like taking a nap. It isn’t a zero-sum game; the time that I’m mentally checked out recharges my batteries, so I’m ready to face the afternoon.

When I first began working in France a few years ago, I had a hard time shaking my American habits. But after a few months, I realized that it was okay to take an actual lunch hour. I’d close the office door, put up a “Be back at 2” sign, and nobody blinked. It was the best kind of culture shock.

Emily Seftel Copyright(c) 2012 All Rights Reserved