Lunching@Work: When Eating at Your Desk Is Forbidden | Rough Translation, S7E2

For more than a century in France, the lunch hour has remained sacred. Workers all over the country spill into sidewalk cafes and office canteens to settle in for a break that can last up to ninety minutes. Strangers share hors d’oeuvres, colleagues catch up and they try to talk about anything except work.

But conviviality isn’t on the menu for one American expat, English teacher Kaitlin Plachy, who often spends her lunch break alone with a salad and piles of papers to grade.

Kaitlin wrote to us about her quiet rebellion against lunching with colleagues, wondering: Why would a culture so committed to separating work from rest need such a law at all?

We hit the streets of Paris to pose this question to lunchgoers. And – with the help of French food historian Martin Bruegel – we explore the 100-year history of the law and what 19th century French epidemiologists realized about taking a break from work.

Can we convince Kaitlin to take a lunch break (in about the amount of time you might be taking yours)? Sit down with your meal of choice and hit play.

Photo Credit: Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images

This episode was first published June 8, 2022.

WHAT IS “ROUGH TRANSLATION”?
How are the things we’re talking about being talked about somewhere else in the world? Gregory Warner tells stories that follow familiar conversations into unfamiliar territory. At a time when the world seems small but it’s as hard as ever to escape our echo chambers, Rough Translation takes you places. Email the show at roughtranslation@npr.org.