Lunch Break Utopia (Cont.)

Continuing with my series on the ever-disappearing lunch break, we get this (h/t Derek Attig)

Want to take off for lunch but the boss won’t let you? Then buy this inflatable Lunch Decoy from Applebee’s.

That’s the premise behind the latest marketing campaign from the fast casual dining chain. But the product is no joke — it’s a real product actually on sale on Amazon. There are six such decoys to choose from, including The Cubicle Queen and The Go-Getter.

Soon, all we’ll be left with is this:

3 Comments

  1. Rev. John Caldwell, PhD July 27, 2012 at 9:59 am | #

    In Dubuque, IA, a Mississippi river town, there is an attraction called the 4th Street Elevator. It was built in the nineteenth century by one of the town’s bankers. The commercial district was built on the flood plain (typical of river towns). The wealthy built their houses on the bluffs overlooking the river above the “unhealthy air” beside the river, i.e., the mosquito-infested areas where the working class folk were forced to find their housing. The banker in question built the tramcar to be able to go home for lunch in the *two hours* that he had for a lunch break!! Makes me wonder how much time his clerks had.

  2. Yedlon July 28, 2012 at 10:18 pm | #

    Working lunches and noon meetings are a problem of not very recent origin for professional and salaried workers.

    The lack of an even formal provision for lunch breaks is more associated with itinerant labor and the “lowest” rungs of physical labor. Also of not recent origin.

    The vast majority of workers routinely get their expected lunch breaks, even at Wal*Mart, the largest employer in the US.

    Perhaps what we’re seeing is advertising creatives grousing about their gilded cages and trying to generalize that?

    Where’s the stats?

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