News that there has been a rise in the number of people bringing a packed lunch to work made me shudder. “It’s crunch time for lunchtime,” chirped the Grocer magazine, and it wasn’t talking about a surge in consumption of crisp sandwiches.
The cost of living crisis is apparently responsible for an extra 108m lunchboxes being brought to work in the past year, a rise of 7%. What is striking about the data is that higher earners are driving the trend. Or, as the Grocer dubbed it, “the rise of the white-collar packed lunch”, as if forgoing a Pret Posh Cheddar & Pickle baguette is some kind of social leveller.
Packed lunches are nothing of the sort. The trouble is they involve bringing a slice of home into the office. They threaten to lay bare if not the contents of your soul then, at the very least, the contents of your salad drawer. People draw conclusions about you, and it’s not nice. (A survey by HR News revealed 19% of people fear having their homemade lunch judged. Frankly, I’m surprised the figure is so low.) “What have you got today,” people smirk in the direction of my latest, desperate attempt to save the £9 I would have spent on a crayfish sandwich and a can of ginger kombucha. “A banana mayonnaise bagel? That is an interesting combination …” Far better to splurge – no one ever offers a critique of your meal deal.
Decades of office life have provided me with an exhaustive dossier on OPL (Other People’s Lunches). Certain ingredients should never darken the office fridge door: boiled eggs, fish pie, anything involving couscous – the latter will surely migrate like a plague of ants from lunchbox to every neighbouring desk surface within minutes.
Some lunch archetypes have stood the test of time. Every office has a smug food tourist: “Yes, that is a tomato and nduja salad you see before you, with burrata from the new deli.” Then there’s the obsessive weight-trainer who sips from a porridge-coloured protein shake every hour of the day. Not to mention the intermittent faster. “How many calories are in a cherry tomato? Three? If I just have the one …”
Anyone who has the organisational skills to outwit the tyranny of the sandwich (which fills 41% of all lunchboxes) should obviously be commended. Personally, I can think of nothing more depressing than carting the remnants of last night’s dinner into the office, but it does have one obvious advantage. Sandwiches, as everyone knows, will inevitably be guzzled by 10.42am, as decreed by international Tupperware law. This happens by stealth. “I’ll eat half now and save the rest …” Then you are vulnerable to second lunch syndrome – disastrous for waistline and wallet.
Then again, reheating a tub of pad thai isn’t great either. Generally such attempts lead to the seventh circle of hell and its inner ring of burning sand, AKA the office microwave. The inevitability of realising, after you retrieve your soup container, that it is now covered in a garam masala-infused mucus from someone else’s lunch will soon put a stop to that.
In truth, though, my objection to packed lunches has little to do with actual food. The real trouble with eating “aldesko” is that it encourages people to chomp away alone while scrolling owl videos and pretending to be busy.
Research confirms that taking a break away from work at lunchtime increases energy levels and decreases exhaustion. Not only that: the effect is cumulative – the more you do it, the more energy you will have. Eating together also boosts trust within organisations. I think there must be some truth in this because I have always made many more friends in offices that have canteens, official or makeshift, than those that did not.
Another study found that taking regular “mini-breaks” throughout the working day, even if it’s just to make a drink, boosts wellbeing and increases productivity. This last is bad news for Monzo, the banking service that this week announced its intention to remove water coolers from all its offices in the pursuit of achieving its net zero goals. This is obviously laudable, but if you bring in your own lunch and now have to bring in your own water, is there any point in coming in to work at all?
• Anita Chaudhuri is a freelance journalist
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