Lunch Rooms as the Great Equalizer

Lunch rooms in state office buildings are places where one is never quite sure of their footing. All levels of staff pass through whatever small space the building administration assigns to house a refrigerator, a microwave, a table and some ratty broken assed chairs. From managers to temporary workers, from attorneys to lifer worker drones we all share the fridge and the microwave.

The lunch room at my office is small. At maximum it holds about 7 seated people. Two small tables sit inside. Space in the “break room” is so limited that one table is wedged into a corner and thus only two seats are possible. The other is wedged against a wall limiting it to accommodating three or maybe four people max.

Most of the time I opt not eat in the lunch room. Frequently I go out for lunch but on one or two days a week I don’t I eat at my desk and type up orders. My office and the branch office of the Secretary of State are distinct in their functions and as a result of that differentiation in task for some people there is awkwardness in comingling in the break room. Sometimes there is even a chill when the attorneys are sitting in amongst the clerks and eating.

Mostly I don’t think the branch staff or we have ever put a finger on that fact but the awkwardness is often palpable. I think this squirmy feeling may actually have to do with branch clerk’s perception of the attorneys as management. We are not; we are more or less stand alone professionals.

For the most part we don’t care about the branch personnel’s’ peccadilloes as to total time spent in the lunch room (the branch is totally production/time clock driven) or what kind of drinking binge they were on the previous weekend. Their managers would care, we don’t. My guess is that they think we are watching every move they make just waiting to turn them in. Thus there is always a sense of something that maintains a distance.

Two very nice ladies take lunch about the time I do. One of them is quite gregarious. She is talkative, opinionated and has lived life. The other has lived life too but the trail leading her to this point is different. She emigrated from Romania. She has an intriguing accent. Her questions sometimes show the differences in cultural experience and cultural expectation.

Today she brought a salad. It was something like a densely packed potato salad but with a wonderful flavor. She served it up on crackers to the other woman and myself. The basic flavor per her comments came from parsley root and pork. It was very delectable. The flavor hung around with a sense of taste not unlike a good fois grais.

The American bred woman asked me if I had ever had anything like it. In all honesty I replied in the negative. What I did bring up was that my ex-sister in law was from the area where Germany and Czechoslovakia abutted. I do remember spatzle and other dishes mostly with very savory flavors from the couple of years they lived in the same little town as I did.

I brought up that are family was the true American family with Russians, Mexicans, Germans and Irish all blended in. All of these were melded onto authentic red neck roots from Kentucky. My American lunch friend began to talk about watching her southern sister in law cure pork. I opined about how my grandmother used to store sweet potatoes in something akin to a buried teepee filled with sand. And then we were off.

I talked about sitting on the front porch of my grandmother’s house in the shade of the live oak tree on an unscreened porch. She talked about how much more important family was back then. She recalled camping Up North with Grandma, Grandpa, Aunts and Uncles all up near the lakeshore with people sleeping in and under cars. When the family tent came along she thought she had died and gone to heaven.

In coming back I talked about renting a house by the ocean and squeezing 14 people in. Compromises were made and some people only got cold water showers. Some people slept on the couch.

Today our Romanian émigré friend remained quiet talking mostly about cooking. She described a dumpling that I believe I have had that has a marmalade in it. The role of raspberries were debated.

I of course engaged in this discussion wearing bunny ears. The brown appendages were well received.

If we can just get beyond what barriers status and class create I think we can find the common elements that unite as human. If we can just forget about the issues of power maybe we can see what common elements we share in this our life on this planet. Bunny ears, food and vacations by talking about these things we can seek common ground. While every management book out there tells you to keep up the barriers, to define the roles, to make distinctions I think we always have to return to the fact that we are people with families, of a large human family seeking sustenance and joy.