Give Me a Break

Dear Pros,

You've got Kat this week and I've technically got my out-of-office on, taking a much-needed few days off after an intense flurry of work and life events. I'm terrible at resting, but I also know how lucky I am to have the opportunity to do so in private.

A lot of workers can't and that's the topic of a recent story by F&W contributor Darron Cardosa. A Threads post has been making the rounds in a way the poster perhaps didn't intend. It's part of an unfortunate trend of people snapping pictures of delivery drivers, waiters, and other service workers — often in uniform — while they're on their break. The gist of this one is that he'd "caught" an Amazon driver on their phone in their truck for 10 minutes while his neighbor waited for his package.

Commenters — many of whom said they are delivery drivers, themselves — were quick to take the poster to task and inform him that, especially on hot days, some workers are required to take 10- or 15-minute breaks. Depending on the company, a person's app may automatically sign them out for a period so they're actually unable to make deliveries, but moreover, why would someone else's need for rest offend them?

As Darron explains in his essay, during his many decades as a waiter, he sometimes got the stinkeye from diners who wondered why he was just sitting down at a booth or table in the back. First of all, there was no break room and a lap around the block wasn't in the cards. "'It's because we work for six hours straight and we're lucky if we find time between tables to take a bathroom break,' I'd want to yell," he writes.

"It seems that anytime someone sees a service worker sitting, that worker is deemed lazy. Maybe it has something to do with so many of these workers wearing uniforms. Someone dressed in business casual sitting on a park bench eating a sandwich doesn't raise an eyebrow for anyone, but a person in a uniform sitting on that bench eating a sandwich makes some people think, 'Why aren't they working?'"

Darron dives into that question and all the nuance around it with his typical meld of humor and heart, and I hope you take a few minutes to read it here, preferably in the shade, with a chilly beverage, not a camera phone in sight.

Stay cool,
Kat