You can now eat lunch at your desk....

That’s amazing, although in a food-focused country like France, I can see how the law wasn’t totally out of the realm of possibility. And societies where lunch can be a 2-hour affair, bringing your desk with you would be criminal, or mpractical at the very least.

In the USA, it’s almost the opposite - jobs where you have to eat at your desk, and to slam your lunch down as quickly as possible.

What’s the French approach to sitting at a table at a Starbucks and working?

Cyn-- how often have you seen someone sitting in a café working? They've be in a back corner.

It's the law to provide access, including financially, to a healthy lunch. You see the stickers on the windows of restaurants, cafés and bakeries that they accept employer provided lunch tickets. I worked places with full cafeterias or restaurants with three course meals plus salad and wine. Some places have servers. Schools offer wine or beer in the teachers' cafeteria. This follows the idea of the noon meal as the main meal of the day. It took a pandemic to change.

Firewall for me, but a very interesting view on French societal practices. Who knew?

I wonder whether it will go back to the old norm post-covid?
I also wonder what it will do for the Spanish, and the menu del dia - which was developed for those who couldn't get home for their main mid day meal?

I actually work for a company that previously did not allow employees to eat at our desks (I work for a bank - think about it, have you ever walked into a bank and seen people eating at their desks?). Our policy has also changed due to Covid (in fact, our break rooms are almost avoided now). However, I absolutely understand your point... the French outlawed eating at your desk because they want to maintain the dignity of an actual meal, which is to be enjoyed (certainly not hurried or worked-through). The American “banking ban” on desk meals has more to do with optics. It’s always interesting to see these cultural differences and try to understand their origins!

Indeed, Emma. We've had similar experiences, particularly at an international conference in Naples, attended by northern Europeans and Americans with locked doors, no projectors, etc. Lots of frowns, sighs, checking watches.

Though I am older and my experience is dated, at least among people I know, many would find eating at a desk uncomfortable, out of place. You may notice that you don't see people nibbling in the street, walking around with paper cups of coffee, or even much snacking between meals. Also, eating with bare hands makes a lot of people squirm. Even at those riverside picnics in summer, people have plates, knives and forks. So setting up to eat inside an office rather than the company restaurant is a big change.

BTW, I knew many larger companies that had private chefs for the top brass and their business lunches.

Interesting. At my employer's office in Lyon, it was quite common to eat at one's desk -- much rarer to eat together. Usually that would have been during noon time meetings or when we all decided to go out to lunch. Even when we would order out for sushi to be delivered -- usually every other Friday or so, we would take our orders back to our desks. It was a small office, though -- around 10 employees. I never looked into it, but my understanding is that the rules governing lunch, lunch tickets, and lunch facilities are different for smaller employers than for larger ones.

I can vouch for the lunch facilities at my clients' places. Even heavy industrial plants had surprisingly good lunches with dishes one would generally have to go to a pretty decent restaurant to find in the U.S. Not like the "roach coaches" that roll up to some American factories at lunch.