Synopsis: You hate your job, not your lunch. Quit your job and get a job that you love, and you'll inevitably end up loving the lunch you currently hate.
Right, because everyone who loves their job also loves sitting down to have lunch with their coworkers who they see for not less than seven hours a day five days a week.
Personally I think this is an utterly ridiculous idea. Perhaps you love it. Perhaps many others do too. But perhaps also there are those of us who want to spend their lunchtimes not socialising but meditating; who want to be alone rather than with others; who want get outside and have a change of scenery. Gosh, perhaps they even want to meet other people for lunch! As shocking as it may seem to you, all of these things are entirely compatible with enjoying one's job.
At my last job (which I can only I assume I must have hated, although to be honest it didn't seem like it at the time) I almost always went out for lunch, on my own. Sometimes I made a sandwich that morning; often I bought something from the market. I bought a coffee; I took my time. I thought about the problems I was working on, and often, it was the most productive time of the whole day. I figured out the architecture of the applications I was building, and wrote code in my head. When I got back to the office, I sat down at the computer and typed it in. In fact, I'd probably go so far as to say that if I'd been sitting down and chatting while I had lunch, my overall productivity would have dropped precipitously.
This is by no means an argument against socialising with one's coworkers; it's not even an argument against having lunch with them. All I'm saying is that we're not all like you.
I'm not saying that you should eat lunch with your coworkers. I actually rarely do.
It's just the case described by the original comment is one of someone who doesn't hate lunch, it's a case of someone who hates their job. There's a difference.
Point 4,5 and 6 where about lunch itself, and I agree woleheartly with them.
Eating a delicious launch and focusing on it sounds like heaven. Except eating it with your SO, everything else in the lunch category is down a rank in my opinion.
I'm interacting with my co-workers while doing my job. I don't have any desire to also interact with most of them during my breaks, which includes lunch. Part of my lunch is to not just take a break from my work, but to take a break from the people I work with.
First of all, I do not have to LOVE my job. As everything in this world, most things have good and bad sides. Surprise!
Applying the concept of love to something as mundane as a job is ridiculous. Just a couple of generations ago, a job was a job was a job? Why, because a job meant survival. You either work your ass off, or you and your family starve. Did all these people love the hard labor, getting up at 4am to tend to a withering field? These generations were much more fatalistic about life and accepted bad things as an inevitable part of life.
Of course, nowadays, the idea that someone tolerates something stressful or taxing is seen as ludicrous.
Before I start I'll address the first point - yes, everything has good and bad sides, but that includes things/people you love. I doubt Beethoven always loved composing, or Einstein always loved doing science - it's a net thing, and when it involves something/somebody you love, the joy vastly exceeds the cost.
> Applying the concept of love to something as mundane as a job is ridiculous
Please, speak for yourself. You might find it ridiculous, you might not think it important to do something you love, and you'd be joining the 99.999% of people out there who live their lives treating the vast majority of their waking hours as being somehow irrelevant to happiness. But consider this - you might be wrong.
"The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a wide-spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible." - Russell
>Just a couple of generations ago, a job was a job was a job? Why, because a job meant survival. You either work your ass off, or you and your family starve. Did all these people love the hard labor, getting up at 4am to tend to a withering field? These generations were much more fatalistic about life and accepted bad things as an inevitable part of life."
Yes - some generations ago, work meant misery for the majority of people but - newsflash - we're not a couple of generations ago. We have experienced miraculous changes in the way the majority of people live, and it would be quite the insult to all those who have struggled to change things to say 'well it was misery generations ago, so why treat it any differently now?' - I can't think of a more retrograde or negative attitude. A few generations ago people died from simple infections - so why bother administering antibiotics? You could go on in that vein.
For some of us there is more to engaging in a certain activity than its ends, where the work itself transcends its purpose and becomes a pleasure in itself - a craftsman who really cares about his work sees the world very differently from a administrative functionary whose work is, by definition, mundane, repetitive and meaningless to them.
It's not all jobs, hell it's very few jobs out there, and certainly not for everybody - not everybody has it in them, or even the desire, to love their work but for those of us that do it is a very real possibility.
A lot of the problem I have with your attitude is that, for the minority who do see work as more than just a means-to-an-end, it is quite a struggle to fight against the prevailing attitude that you demonstrate and I really find it surprising that an HNer feels that way, and is especially frustrating for me as I am stuck in a job I emphatically am very unhappy in, fighting and struggling to get myself up to a level of ability where I can get a job in which I can practice my craft happily, and as a result I am considered fairly mad by a chunk of my friends + family.
pg puts it far more eloquently than I could [1]:-
"The test of whether people love what they do is whether they'd do it even if they weren't paid for it—even if they had to work at another job to make a living."
A few generations ago getting a job you love just wasn't possible for the vast majority. Now, and especially in software development, it is, and in fact as a result of the cheapness and ubiquity of computers + open source, etc. it is possible for somebody (at least in the west) to really pursue the craft regardless of circumstances. Please don't downplay that - it's nothing short of a damn miracle, really.
