Your sad workday lunch has its origins in New York City
Leave your desk, cog!
Lunch as we know it has only existed for some 200 years. Before the 19th century, a Western lunch was defined as “as much food as one’s hand can hold,” according to a 1755 dictionary entry.
But when industrialization came to major cities, people (mostly men) stayed at work for longer hours, or all day. A new meal had to be created so workers could literally regain strength for the rest of the day’s labor.
Later, technological innovations like the pocket watch and punch clock ensured workers’ every second was accounted for. And the quicker a person could bang out said meal, the sooner he could punch back in.
“Haste seems to be a controlling factor in the luncheon of the worker,” observed Munsey’s Magazine in 1901. It named the new phenomenon the “quick lunch.”
The culture of the quick lunch originated in New York, says culinary historian Laura Shapiro. “New York has all the conditions that make America different from the Old World in terms of speed and work and the arrangement of life. In New York, the focus of people’s lives is work, and lunch is the meal that was just made to fit into the industrial, urban work day.”
Geographically, more businesses and factories clustered in lower Manhattan, making the area chaotic with congestion and noise. As a result, more residents moved north to quieter areas and restaurants, automats, and food carts took their place.
Counter-service restaurants, also known as “one-arm” joints, were complicit in the culture of speed. Patrons could order fast food and eat it at counters standing up, packed in tightly — using only one hand. Restaurants encouraged the pace. Some menus even warned they were “not responsible for personal property” if it was stolen in the hustle.
One intrepid New York Times reporter spent a month timing diners in a single quick-eating establishment in Times Square, in part because Americans had earned the reputation by this time of “gobbling food almost whole.” Two men stood out, he said. One finished his meal in 48 seconds; the other in one minute and 55 seconds. Of the latter, “The man simply tossed the food into his mouth, which was large, and swallowed it as fast as his throat could work. The putting of the food into the mouth and the swallowing seemed almost simultaneous.”
You can imagine this got old.
Some people tired of the quick lunch and restaurants’ monotonous menus. They brought bagged lunches or pails and checked out all together. According to a 1901 feature by Grandthorpe Sudley for Munsey’s Magazine, manual laborers would “sit in the half finished doorways, or prop themselves against the walls” or “even spread their luncheon on the curb.” He compares their “hour of luxurious ease” to businessmen who would “feed,” rather than lunch.
Office professionals fancied their own version of lunch escapism. A 1904 issue of Good Housekeeping chronicles one reader’s solution: a simple bag lunch of sandwich and a “little dainty” like almonds or raisins — eaten at his desk.
“The package slips into a coat pocket unobtrusively, and after I eat it in my office, I have a quiet hour to work without being bothered by the ‘clamorous clients’ that infest a down-town law office at all other hours of the day.” — C.S.
Whoever C.S. is, we can thank him for helping to normalize what now plagues the white-collar American worker: the sad desk lunch. About 60% of professionals eat lunch at their desks, and about half eat alone. What would otherwise be an hour free of work obligations is spent catching up on email and punching out small tasks, like responding to Slack messages; in other words, minutiae that can survive the “distraction” of a sandwich. And they’ve been doing it for decades.
It’s why we have bromidic lists titled “12 Lunch Break Ideas That Improve Your Productivity,” with flamethrower tips like “read about your industry” and “make phone calls.”
It’s New York’s fault, really. When lunch outside the office got too crazy, people began retreating to their desks. Top that off with decades of increasing productivity pressures and on-demand delivery options and you’ve got the recipe for today’s sad desk lunch, with only a greasy keyboard for company.
Hope your productivity is worth it. (It’s not.)
