Question about eating meals at work

[Ed Anger]

So that my post does not get ignored as being too reasonable and balanced (aka the PDH's Curse), here's the executive summary: I'm smart and you are all stupid. 

Tldr

[Syt]

Well, in Vienna lunch time specials are between 6 and 9 EUR on average. If you go for, say a 7 EUR meal (soup + main course, usually), that leaves you with 5 EUR for breakfast/dinner. With that money you could go to a deli counter in the supermarket and get maybe, two, three basic sandwiches (i.e. a roll + some lunch meat on it). And then you haven't had anything to drink yet. 12 EUR would cover "normal" breakfast in a café plus an average lunch I suppose, but then you've had no dinner yet.

Lunch special would help her considering that isn't a meal that qualifies (she only gets breakfast and dinner covered).

Oh, overlooked that. In that case it's breakfast at a café and dinner at BK.

[garbon]

Oh, overlooked that. In that case it's breakfast at a café and dinner at BK.

Exactly.

[Neil]

So that my post does not get ignored as being too reasonable and balanced (aka the PDH's Curse), here's the executive summary: I'm smart and you are all stupid. 

I don't think that anyone was puzzled.  MS was doing the same thing with his post that you were with yours:  Being a passive aggressive douchebag.

[Josquius]

Lunch special would help her considering that isn't a meal that qualifies (she only gets breakfast and dinner covered).

Gah, hate that southern classification of lunch and dinner as seperate things.

[Eddie Teach]

Dinner is the biggest meal of the day. For most people, that's supper.

[Habbaku]

Lunch special would help her considering that isn't a meal that qualifies (she only gets breakfast and dinner covered).

Gah, hate that southern classification of lunch and dinner as seperate things.

[dps]

Lunch special would help her considering that isn't a meal that qualifies (she only gets breakfast and dinner covered).

Gah, hate that southern classification of lunch and dinner as seperate things.

"Dinner" was supposed to be the term for the larger meal of the day.  If it's the mid-day meal, then the evening meal is "supper".  If the evening meal is the larger of the 2, then the mid-day meal is "lunch".  In popular usage, this has mostly been forgotten.   In the US, using "dinner" and "supper"  considered rural and southern because the mid-day was usually the larger of the 2.  In more urban areas, "lunch" and "dinner" are more generally used because the mid-day meal was often a quick bite grabbed on a short work break, and the larger meal was eaten in the evening after you got home to your family.

[garbon]

Of course that's rather irrelevant unless Jos thought B was saying a mid-day meal is typically taken at home.

[Josquius]

Things have morphed even more in the north of Britain with dinner nearly always meaning a mid-day meal; though there is a bit of a distinction of dinner being something heavy (generally reserved for Sunday) and lunch something light, not everyone always uses this of course and dinner to many just means a midday meal in general. The idea of having dinner at tea time just tend not to come into play, except of course on Sunday.

Of course that's rather irrelevant unless Jos thought B was saying a mid-day meal is typically taken at home.

Not at all.
If it was a lunch special at a restaurant then surely under the original meanings that would count as a dinner as opposed to a more standard lunch of just a few sandwiches or whathaveyou.

[garbon]

Yeah, you're an idiot.

[merithyn]

Yeah, you're an idiot.

[Admiral Yi]

Don't think so. If I were to bet my lunch money on it, I would say this comes from the paternalistic tradition of Salazar. This seems a lot like what we had during the communist era (where there was no overly strong restaurant lobby) and seems a type of thing Catholic "socialist" paternalists would come up with.

This tradition does not view an employee as merely a contractor of the employer, but someone the employer should care for and protect (and someone who, like a feudal client or, in more paternalistic and "benevolent" interpretations, a slave, is simply less smart than the employer, and as such should be guided and have some decisions taken for him).

Ultimately, this is pseudo-feudal and such fringe benefits (other allowances include often stuff like clothes you need for work - even if it is just a suit - or a holiday allowance, a special allowance granted on the birth of children, or marriage, or funeral in the family and so on and so forth) that are not seen as a "real pay" (and thus are not taxed or are taxed differently) are a perfect example of this mentality.

To a free market capitalist mind these make no sense, as the employee is perceived as an autonomous economic actor who engages in a transaction of pure exchange of work for pay, but to a paternalistic mind these are all part of a social contract.

The only thing that surprises me is that, on a forum so full of educated people with broader horizons, noone seems to be able to grasp these cultural differences and all we get instead is Martim Silva being puzzled at the Anglosaxons and the Anglosaxons being puzzled at Martim Silva.

Agree 100%.  400 years later and Yuros still act like serfs, waiting for a barrel of mead and a couple sheep from their liege to celebrate the solstice.

Has anyone read Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom?"  I haven't, but it does seem logical that that the reason this mentality has been able to survive is that it was given an intellectual patina by socialists and unionists. 

[garbon]

You know, I was just told to read that the other day.

[Barrister]

You know, I was just told to read that the other day.

I enjoyed it (well as much as you can enjoy a text on economics).