In a lot of states it’s illegal for workers to work too many consecutive hours without a break, especially if it’s a physical labor job. Your employer may legally not be able to allow this.

Though sometimes they are just petty and inflexible.

Still got to leave early, I'll call that a win.

I didn't ask and no one seemed to care.

There's all kinds of legal murk with this.

If you don't get a break and you make a mistake that injures or kills you or someone else, the employer is responsible.

If you "don't get" a break, either by force or voluntarily (the reason actually doesn't matter), then many places consider that to be.... For lack of a better description (my brain can't think of one right now): bad working conditions, and illegal.

Even if you voluntarily skip you break/lunch, the thin line between that being fine, or a problem for the company, is whether you want to hire a lawyer and make it a problem or not.

That's liability that they don't want.

I guarantee they couldn't give any less of a shit whether you take your lunch/breaks or not, except for the fact that it could affect them.

I'm thankful for this, because bluntly, otherwise, they just wouldn't give you a break at all.
They would put it on the books as you working a 9 hour shift, and taking your lunch at the end of the day, but tell you that you are on an 8 hour shift that has no breaks. Since they can't cover their ass like that, you get an unpaid lunch.

The unpaid part was the compromise to get the legislation passed so they don't subject workers to inhumane conditions. Remember that the government is largely comprised of, or paid for by, businesses and business owners. So if it isn't, at the very least "fair" to business owners, it's not going to pass.

Wait, so you don't eat for 8 hours?

Half an hour?

Damn.

One problem is that if others are dependent on you being there, this screws 'em. Guys at the other Lowe's store did it all the time. By the middle of the afternoon the garden center was dead, who care's if there's only one guy for an hour?

I had dinner last night around 630pm. I'm not planning to eat anything until around 1pm today - and that might be optimistic. I subsist on sleep, coffee, and rage until then.

My entire career, I got a one-hour lunch, and two, paid, ten-minute breaks.

I know some will say you'd rather not because that's just more time at work, but with a one-hour lunch you can leave work, that's the whole point. It's a real break. One hour is enough time to go to a restaurant, or you can eat at work, and take a short walk. Half-an-hour is barely enough to time to eat and use the bathroom.

I guess what I'm saying is unionize.

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I eat one big dinner each day, so I go around 23 hours between meals. It takes a little acclimation, but I don't get "hangry" anymore and can go much longer without effect if something comes up and I have to delay eating.

That's not a problem at all. I've been intermittent fasting for almost 10 years now. Started with 36 hour fasts 3 times a week. Then eventually started following my shift work schedule. If I was evenings I'd eat breakfast and lunch, if I was days I'd only eat supper. Now I'm days only so I only eat supper.

My parents who are almost in their 70's started doing it a few years back and they lost a ton of weight. The thing I love about fasting is it changes how you deal with hunger. My body being hungry doesn't really phase me, I'm able to ignore it rather easily. I don't get stomach aches or headaches. I can mentally tell myself that this is my fasting window and it makes it really easy to not eat.

It's hard to explain without you actually doing it but it was one of the best choices I've made. I'll never go back.

Not eating lunch and taking a break is bad for your health and potentially undermines your productivity. It's a bad idea all around.

There's also the problem that if your coworkers skip theirs voluntarily, then you feel pressured to do the same and it's no longer voluntary. Breaks and lunch are legally required because otherwise you just don't get them at all because of the legal murkiness you mention.

When I worked at Target about a decade ago, if you missed your break, YOU got written up. They'd been sued so many times for not giving breaks that they FORCED you to take a break or be written up for it. If you were within 10 minutes of working into your lunch break, you can bet your ass someone was on a walkie talkie telling you to get your ass out and stop working. At the time they loved 4h45m shifts because it gave them 15 minutes buffer before you had to take a lunch.

This is literally what I do every day. I intermittent fast, so I don't eat until dinner. I work through lunch, take breaks whenever I need to get up and stretch my legs, and leave at ~4:15.

And that's why lunch should be paid if it's inside the workday.

This is how it is at my current job in Denmark. Never experienced it before working in Denmark.

It's not illegal where I live but it's against my union rules (though it's not a labour job). They have super strict rules about exactly when we should take our breaks. I get it in principle because there are asshole bosses who would try to force people to work through their breaks or shame them into it, but it really sucks for those of us who just don't mind pushing through so we can leave early or like to take late lunches.

I can't because it wouldn't make much sense, we need people working together to do stuff so break times are synchronized

If they let you take lunch at the end of the day to leave sooner that creates a loophole to say they gave you your lunch break without actually doing so