Workers Scolded By Homeowner For Taking A Lunch Break — 'Am I Paying You To Eat Your Lunch Or To Work?'
Are they supposed to work eight hours without eating? According to this homeowner, yes.
Latino Life | Canva Pro It doesn't seem to matter how much we all speak out about it; some people in the world just refuse to change the way they treat working people.
Usually, it's bosses who are culprits of this unfortunate trend, but it's also going strong among the rank-and-file whose privilege has convinced them they're superior to working people and entitled to get their way. An interaction with a customer that a U.K. tradesman recently shared on TikTok is a perfect example. Apparently, the homeowner was unable to wrap their head around the fact that laborers might want to eat lunch.
A homeowner scolded workers for taking a lunch break.
Having contractors and workers like carpenters at your house is often a frustrating experience — their jobs frequently tend to take longer than expected, often through no fault of their own. It can be hard to have patience during that process.
But this customer? She took that whole thing to an extent that is just downright bizarre. It's one thing to be disgruntled that things are taking too long. To be disgruntled that workers are eating their lunch? That is absurd, to say the least.
But this customer, who has been dubbed a "Karen" by the internet, was unfazed by basic reason and common sense. It led to her making some downright bizarre demands.
The customer insisted she was not paying the workers to eat lunch and demanded they go off-site instead.
"Do I actually pay you to have your lunch, or do I pay you to actually work?" the woman angrily questioned the tradesmen. "You're not paid for lunch. You're actually paid to work."
This is not actually how things work, of course. Typically, in the first place, contractors are paid — well, by the contract, not by the hour. And even if they were, eating lunch is… part of being a human who is alive? What exactly this woman expects is a mystery.
"We are entitled to a break, you know," one of the tradesmen responded, but the woman insisted it was not her problem. She then offered a solution that made no sense whatsoever.
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"If you want lunch, you get off the premises and you go and have lunch elsewhere," she said, then went on to complain about how long the work was taking and how "behind" the tradesmen were. She angrily pointed out that it was already noon, and they hadn't finished yet. "Yeah, it's a three-day job," the worker responded. Oops.
This is all strange on its face, but it also makes no sense. If you're angry that the workers are behind, what on Earth does sending them away for lunch accomplish?
You'd rather them take the time to drive off, park, buy food, eat it, get back to the car, and drive back to your home instead of… Just letting them eat their sandwiches in front of your house in peace? Frankly, it's idiotic.
Many felt that the woman was just trying to start drama so she could avoid paying, especially when she escalated to threats.
To many who watched the video, it quickly seemed like the lunch wasn't the actual point — the real gambit seemed to be raising a ruckus so she could refuse to pay, especially when she began threatening them with reprisal from her husband.
Threats that seemed to fall on unfazed, deaf ears, for the record. Instead, the tradesman tried to nail the woman down on camera. "So you want us to spend eight hours a day without having a break?" he asked. She answered simply and without a shred of shame: "Yeah."
"Decent people offer food/refreshments to these hard-working people," one person on TikTok commented. Indeed, the UK actually calls a basic cup of tea a "builder's tea" or "a builder's" because it's what you're supposed to offer tradesmen while they work on your house.
Others pointed out the obvious. "You are legally obliged to have a break," one person wrote, whether the work is satisfactory or not. On X, people saw something more obviously nefarious at play.
"Why do I get the feeling she's going to scam them out of paying for the work they've done," one person wrote. Many others on TikTok firmly agreed. And even more had a simple, easy, and well-deserved solution to this altercation.
As one person put it, "At this point, I’d pick up all my tools and say, 'Enjoy finishing it yourself.'" It's hard to argue with that. Just because you hire someone doesn't mean you own them. And even if their work is subpar, they're still entitled to basic needs like food. Nobody should need to be told that.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.