Coffee breaks

You know, we keep having this discussion about how in India (atleast in the IT industry) people tend to stay late at office every single day. I have always believed it is just because the productivity is so low during the 'official' 8 hrs that people have to stay back to catch up. And the coffee breaks are probably a big contributor to this. But it is actually good that way.

Here, in Germany, I keep finding that a bunch of we Indians are the only ones who really go sit in the coffee room, have a leisurely chat for about 15-20 min (In India, I used to do this for a min 30 min) then slowly walk back to our rooms. The others just come, pick up the coffee and go back to their computers.

I, for one, believe, these breaks are quite healthy on 2 counts. One, we dont spend all the time looking at the monitor all day long and get the blood circulating in our body...:) (that's a real lousy excuse)

The 2nd thing is in the 'team building' area. I think people are becoming much 2 impersonal with all the virtual teams and distributed locations. There is no more 'fun' at the workplace. At least in the coffee room, you will hopefully talk about the more important things in life like 'whether Will Smith's acting in Hitch was good or not...should ganguly be dropped from the team..etc'.

Gone are the days when companies used to sponsor these team bonding lunches or parties. So I believe the next best thing is to find ur buddies over a coffee in office.

So coming back to my initial statement, it is good to go get your coffee and take a long time while doing it. Now move!!!