The Italian world starts slow and continues that way. Most things open at 9am and close between 12.30pm and 4.30pm, opening again until 7pm. Dinner is generally 8pm or later. It’s all very civilized.
It all seems to flow very smoothly despite a big break in the middle of the day when nothing can be done because not much is open. Of course, there will be the occasional café open for leisurely lunches but that’s it. In fact, we were unceremoniously jostled out the door of a shop as we were browsing because it was 12.30pm.
It seems big cities and tourist towns don’t tend to follow the same rules and you might even be able to have lunch in Urbino until 2.30pm before the café suddenly closes without warning. Tourist shops in some small locations like The Republic of San Marino don’t seem to close for the lunch break at all. In the off-season, some shops in tourist towns don’t bother to open at all except at weekends. One never knows if one will find shops open or closed, cafes open, closed or closing, or anything available anywhere. Even service stations close for this lunch period, although most have self serve so you can still fuel up, but you can’t go in and buy that beer you wanted to go with your fuel.🚗
You could starve in most of the smaller towns and villages in Italy if you didn’t plan ahead and eat early, pack something or plan to eat late. It’s all very random.
We constantly complain about the Sunshine Coast where you can rarely find anyone to serve lunch after 1.30pm and Italy is closed for FOUR HOURS over lunch! It’s just so completely bizarre. It also seems that Italians have their lives perfectly in balance. They work to live, not live to work. Lifestyle and family before all things. I don’t know what Italians do during this their lunch break period, but I assume if they live close by, that they go home for a leisurely family lunch and maybe a nap. Certainly in smaller towns and villages, there is the silent hum of nothing during these periods, interspersed by the clink of cutlery from open windows. If you don’t live close enough to go home then I guess you work in a bigger town or city. In this case lunch venues are open so that you can spend your hours having your leisurely lunch out.
I’m fairly sure that most Italians wouldn’t spend this time locked in an office building with no windows, catching up on emails and inhaling a sandwich like so many people I know.
So, are they less efficient because they live their working lives this way? Do we really get more done in a working day that starts at 8.30am and ends at 5pm with only an hour for lunch and no breaks otherwise? There is much to be said for happy workers being efficient,
I think. If you are unhappy in your life (which includes your job) then in my experience you will produce less work and of poorer quality. In my life, it takes about 30 minutes to drive from home to work and if this is all the travel I do, I fill my car with fuel every ten days. If my work closed for four hours in the middle of the day, would I drive home for a leisurely lunch? Given I would lose an hour in travel plus extra fuel and running costs for the car – probably not every day. Certainly some days I would go home for a leisurely lunch, take the dog for a walk, put the washing on and pop dinner in the slow cooker. Some days I would take my leisurely lunch to the lake or the beach or countryside and consume said lunch in a leisurely manner. I might meet friends at a café sometimes although the cost is prohibitive to do this more than once a week. I might sit quietly and read a book. Some would spend the entire four hours updating their facebook posts (which would stop them doing it during business hours and allow them to be more productive at work😊). I know I would be more relaxed when I went back to work at 4.30pm and possibly more productive. (Or I could be more sleepy having consumed a large, leisurely lunch?)
Would businesses lose revenue and/or custom if we ran our lives this way? Do our supermarkets and chain stores make more profit being open until 9pm every weeknight and all weekend? Of course it’s very convenient and a change would have to be made to our expectations and the way we live our lives.
Would we be better people if we were more relaxed, less focused on income and more focused on happiness? Would our society and economy be improved by choosing lifestyle over dollars?
