Lunch Hour Depression (LHD)

Lunch Hour Depression LHD is that phenomenon which occurs when you are forced to take your legally proscribed lunch time and you don’t necessarily feel like taking the lunch hour.

Most of the time I take my lunch hour just because I have too- I don’t want to have to stop my work flow roll over to the fridge to retrieve my lunch, heat it up and eat it. This takes thirty minutes living me with having to get rid of yet another thirty minutes or loose them. I just hate giving anything to the System. I would not mind so much if the system was not so punitive about what the system feels about time abuse. So, I max the lunch hour out every chance I get. Many times I just read my book in the Council meeting room and call it good.

Other times I am forced out of the office to “range” for my lunch—this happens when the council room is occupied and I can’t warm up my lunch. Then I actually climb back into my powerchair—then the problem arises, where can you go in an hour you do a decent lunch. There is the mall across the street with typical mall food=fast food. Restaurant choices are limited without having venture deep into the city which means taking a lot of time getting there then getting “set” then the whole lunch process: menued, ordered and fed then back to the office is impossible in sixty minutes. This process is not too bad if I have an extra hour or two.

I suffer from LHD especially from the above situation—you have to use the time but you are not really hungry, especially not hungry for Mall food or other fast food offering. You actually think you might be interested in some of the restaurant offerings. You have the time, money sort of the interest to find out when you get there there is NOTHING on the menu which sounds appealing. When this happens I get a little weird trying to think of a “good” place to go for lunch in the dwindling time I have left. Sometimes I actually have caught my self spinning my powerchair in circles. This has too look seriously unbalanced to those looking on. I usually end up defaulting to the mall—madly crossing the street, entering the mall elevating to the second level the Food court level and dashing to Taco Time or Dog on a Stick grabbing the hot offering and munching on this so called lunch on the way back to the office. The fastest path takes me past the Men’s Homeless Shelter. The guys are in line for the soup kitchen when I pass—I feel their eyes on me and my grease lunch. I can feel their fried food lust even if I choose not to eat my lunch till I get back to the office. The food is in the rolled up paper bag which radiates with the distinct flavor of fast food. I just stare straight a head power forward and loose myself in my afternoon to work and heartburn..there really should be another option.