Office-bound Brits will spend the equivalent of an entire year of their lives eating lunch at their desks. The average worker remains glued to their workstation for four lunches a week, an astonishing 180 desk-bound meals every year.
Time Adds Up
Across a typical 49-year working life, from the age of 18 to 67, those one-hour lunches add up to 8,820 hours. This amounts to just over one full year of continuous time, the Greggs bakery research finds.
Workers also miss out on 2,548 summer lunches, which is equivalent to more than 106 full days that could have been spent enjoying the sunshine.
Generational Differences
The new research found that Baby Boomers are Britain’s biggest desk diners, eating lunch at their workstation all five days of the working week. If they keep that habit up across their working life, they will clock up a whopping 11,025 hours - the equivalent of one year and three months.
Gen Z are starting a healthier trend by escaping the confines of their office more often. More than half (59%) eat lunch at their workstation three days a week or fewer, while more than three-quarters (77%) regret staying indoors while it’s sunny.
Regional Habits
Workers in the North East and Yorkshire spend most of the working week at their desk for lunch. And Londoners are more likely to escape, typically eating two lunches a week outside the office.
Zoe Harris, of Greggs, said: “Lunch shouldn’t be spent hunched over a screen and picking crumbs out of your keyboard, especially when the sun is shining.”
