Unpaid Lunch Breaks!

Fuck this whole concept. I start a job tomorrow but the breaks and lunch periods are unpaid. All you hardened work veterans are probably turning your face inside out now like "ohhh, welcome to the real world, hohoho". Fuck you. I know it's the norm and I'm not bitching about it with the kind of indignation of a spoilt, middle-class brat. I'm just saying, shit.

I know I shouldn't be paid for time spent not working for the people paying me, but they take a certain freedom from me and anyone in work by having kind of stranded us in that situation. If I worked from home, that's my environment so that'd be a just scenario of an unpaid break (although you could argue that the 30 minutes to an hour window limit your freedom too). As it stands though, it's as if I work on a desert island. When I'm working for them it's fine because that's the trade off - my time and labour for their money but when the breaks are unpaid that switches to my time. However, it's not strictly my time. It's like my time in a vacuum, or relative to the situation they caused. It's being free to go knock coconuts out of trees for thirty minutes but that's not what I'd choose to do with my own time; that's what I'd choose to if I was trapped in the circumstances they caused. I'd actually much rather work through and get off early, but I dunno if they give that option yet. If they don't then I'm not at liberty to do what I want with the time because it's limited by them employing me on a fucking desert island. If they paid or compensated me for those breaks it would revert to the trade off and everything would be peachy again.

As it stands it's probably the mildest oppression imaginable, haha. Get my union on this!

Travelling times are a similar thing, but less practically resolved. You'd get motherfuckers commuting from New Zealand just to milk it.