If you think that the most
popular words are 'I love you`, you must be a juvenile delinquent. The
most popular words are the frequently uttered 'Let`s have lunch.`
Time was when everybody from the factory and
mill worker to the white collar worker, watchman to the foreman (and perhaps
the chairman) used to bring the lunch box from home, if they did not have
a canteen in their organisation. In Bombay, the dabbawala Punekar used
to supply lunch boxes to mill and office workers. The lunch box has become
passe. Now lunching out has become the order of the day.
Colleagues lunch together,
but not all colleagues. It is only birds of a feather that lunch together.
You can never see rivals in an office lunching together. But pretences
are maintained and invitations are made:
''Joining me for lunch?`` asks a colleague.
''I`ll join you later`` says the blighter
who does not really want to join and adds, ''I have this important report
to file.`` The former very well knows the latter does not want to join
him.
.
Besides, office lunching
is always parallel. Men of equal ranks lunch together. Some avoid discussing
office politics over lunch, but some lunch together only to discuss it.
The first thing ambitious people learn is that lunch is political. Seniors
and subordinates never lunch together unless there is a catch in it or
considerations other than professional. Only if there was more vertical
lunching there would be more industrial peace.
.
The business lunch has
become a part of the corporate culture and sometimes also referred to as
the 'power lunch`, during which business deals are clinched. Executives
and ad men, bankers and clients, bureaucrats and industrialists, consultants
and entrepreneurs engage themselves in this popular ritual.
'Why don`t we meet at lunch` a hard bargainer
may bait a prospect. In such cases the lunch is only a ploy to soften a
tough nut. Tough nuts are known to crack over a sumptuous meal. But there
are some who wouldn`t budge an inch, lunch or no lunch.
.
Whatever be the kind of
lunch 'there is no free lunch` as the saying goes. This saying was prevalent
in the USA in the 1840s. It gained currency in modern times when the well-
known economist Milton Friedman, made it the title of his book. It simply
means 'there is no getting something for nothing.`
There may be no free lunch but there are various
kinds of lunches which a person with a keen eye may be able to distinguish.
.
Like the Parkinson`s lunch
where lunch expands to fill the time and importance attached to it. Then
there`s Peter`s lunch where one lunches up to the level of his incompetence.
In Murphy`s lunch (not Eddie Murphy!) everything that can go wrong at lunch
does.
.
A lunch sometimes has a
catalytic effect or the 'Newton`s syndrome`: Every lunch has an equal and
opposite lunch or in other words a good lunch deserves another.
.
Whatever significance is
attached to a lunch, it is good to remember one thing: A lunch is a lunch
is a lunch. To modify the words of Tennyson, 'It is better to have lunched
and lost than not to have lunched at all.`