lunch etiquette

Sometimes (often?) in the field, you’re running on a relatively tight schedule that involves coordinating the activities of several people. When you’re juggling schedules, you need to work together to make sure that everything happens at the right time.

In this case, it’s a big pain when someone takes off without notifying anyone. Usually they have a good reason, like they need to run to the store or the trailer or whatever to grab some supplies they need. That’s fine, but I need to know who goes where so that I can coordinate things.

If someone takes off, I can just call them up and get an update. That’s fine. But what aggravates me is when somebody (or the rest of the field crew) takes off on some minor errand and then disappears for an extended length of time because they’ve just decided to take lunch. Hello? I’m stranded here on the site, waiting for you to get back. I don’t like calling every 10 minutes for status updates, but if something changes, I need to know. If you come back and you’ve had lunch without telling me, then either I skip lunch so that we can get something done, or then you wait for me to grab something and scarf it down while everyone else is waiting on me.

Is it so hard to call and say, “we went for lunch”? I eat too, you know!