A break at work is a period of time during a shift

Working time

Working time is the period of time that an individual spends at paid occupational labor. Unpaid labors such as personal housework are not considered part of the working week...

 in which an employee is allowed to take time off from his/her job. There are different types of breaks, and depending on the length and the employer's policies, the break may or may not be paid.

Meal breaks

Meal breaks or lunch breaks usually range from 30 minutes to one hour. Their purpose is to allow the employee to have a meal that is regularly scheduled during the work day. For a typical daytime job, this is lunch, but this may vary for those with other work hours. It is not uncommon for this break to be unpaid, and for the entire work day from start to finish to be longer than the number of hours paid in order to accommodate this time.

In the United Kingdom the law states that employers are legally required to provide at least a 10-minute break for every four consecutive hours worked and that a person must not work more than four hours in succession. When working in a restaurant environment, staff can be required to work up to six hours straight before having a break but must be given at least 20 minutes break for each six hours worked. Employers are not allowed to make a member of their staff take a break earlier in the shift then work more than four consecutive hours or six consecutive hours in one go without a further break; for example, if an employee was working ten hours the company could not give him twenty minutes' break two hours into the shift and then expect the employee to work the rest of the shift without a further break. This is illegal and could have serious repercussions for the employer.

According to a study, the amount of time people are taking for lunch breaks in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 is shrinking, thereby making the term "lunch hour" a myth. Some employers request the lunch to be taken at their work station or not offering lunch breaks at all. Many employees are taking shorter lunch breaks in order to compete with other employees for a better position, and to show their productivity.

In some places, such as the state of California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, meal breaks are legally mandated. Penalties can be severe for failing to adequately staff one's business premises so that all employees can rotate through their mandatory meal and rest breaks. For example, on April 16, 2007, the Supreme Court of California

Supreme Court of California

The Supreme Court of California is the highest state court in California. It is headquartered in San Francisco and regularly holds sessions in Los Angeles and Sacramento. Its decisions are binding on all other California state courts.-Composition:...

 unanimously affirmed a trial court judgment requiring Kenneth Cole Productions

Kenneth Cole Productions

Kenneth Cole Productions, Inc. is an American fashion house founded in 1982 by Kenneth Cole. He originally named the company Kenneth Cole Incorporated in September 1982 and planned to showcase his new line of shoes during market week at the Hilton New York Hotel...

 to pay an additional hour of pay for each day that a store manager had been forced to work a nine hour shift without a break.

Restroom/WC breaks

A short break to allow an employee to use a restroom or WC

WC

-Computing:* wc , a Unix utility used for counting words and lines in a file* Wing Commander , a video game media franchise* Write-combining, a computing performance method of combining multiple memory writes before sending them-Industry:...

 and will generally last less than 10 minutes. Many employers expect their employees to use the facilities during their regularly scheduled breaks and lunches. Denying employees rights to use the facilities as needed could adversely affect workplace sanitation and workers' health and could create legal issues for both these and other reasons. Employers and co-workers often frown on employees who are seen as taking too many of these breaks, and this could be a cause for termination.

Coffee break

For more see article on Coffee culture

Coffee culture

Coffee culture describes a social atmosphere or series of associated social behaviors that depends heavily upon coffee, particularly as a social lubricant. The term also refers to the diffusion and adoption of coffee as a widely consumed stimulant by a culture...

.

A coffee break is a routine social gathering for a snack

Snack

A snack is a small portion of food eaten between meals. The food might be snack food—items like potato chips or baby carrots—but could also simply be a smaller amount of any food item.-Snacks and health:...

 and short downtime practiced by employees in business

Business

A business is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and administered to earn profit to increase the wealth of their owners. Businesses may also be not-for-profit...

 and industry, corresponding with the Commonwealth

Commonwealth of Nations

The Commonwealth of Nations, normally referred to as the Commonwealth and formerly known as the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organisation of fifty-four independent member states...

 terms "elevenses

Elevenses

In the United Kingdom, Ireland and some Commonwealth realms, elevenses is a snack that is similar to afternoon tea, but eaten in the morning. It is generally less savoury than brunch, and might consist of some cake or biscuits with a cup of coffee or tea. The name refers to the time of day that it...

", "morning tea", "tea break", or even just "tea". An afternoon coffee break, or afternoon tea, sometimes occurs as well.

The coffee break allegedly originated in the late 19th century in Stoughton, Wisconsin

Stoughton, Wisconsin

Stoughton is a city in Dane County, Wisconsin, United States and is a neighbor of Madison. It straddles the Yahara River about 20 miles southeast of the capital, Madison. Stoughton is part of the Madison Metropolitan Statistical Area...

, with the wives of Norwegian immigrants. The city celebrates this every year with the Stoughton Coffee Break Festival. In 1951, Time

Time (magazine)

Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

 noted that "[s]ince the war, the coffee break has been written into union contracts". The term subsequently became popular through a Pan-American Coffee Bureau ad campaign of 1952 which urged consumers, "Give yourself a Coffee-Break — and Get What Coffee Gives to You." John B. Watson

John B. Watson

John Broadus Watson was an American psychologist who established the psychological school of behaviorism. Watson promoted a change in psychology through his address Psychology as the Behaviorist Views it which was given at Columbia University in 1913...

, a behavioral psychologist who worked with Maxwell House

Maxwell House

Maxwell House is a brand of coffee manufactured by a like-named division of Kraft Foods. Introduced in 1892, it is named in honor of the Maxwell House Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee. For many years until the late 1980s it was the largest-selling coffee in the U.S. and is currently second behind...

 later in his career, helped to popularize coffee breaks within the American culture.

Coffee breaks usually last from 10 to 20 minutes and frequently occur at the end of the first third of the work shift. In some companies and some civil service

Civil service

The term civil service has two distinct meanings:* A branch of governmental service in which individuals are employed on the basis of professional merit as proven by competitive examinations....

, the coffee break may be observed formally at a set hour. In some places, a "cart" with hot and cold beverages and cake

Cake

Cake is a form of bread or bread-like food. In its modern forms, it is typically a sweet and enriched baked dessert. In its oldest forms, cakes were normally fried breads or cheesecakes, and normally had a disk shape...

s, bread

Bread

Bread is a staple food prepared by cooking a dough of flour and water and often additional ingredients. Doughs are usually baked, but in some cuisines breads are steamed , fried , or baked on an unoiled frying pan . It may be leavened or unleavened...

s and pastries

Pastry

Pastry is the name given to various kinds of baked products made from ingredients such as flour, sugar, milk, butter, shortening, baking powder and/or eggs. Small cakes, tarts and other sweet baked products are called "pastries."...

 arrives at the same time morning and afternoon, an employer may contract with an outside caterer for daily service, or coffee breaks may take place away from the actual work-area in a designated cafeteria

Cafeteria

A cafeteria is a type of food service location in which there is little or no waiting staff table service, whether a restaurant or within an institution such as a large office building or school; a school dining location is also referred to as a dining hall or canteen...

 or tea room.

More generally, the phrase "coffee break" has also come to denote any break from work.

Snack breaks

Snack breaks are usually shorter than meal breaks, and allow an employee to have a quick snack, or to accomplish other personal needs. Similar types of breaks include restroom and smoke breaks.
These breaks are also required in the state of California; one 10-15 minute break for every 3.5 hours worked. A few other states have similar laws, but most do not.
Some employers allow employees to stop their work for short durations at any time to take care of these needs.

Smoking breaks

Many companies in the 21st century don't allow smoking on their property, although some employers allow workers to leave the premises to smoke, and some jurisdictions have laws prohibiting smoking in an enclosed place where others are employed. Smoke breaks can be of different lengths but for the most part are shorter than lunch breaks. Some employers are very strict about smoking. Alaska Airlines

Alaska Airlines

Alaska Airlines is an airline based in the Seattle suburb of SeaTac, Washington in the United States. The airline originated in 1932 as McGee Airways. After many mergers with and acquisitions of other airlines, including Star Air Service, it became known as Alaska Airlines in 1944...

bans smoking and use of tobacco for employees, even outside the workplace. A criticism of smoking breaks is that non smoking employees do not receive the small respite because they simply do not smoke.