In business, many word combinations are used together frequently, even though they don’t really go together. Profit and loss (you can have both?); research and development (don’t these people know reading is the alternative to productivity?); sales and marketing (just similar enough to be like squabbling siblings).
To the lexicon of poorly matched business terms, I would like to submit perhaps the most egregious of all: “lunch and learn.”
The lunch and learn has gained tremendous trendy popularity among the kinds of companies that do stuff no one understands. Information technology companies are big on this. Accounting and financial services firms will put on a lunch and learn to teach you all about Sarbanes-Oxley, presumably under the theory that you’ll be asleep within 10 minutes and they’ll have the opportunity to scarf your chips.
Of course, the companies who present lunch and learns don’t want you to learn too much. Their primary objective is to show you how complicated the subject at hand really is, thus motivating you to simply turn it over to them for a healthy fee.
“The key to data security is redundant servers,” the presenter declares.
“What does that mean?” wonders the inquisitive luncher/learner.
“It means multiple sites ensure the highest level of digital integrity!”
“I don’t have a clue what you just said.”
“Have some more potato salad!”
The lunch and learn is fatally flawed, because it combines two things that should never be combined: lunch and learning. Essentially, the lunch and learn ruins lunch.
Learning isn’t what lunch is for. Lunch is, first and foremost, for eating. And because of that, it deserves to be your primary focus.
How am I supposed to listen to some guy droning on about generally accepted accounting practices when I’m trying to decide if this chicken bone has enough meat left on it to justify my continuing to run my teeth across it? Because if I’m grasping at straws, I need to put it back in the bag and move on to the next piece. This requires a lot of concentration. (Or it would if I ever ate something like that for lunch, which of course I never would, because it wouldn’t be healthy at all.)
That raises another problem. When you attend a lunch and learn, you have no choice but to eat with manners and decorum. Others are watching. If you inhale your food with all the restraint of a ravenous dog, how is that going to look? You can’t eat that way at the lunch and learn. You have to sit up straight, taking the occasional dainty bite while writing on your notepad. Granted, you wrote out the Giants’ 1987 playoff lineup, but no one could see that. You looked like you were paying attention.
But taking notes is something you can fake. Eating, you can’t fake. If you eat the way that comes naturally to you—grease flowing down your shirt, mustard on your chin—you’ll be ostracized from the Economic Club. And you wouldn’t want that, would you? (OK, maybe you would. These demonstrations aren’t precise.)
But the greater problem with the lunch and learn—the true bastardization of lunch—is that lunch is about chilling out and taking a break. Learning is exactly the opposite. Let’s face it, there’s a reason you skipped school but you don’t skip lunch. Learning isn’t fun. I know you’re supposed to talk about how much you love learning, but you don’t and you know it.
You may read during lunch, but you’re not reading anything educational. You’re reading ESPN.com, chatting on a sports forum or scanning People. A few of you might be sitting in your cars somewhere listening to Rush (I’ll let you decide whether that’s educational).
So whose idea was it to mix up eating and learning? They didn’t let you eat in your high school math class, did they? So why would they think you can eat and listen to them at the same time?
Simple time management. You aren’t going to come to a meeting so they can quasi-teach you stuff. You don’t have time. But ah, they figure, you have to eat! So if they bribe you with food, you’ll sit there and listen to their “lesson.” Besides, if you’re trying to focus on the food, you’re only going to remember enough of what you hear to convince yourself that you should just turn it all over to them to handle anyway.
But no one has it worse than the lunch and learn presenter, and this is the fault of your mother. She’s the one who made that rule about how you’re not supposed to talk with your mouth full, and you don’t want to violate that rule in front of business associates, especially people you hope will become your customers.
Now, I have to tell you, that’s a dumb rule. Have you ever participated in a business lunch? Yes, I know, these also ruin lunch. But let’s be honest. They take place. If you have to be quiet whenever you have food in your mouth, nothing is ever going to get done. But when you’re a lunch and learn presenter, you can’t talk and eat at the same time, which means you have to either eat first—which is rude—or wait until you’re finished talking and hope there’s some food left. This is all highly traumatic and not conducive to the worthy cause of proper, aggressive, high-volume lunch consumption.
Besides, learning is dumb. You know enough. If you’re wondering about something, just look it up on the Internet while you scarf your chicken (which I would never do). The business world already combines too many things that should be kept apart. Ruining lunch by adding learning simply won’t do.
I typed all that with my mouth full.
