Why are Americans so bad at lunch?

[hunter]

45. This nation needs more taco trucks and longer lunch breaks!

One of the most depressing places I've ever eaten lunch was when I was working for a mainframe computer company that was slowly withering away because of the PC revolution. Three-quarters of their huge open factory floor was dark.

The cafeteria was 1950's modern and large enough to serve hundreds of people. It was still open with two older women cooking and making sandwiches. They'd been working there many years and all the old-timers knew them. The seats and tables further away from the cafeteria counter were dusty. Some of the fluorescent lights in the ceiling flickered, others were burned out entirely. There were no windows, the cafeteria was near the center of the factory.

Me and some of the guys I worked with would eat our lunches in what used to be offices for the R&D managers, now abandoned. We'd set up one office with random furniture. These offices had large windows with an excellent view of the hills across the valley.

I'd been awfully excited to get a job in the computer industry, especially since I'd quit my college engineering major two years in, but it turned out I was only there because so many people had been laid off or abandoned the sinking ship.

They still had some contracts going with the government and a few stodgier conservative businesses satisfied with their 'fifties and 'sixties computer technology.