His boss raged at him for taking a late lunch during an IT outage — so when the whole network went down at 12:25 he clocked out right on time

Office lunch breaks allow employees to step away from their duties, eat, and recharge. However, not every company respects that time. An IT staff member who goes by u/daschande on Reddit revealed that his boss called him out for having lunch half an hour late from the usual hours (12-1 p.m.). He was actually helping a client, but the boss refused to understand. Three days later, during a network outage at around 12:25 p.m., the worker followed the boss's order, clocked out just in time for lunch, and watched the entire office descend into chaos. The post, shared on June 28, has received over 9,000 upvotes. 

The lunch police

The author was trying to fix a 'mission-critical' computer and suggested the fastest fix, but the owner wanted him to go slowly since he'd paid extra for tech support. That's why the worker stayed on call with the support teams for hours and missed his usual lunch time at work. "No big deal for me, but when I clocked back in and got back to my desk, my boss was standing there, fuming," he recalled. The boss was unhappy that the author ate his 30-minute lunch outside the normal hours and insisted he stick to the official lunch hours only.

The Uno reverse

Three days after the incident, a network outage disrupted office work at around 12:25 p.m. The author suspected the blackout was due to multiple high-voltage woodworking machines and unshielded Ethernet cables. The office was rented, so none of the employees could check the switches or routers. Since he had no admin access, he "set up Wireshark to record and a continuous command line ping" and then went to lunch, following his boss's order. When the employee came back, his boss was by his desk, with a look on his face. He snapped, "The network is up, by the way!" Even though the boss made a sarcastic remark, he couldn't call out the employee because of his own order.

Lunch break dilemma

A 2025 ezCater survey revealed that the majority (94%) of surveyed employees reported that lunch breaks boosted their performance. However, 51% skipped lunch at least once a week, and 33% skipped it twice a week or more. The main reasons why they had to miss it were work and the fear of being judged for taking a 'proper break.' What happened to the author of the Reddit post proved this fear was real. He was busy working during lunch hours and decided to take the same amount of time to eat outside the usual timing, and was reprimanded for it.

'What does IT actually do?'

Meanwhile, people in the comments advised the author to start looking for jobs elsewhere. For instance, u/DoctorGuvnor wrote, "Start looking for another job, your days there are numbered, and it's not a big number. A*sh*les seldom respond well to being silently informed they're a*seh*les." u/tusk354 added, "Welcome to the joy of IT! If things work — 'What does IT actually do?' When things don't work — 'What does IT actually do?' Enjoy your peace before on-call, endless mgmt meetings, mor*ns, etc."

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