Lunch-gate: Colleagues urged to report those taking long breaks

Noticing a member of your team flicking through Facebook while ‘working’ can be frustrating. Watching them come back from lunch late with little more than a mumbled excuse about the queue at the sandwich shop can be even worse. But is the answer to report them to your boss?

That’s what public servants in Australia have been advised to do.

The Australian Taxation Office sent out a memo to 20,000 staff in December urging them to be aware of their colleagues behaviours, according to BBC.

"A colleague makes a habit of taking long lunches; or regularly leaves early; or spends the first hour at work eating breakfast and reading the paper... or all of the above," the memo read, adding while that there may be there reasonable explanations,"… perhaps your suspicions are correct and they're simply not recording their working hours appropriately."