It's lunchtime in Paris.

Chefs are writing their menus on chalkboards.

Waiters are setting tables.

The wine, carrafts, are stacked.

Customers begin arriving.

It seems like this are playing out in beast rows and canteens all across France.

Meanwhile, in her office at the University of Strasbourg in northeastern France, an English

teacher named Caitlin Platchie furtively pokes her head into the hallway, looks both ways.

Seeing no one, she carefully clicks the door closed, returns to her desk, and in the glow

of her computer screen, she pulls out a salad and records this voice memo.

My name is Caitlin.

I have a workplace cultural challenge, which is currently I'm sitting in my office hiding

because it's lunchtime.

At lunchtime in France, people generally take an hour and a half or two hours and eat

and try not to talk about work.

But I come from the US and I love a productive lunch.

There's even a law in France that forbids workers from eating after desk.

And that is my workplace cultural challenge.

Thanks so much.

Wait, what did you say?

It's forbidden.

There's a law against eating lunch at your desk.

...