Csdrhrt

Frankly speaking, unless the job role is about or demands the presence of oneself at the desk for a given period of time (example: support executive for a hotline), as long as the overall work expectations are met, how individuals are managing their time should not matter much to the supervisor / upper management. In other words, as long as the work is accomplished within the expected timeline, usually no one bothers about how the time was managed.

You may need to see, whether there are other reasons being this objection, like

• Objection / report about being blocked on someone else's availability (at any time)


• Missing delivery timeline


• A drop in quality of work

which in turn might have triggered this time-monitoring practice. Sometimes, people state the easiest reasons (also "canned" response), just for the sake of it. You may really need to know what the real objection is.

One more theory behind why it could have happened:

As if this has really been an unofficial practice for some people to go out (simply being unavailable) in a particular time everyday, yes, this can cause issues with availability. Maybe the upper management want to point out the issue in whole, instead of finger-pointing at any particular employee?

Does my boss have a reasonable concern here? Am I just biased?

Unless you can rule out all other possibilities and prove otherwise, we've to consider yes, your boss has a reasonable concern. That's why this directive was given. However, how "reasonable" that is overall, you can only find out if you approach someone from upper management (HR, on in absence, someone charged with the HR/Admin department) to ask for more clarification.

TL:DR - It appears there's more to it, you need to have a conversation and find out and remedy the actual problem.

My main concern is that you are, during your work time, taking a break of 10-15 minutes on an external place. If your work does not have a break room and a coffee machine, I think your management should act and bring what you need to rest / take a break inside the work environment.

I'm not shocked with the fact that a small company try to split you into smaller groups : maybe it's a fact or maybe just a false impression, but bigger groups tends to take longer pauses than smaller ones. Maybe they want to avoid you taking longer and longer breaks and leaving with bigger groups one step at a time.

It's a fair concern, I think, given that your company probably still has to prove itself, but it's also a lack of confidence for management. If your productivity is not lowered by this little break, no harm will be done on this project and moral will probably be better, hence better results during work time.

While I understand that in our small company (~20 people) that is a noticeable absence, it really rubs me the wrong way. Upper management always wants to keep a tight grip on everything, and there isn't a lot of trust. So it felt like a deliberate attempt to limit coworker's interactions with one another outside the office.

Does my boss have a reasonable concern here?

Maybe. What you are not telling us is why management objects. You are assuming it's about trust, but there may be other reasons. Perhaps they find it unreasonable that the entire team is absent -- there would be noone to turn to if something goes wrong. Or perhaps, due to the small size of the company, it's very disruptive if 3-7 people all return at the same time, all chatting. Or it is because you're not compensating for the time being away (either by cutting your lunch break short, or by coming in early/staying late).

Am I just biased?

Well, of course you are.

From your description of the problem, I suspect the lack of trust is mutual. You didn't ask upper management what they are concerned about. You didn't even ask here how to solve this issue -- you're just trying to seek validations for your suspicions.

Does my boss have a reasonable concern here? Am I just biased?

The concern is only somewhat reasonable if the employees who are regularly leaving the office are struggling to meet their deadlines for their assigned tasks. I say somewhat reasonable because at the end of the day, 15 minutes every day should not be enough time to significantly impact an employee's ability to meet their deadlines.

there are too many people going on the morning coffee run at a nearby cafe at once, and that it "disrupts the work routines" of other people.

Let's take that at face value. Could your boss be right? Absolutely.

If you go out for a coffee alone, you are silent. You are focused. You talk to nobody, go over the street, order your coffee, wait for it, then grab it and go straight back. You go back to your desk and continue working.

Now if two people go for a coffee, they talk. Not loudly though. They go over, both order, then both wait for their order. After the first gets their order, they wait for the second one's order. Then they go back chatting. This took longer than them going separately, because person #1 had to wait not only for their own coffee but also for person #2's coffee, while person number two had one more person in front of them in the queue. It was also noisier. And it increased the chances that a question in the office went unanswered because although either would have known the answer, neither was there (compared to them going one after another).

Add more people, it gets even worse. The chatting gets louder, because now there are multiple parallel conversations in the group, the combined waiting gets longer, because person #1 has to wait on person #2-#7 while #7 has 6 more people in front of him/her than usual. And the chance that one of them can help with a question is diminished greatly.

So yes, it's absolutely possible that the rise in volume, rise in time spent idle and not working and time lost by others who had to wait for you to come back to get their question answered has finally risen to a level where your boss needs to object.

To see if he has a point, just a thought experiment: If you had 1000 employees and they all went to grab a coffee at the same time and all stay until they all have a coffee, how long do you think that would take? Would any work get done that day?

So yes, it's a thing. You will have to work around that. Maybe you can send one or two people with orders from all 7. For good measure, ask your boss if he/she wants one as well. That should be enough to satisfy everybody.

Upper management always wants to keep a tight grip on everything, and
there isn't a lot of trust.

This is probably the start and end of the problem. Managers like to see their employees working, especially if they are paying for them. If they see lots of people getting coffee then they probably see lots of people not working.

This is a really difficult area because technically the coffee time is wasted work time but in practice it might boost productivity. People don't find it easy to sit at their desk and do cerebral work on command and occasional breaks can be beneficial. So your boss kind of has a point and you kind of have a point. It isn't a straightforward right/wrong. It doesn't help that people like to take breaks even when it doesn't boost their productivity.

The main problem you've got is that the benefit from breaks is intangible and hard to demonstrate while the wasted time is very tangible. i.e. it is hard to justify the breaks, especially if you are talking to someone predisposed not to like them. On this basis I would avoid clashing with management over the topic and try to find some kind of appeasement strategy. Perhaps they are expecting one person to queue for 2-3 coffees? Try to find an informal solution which will appeal to them.

So it felt like a deliberate attempt to limit coworker's interactions
with one another outside the office.

Possible but less likely.