Getting serious about lunch

When you work in this field long enough, you notice some strange coincidences that tie one thing to another through the years.

I had that experience yesterday.

I once wrote a column about lunch. It was a metaphor about the collector impulse. Some people feel it and understand what we collectors do. Some people don’t feel it and never really have a clue why we do what we do.

I asked how you would explain lunch to aliens who did not know hunger and did not eat as we humans do.

It was one of those odd ideas that popped into my head in the mid 1990s.

I have also mentioned lunchtime experiences at the Crystal Cafe to help illustrate a point or two through the years.

Well, yesterday I had a call from the Mint. What was the topic? You guessed it: lunch.

No it wasn’t an invitation.

It was to let me know that the Mint has discovered that it has been paying employees for lunch when it should not have been. It is a longstanding policy and it will be changed by the Sept. 27 pay period, which is the first for the new fiscal year.

This will allow employees who are used to the arrangement to make alternative schedules and plans for the workdays, which will be a half hour longer.

So here I am writing about lunch – seriously.

Who’d have thought it?

To read more from Dave Harper’s blog go to numismaticnews.net/buzz