My SM told me I should start eating lunch at my desk and multitask or power through until the end of the day... I was speechless. Should I just quit now?

hey, listen. if you are employable. Then advise is simply put this. Work what you can, eat when you want (minus client calls) and continue. he will be forced to roll you off. you may get a bad review, but document all email communication. Also let your partner know that he is asking you to do this. trust me those SMs get fired eventually

At my previous client our team wasn’t told to eat lunch at your desk and multitask, but everyone did so I went with the flow for a year and a half.

Having an actual break for lunch is a great way to take a pause from work in the middle of the day.

Does everyone else on your team do what the SM is suggesting?

Man / woman up. Crank through your work as you stuff your face.

Mental health is more important than powering through and impacts physical health. If you nerdd to step away do it....plus it's the law.

Escalate to the MD. Poor leadership and not sustainable. Or just starting charging actuals if you want to get rolled off... 😂😂

I mean.... I’ve been on maybe like one project where I had the time to go out to lunch. Never bothered me. I’d rather power through my work and I am a born multi tasker. But I’ve also never had someone outright ask me to take desk lunches. More like if I did... I’d be the only one and that would be awkward.

Did you ask your SM on why is he asking such? Is it about managing optics with the client during a SOW renewal? Did client have a one off remark/feedback on you that - you might have been spending too much time at lunch? Maybe a contractor who sits next to you complained that you seem to be playing games on the phone? Quitting never helps. You are leaving a company because of one odd instance...

Ask for release or quit and suggest him/her to start eating lunch at desk and multitask to fill up for you once you are gone 😏😏
Or may be suggest him/her to quit also if he/she is not able to multitask while having lunch...lol

Not that it makes a difference, but what does most of the team do?

OP - Those are long “required hours”. Curious, are you charging in actual hours or ghosting?

IMO there’s 2 ways to deal with it.
1) you just don’t listen. Go to lunch whenever you want to
2) be passive aggressive and charge an extra hour for lunch everyday since you’re technically “working”. I’m petty enough to do the latter

Sounds like a joke figure out if he was joking if not, change to a different project.

Could this be a situation where a recent college graduate and new to consulting is being taken advantage of by their manager? In 25 years of consulting I have never seen this.

Totally not acceptable! You need to push back and raise to the MD on the program. Happy to help as well