Coffee Breaks

In 1952, the term "coffee break" was coined by a Pan-American Coffee Bureau ad campaign that read, "Give yourself a Coffee-Break -- and Get What Coffee Gives to You."

Many people take a coffee break while at work, believing that this will ease their stress. Research has been conflicting on the effects of caffeine. Some studies suggest that it can worsen anxiety and trigger stress, while others show it boosts confidence and alertness.

Recently, however, a study was done by psychologists Lindsay St Claire and Peter Rogers of Bristol University in the United Kingdom. This study suggests that taking coffee breaks while working may actually deter employees' ability to do their jobs. It also found that it undermines teamwork instead of boosting it.

So this raises the question: do the classic American coffee breaks hurt more than help?

The study found that caffeine is particularly unhelpful to men and can disrupt their emotions and hamper their ability to perform certain tasks.

This latest report, released by the UK's Economic and Social Research Council, also suggests that caffeine makes people less co-operative when working in teams.

This research found that coffee or tea breaks might be detrimental in business situations, especially with the men. Coffee and/or tea breaks actually might make things more stressful instead of less stressful.

The researchers began their work after they heard a story during a stress workshop. A man described how he and a group of co-workers went on a business trip to the United States.

In the United Kingdom, coffee isn't readily available in the workplace. However, in the United States, coffee was freely available and the team drank indulgently. Soon, they noticed that their stress levels had risen.

They felt that the extra caffeine had disrupted their team cohesiveness and affected their ability to work together.

The team from Bristol University tested caffeine's effects on 32 coffee drinkers. The subjects were told that they would be given one of three drinks. A caffeinated coffee that would enhance their performance, a caffeinated coffee that would make them feel stressed, or decaffeinated coffee.

This, however, wasn't completely true. Half of the drinks contained 200 mg of caffeine and the other half contained none. The subjects were then asked to perform two stressful tasks.

The results of the tasks? Men did significantly worse than women in coping with the caffeine from the coffee. Those that had been told that their coffee contained the performance-enhancing caffeine had higher heart rates and showed more stress, especially during a public speaking task.

The caffeine, however, did not affect the men when it came to mathematical tasks. When the subjects performed a "desert survival task" in teams, taking coffee breaks did reduce stress, especially in men, but drinking coffee seemed to reduce teamwork.

So when it comes to coffee breaks, it may be advisable to lay off a bit if you're about to speak to an important client or head into a team meeting where you know there will be much bickering about the latest project plans.

And while coffee and caffeine have been shown to be extremely beneficial in other areas of your physical health, maybe they should be reserved for before and after work or on the weekends.

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The world's first coffee break probably took place before 1000 A.D. in Abyssinia (today's Ethiopia). Legend has it that a goatherd named Kaldi noticed his goats dancing around on their skinny hind legs. Then he noticed the goats had eaten some red berries. Kaldi tried the berries; he started dancing, too; and so coffee break dancing was born!

From those beginnings the story of coffee is "long and global." Arabians in the 13th century used the roasted, brewed beans to ease menstrual cramps. The first coffee shop opened in 15th-century Constantinople, where the Turks thought the drink was an aphrodisiac. By the mid-1600s, coffee replaced beer as New York City's favorite breakfast drink. In the 1700s in Leipzig, Johann Sebastian Bach wrote a cantata about coffee. And in 1773, the Boston Tea Party made drinking coffee a patriotic duty.

The American ritual of taking a workday break for coffee, however, didn't begin until the early 20th century. The U.S. workplace of the late 19th century was a dreary place, says a historian of industrial relations at Canisius College in Buffalo, N.Y.: "There were frequent wage cuts, there was very little job security, few benefits. Unions for the most part, outside of skilled trades, were virtually non-existent."

But as the century turned matters began to improve. Social reform was in the air. Legislation emerged to create a minimum wage, and workers' compensation. Companies and factories installed in-house lunchrooms, places where workers could get away from the drudgery for a while -- and the coffee break became part of the change.

What remains in dispute, though, is precisely which U.S. company was the birthplace of the coffee break.

But wherever the coffee break originated, Stamberg says, it may not actually have been called a coffee break until 1952. That year, a Pan-American Coffee Bureau ad campaign urged consumers, "Give yourself a Coffee-Break -- and Get What Coffee Gives to You."

Today Americans are hooked on coffee, consuming about 350 million cups of it daily.