Having been in this business over 3 decades, and having worked for both large corporate organizations and medium sized ones, I still have never cracked one mystery about lunch...

Like most techies I am either eating at my desk while working, or indeed like you Andy, reading a book or magazine while I down yet another salad (to keep my doctor happy...)

So here's the mystery... Why is time for Sales and Marketing guys different from those of us in the tech arena? If a techie goes to lunch for "an hour", he/she is back usually within the hour. But if a Sales and Marketing guy (or guys) go to lunch for "an hour", they leave at Noon and return at about 3:00 PM.

Is there some great tear in the fabric of time and space? Do Sales and Marketing guys hunt for their food, cook it, and then devour it? Do their watches stop when they are outside the office?

In all these years the only hint I have at what is really going on comes from a time when I was out picking up the pizza for the tech staff and I happened to notice a gang of our Sales and Marketing guys who had "gone to lunch" - and actually were at the driving range blasting golf balls into the netherworld.

Oh, and thats another mystery I have never resolved... What does playing golf or driving golf balls have to do with successfully selling software? My theory? You line up the clients, slap a few golf balls and hopefully hit a few clients in the head - thereby making the sale easier as the client stands there dazed and confused. I suppose this is just the fabric of mankind: Ug the caveman found a cavewoman by whacking her in the head (apparently), and we have simply carried on that sometimes-successful strategy to this day.