Don’t you just hate it when you walk into government office for a very important matter and they tell you sorry, it’s their Breaktime? Sometimes I get so upset whenever this happens, especially when I come from a far place and spend so much traveltime just to get to a government office and they tell me they are closed for lunch or breaktime! Well, I do understand that everybody is entitled to have a breaktime. But, in this country, never, ever walk into a government office the minute the clock strikes 12:00pm because you won’t find a single soul around.  Well, at least not till 1:00pm. Everybody is stricken with the breaktime syndrome. You may, however, be lucky enough to still find someone who isn’t hungry yet in that office, and hasn’t left his or her desk at that moment you stepped in! You must have prayed really hard enough on your way to that government office! I really wouldn’t mind if everyone had that breaktime syndrome, if I was well aware that everytime you step into a government office in this country and you find every employee working on his desk. I’ve entered too many, where you find employees stricken with the breaktime syndrome, sitting around and gossipping while a long line of people wait outside to be attended to. Sometimes they actually don’t realize that breaktime is over! And if ever you want express service, well, there’s either an extra fee for that, or, you would have to attract the attention of one of those gossipping employees and offer some “incentive” to get your stuff done right away. At times it’s just so disappointing to see things happen this way. But what can we do? Just live with it, right? Live with the Breaktime Syndrome! I really, really don’t want to generalize that ALL government offices run this way, though. But at this point I still have to find one that has given the most ordinary Filipino citizen the kind of service that would change my point of view about the entire group, the group that’s stricken with the Breaktime Syndrome!