the.com/coffee break

The only meeting where nothing gets decided and everyone's fine with that.

means A short pause from work, typically taken to drink coffee (or do anything else that isn't working), that became a normal, even sanctioned, part of the day.

from A 20th-century American coinage, popularized through workplace and advertising usage — notably a mid-1900s coffee-industry ad campaign that promoted the phrase to encourage office coffee drinking. It simply compounds 'coffee' with 'break' (a pause from labor), but its spread owes a lot to marketing rather than organic slang.

origin
1890s wisconsin factory let workers pause for coffee
productivity myth
short breaks actually boost focus afterward, studies confirm
corporate irony
invented to control breaks, not grant freedom
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