Thrifting, surfing, prayer and more: How 6 Long Islanders add joy to the workday mix

Weekdays at lunchtime, parking lots surrounding Republic Airport in East Farmingdale can resemble drive-in theaters, with vehicles positioned toward the busy skies ahead. Workers on break from their office or worksite are there to watch planes take off and land right over the roofs of their cars, covering them on sunny days in a fleeting noontime shadow as the roar and rumble of engines pass overhead.

Patchogue resident Ken Neubeck, 72, started plane spotting at Republic in 2008, he said, while he was working at a nearby factory. He had begun writing about military aviation, and soon started photographing the planes, eventually including images in his books.

“You need to decompress,” said Neubeck, who now works part time as a reliability engineer in Bohemia and goes out for lunch around Long Island MacArthur Airport in Ronkonkoma. “You know there could be some bad days at the office, and you need to just remove yourself from an environment for at least an hour, and you can kind of hit the reset button.”

Call it a lunchtime lift, a way for Long Islanders to disconnect from the workday for a short respite. Instead of grabbing a meal at their desk or on the back of a work truck, some take the opportunity to volunteer with dogs, to surf, pray, lose themselves in the aisles of a thrift shop (and maybe make some extra money), or get away from it all by imagining just where all those planes are coming from or heading to.

A RITUAL’S BENEFITS

Not to be dismissed as a distraction or procrastination, a restorative lunchtime ritual can be a practice worth preserving. For employers, workers who step away from the desk to eat can be more productive if they rest their bodies and minds, research shows. For employees, it’s a way to refresh, improve the workday and recover from the high stress that accompanies many 21st century jobs. Such a pause can be extra beneficial if done outside the workplace where there is green space, according to research in the nonprofit Harvard Business Review magazine.

Pausing during your work day is helpful because it helps us to connect with ourselves.

- Cicely N. Horsham-Brathwaite, psychologist

“Pausing during your work day is helpful because it helps us to connect with ourselves,” said Cicely N. Horsham-Brathwaite, a psychologist with offices on Long Island and in Manhattan. “Often we can be so focused on doing, doing, doing, and it becomes automatic that we actually tap out of the creativity that lives within each one of us when we sort of act like a machine instead of a person.”

Including movement can help workers to feel joy and bond with others, added Horsham-Brathwaite, who devotes a chapter to the importance of taking lunch breaks in her 2024 book “Self-Care Activities for Women: 101 Practical Ways to Slow Down and Reconnect With Yourself.” Petting a dog, for instance, can release oxytocin in the body, which is a bonding chemical, she says. Exercise, like surfing, can stimulate serotonin, which can boost and stabilize one’s mood, she added.

“Then, there’s a sense of reward that you get when you do something that is of interest and fun that can also help to stimulate all of those chemicals known to be mood enhancers and are important as a part of a balanced life,” Horsham-Brathwaite said.

MIDDAY SURF SESH

No one needs to explain the benefits to Billy Smith, 49, of Ronkonkoma, who owns a construction company. Some office workers might walk, bike or do light exercise outside or near company grounds. When the weather is just right and there’s a swell, Smith sets up his work crews and surfs on his lunch hour (or two). He’s always at the ready with a board and a wetsuit in the back of his truck, he said.

“It can’t just be all work, work, work, work, work, work, pay mortgage, pay mortgage, pay mortgage, [you] wake up one day, you’re 70 years old and your life’s gone by, and all you did was work and pay a mortgage,” Smith said. “So, you know, I believe that it definitely provides me with a life that’s balanced.”

But, he adds, it also helps him in his craft building and remodeling homes on the East End, where he catches waves.

“I’m hyper-focused, and you have to be, to be a good surfer,” he said. “So, I think that helps with what I do.”

‘A MEETING WITH GOD’

An office intermission helps Hamza Khamisa, 29, in his work, he said.

Khamisa, who is Muslim, said he stops sometime between 1 and 1:30 p.m. to pray, either inside the Garden City Park office of the real estate firm he owns or at the Hillside Islamic Center in New Hyde Park. Khamisa said he started buying and selling homes when he was 18, and he’s never known any other way as an adult to spend the middle of the day.

I have a meeting with God at so-and-so time. I can’t cheat somebody and then go on my prayer mat and act like I didn’t do anything wrong. 

 - Hamza Khamisa, real estate firm owner

He said his internal conversation during prayer helps keep him sane. “As salespeople, we have a bad reputation,” he said. “It instills a fear of God, like, OK, you know, I have a meeting with God at so-and-so time. I can’t cheat somebody and then go on my prayer mat and act like I didn’t do anything wrong. I take a lot of pride in that.”

During the 10- to 15-minute prayer, one of five in the course of each day, Khamisa said he not only asks for things — his health, wealth or productivity, for instance — but shares his problems.

“I put out my own fires in my deals, then I help my agents put out fires in their deals,” he said. “I deal with attorneys. I deal with banks, home inspectors, buyers, sellers, other agents. So my job is essentially to just manage the entire deal and like, 10 different people with 10 different personalities. So it’s nice to take a break.”

In the summer, when it’s warm, cleansing his hands, arms and face as part of prayer, he said, is “a good refresher.”

If he’s at the mosque, Khamisa stays to speak to others in the congregation, where he’s a member of the executive committee, he said. If he’s at the office, he and others who also stop to pray, no matter their faith, order lunch and eat, he said.

THERAPEUTIC THRIFTING

Spending time with others during the lunch hour is important for Johanna Villanueva, 45, who works from her Patchogue home as coordinator for a payroll company. She said she began working remotely when the pandemic started, and never went back. “It’s lonely,” said Villanueva, adding that she used to eat with coworkers.

Now three or four days a week on her lunch hour she heads to Angels of Long Island, a Patchogue thrift shop whose mission is to help people in need. Villanueva said she’s gotten to know members of the staff, and looks forward to seeing everyone during her visits. She said she spends on average 35 to 40 minutes browsing the clothing racks for items she can either keep for herself and her teenage daughter or resell online to help make ends meet.

Villanueva describes her thrifting trips as therapeutic but also exciting. “I’m looking for high-end things, and so I have to go through all these things to find my diamonds in the rough,” she said. “And so it’s always like a little bit of a rush.” Once, she said, she found two snowsuits for $3, selling one online for $459.

Patchogue resident George Tyson, 28, a mechanical engineer, also drops into Angels of Long Island during his lunch hour from a nearby office. The excursions, usually for 15 minutes at a time three days a week, are to find things he, his girlfriend and his friends want or need, including video games for his extensive personal collection.

Going there clears his head, he said, helping him “switch off” for a little while and break the monotony.

“I sit at a desk all day just looking at a computer,” Tyson said. “So it’s nice to get up and move around.”

And when he finds a treasure, such as a hard-to-find game for the Nintendo GameCube, it’s a thrill, he said. “I’m in a better mood when I get back to work.”

FURRY INTERLUDE

The calls that come into Melissa Erickson’s family cesspool company, she said, are often accompanied with cries of distress as sewage backs up into basements, bathrooms, washing machines or lawns.

“I get a lot of criers,” said Erickson, 52, who works from her Ronkonkoma home as an office manager for the business. “I have a lot of people who . . . break down on the phone, who have had . . . horrible things happen to them. They bought houses that are falling apart, or their cesspool collapses or [they’re] just in very, a very bad way. And I will spend time on the phone with them trying to get them to calm down.” 

After she’s able to get help on the way, she’ll leave her office and pet a dog (sometimes many), she said.

For two years, Erickson has been volunteering on her lunch hour at Paws of War, a Nesconset-based nonprofit that trains rescues to become service dogs for members of the military and first responders. It doesn’t matter what Erickson’s assignment might be. She could be walking dogs, bathing or feeding them, or simply washing floors. “Sometimes, it’s just being able to sit on the floor in that kennel with whatever dog is there ... just to be able to spend that time, it’s just peaceful,” she said.

She returns to work with a clear head but said she often does not want to go back. The time away from her workspace helps her get in touch with herself, she said.

“The biggest thing for me is I have a better appreciation for what I do and a better respect for what I do,” Erickson said, adding that she ends up having “more respect for people” as well.