I am a web developer for 1 year in a company, and i am undergoing a very complex work/life balance situation.
To keep in short terms: i accepted this work, moving from my home town to a bigger city, in order to build my life and everything (i am 26 years old now, i was 25). But my lunch break lasts 2h, and at the very start it was ok, the major sacrifice was travelling for a total of 4h a day. But now that i am here i still not have the time to live my life because of it.
Most of my colleagues go home with their cars, while i don't have a car and neither i have the money to buy one; i come here with a bike because is faster and for sure less expensive then public transportation like bus. My company isn't really in the center of the big city, but in a town smaller than my hometown; it's not hard to reach, 20min with bike, but moving near my company just for this is not an option since i will lose the main factor of living in a bigger city with all its benefits.
So: i want to ask for a lunch break reduction, i need 30min to eat. I think that it last so long in order to keep as long as they can the employers in the company for some right reasons like meetings and assistance. But in this role, especially my position where i rarely speak with my colleagues such is relaxed (like, 15min a day and for things that are not even important) my phyisical presence here is useless, and it cannot happen to have an emergency where i am required at the end of the day; it never happened and it never will since i just don't have that type of responsabilities.
But still, even if i know that there's no need for me to stay that long, and proven that i really need to come home earlier in order to restore some work/life balance to not get crazy (i am 26 y/o), and that i don't want to come home in the middle of the day (especially for the risk of going around without many bicicycle paths, but it's anyway tiresome) i think that this is a very unprofessional thing to ask, since "everybody's the same under the same roof".
So how can i ask a lunch break reduction to my administrator (which is not the boss, but his wife)?
EDIT: I ask to the administrator rather then my boss because she handles all the papers realted to hiring process and so; but she is more hard to convince then my boss. Actually when i was in the traineeship i asked for a reduction of 1h because of the long travel (4h) but when i became an official worker she said "you will be like the others, no matter what".