What can a break or a pause be about and above all what does it do to social situations? We approach this question by contrasting two very different kinds of breaks. The welcome smoke and coffee breaks are compared to the embarrassing pause or the enforced waiting. Different approaches in cultural analysis and a range of empirical materials are tested in a discussion of what the seemingly unimportant may say about social relations in shifting contexts. Through a historical perspective we follow the formation and changes in breaks organized by the cigarette or the coffee mug. In the analysis of provoked interruptions our starting point is individual narratives. Pauses are experienced very differently and often contain a power dimension that needs to be explored.