If the worker is working with figs, he is not allowed to eat grapes belonging to his employer. If he is working with grapes, he is not allowed to eat his employer’s figs. You are only allowed to eat from the produce you are currently working with. Even if the farm, let’s say, has both types of produce, figs and grapes, you are only allowed to eat from what you are currently working with at that moment. But the worker is allowed to hold back from eating until he gets to the better-quality produce and eat from there. Even though you are going to eat much more of the better fruit than you would have of the inferior fruit, you are allowed to wait and have your pick of the better fruit.
Everything we’ve said about the Torah allowing a worker to eat from his employer’s produce applies only while the worker is actually working. But even though we just said that they are only allowed to eat while they are actively working, the Chachamim (Sages) said that mishum hashavat aveidah leba’alim, and not to save me, but to save the money for the employers who are suffering a loss if their workers are eating while they’re working. That means a minute here, a minute there is going to go to the worker putting food in his mouth. The employer would rather that the employee have more time to eat and that the employee use his walking time, when he’s going from one place to another, to eat. So when the worker is going from one row to the next, when he’s finishing harvesting one row of plants or grapes and walking to the next row, or when he’s coming back from the wine press with the next load of grapes, the Chachamim allowed that time as well. During these times, there’s no active labor going on. So on a technical level, the worker is not allowed to eat because he’s not dealing with produce that’s attached to the ground. But the Chachamim said that this is more convenient for everybody. The employer would rather the employee eat during the service, so that when he’s actually working, he’ll focus on work. Therefore, all these in-between times—walking from row to row, walking back from the wine press to get more grapes—become permissible by the Chachamim, and the workers can grab a handful of grapes and eat it on the way back.
The Torah also tells us that we are not allowed to muzzle a donkey while it’s working, or an ox while it’s working. So what we’ll learn from here is that the prohibition against muzzling them is not only when the animal is actually threshing on the floor, where it can visibly see the produce in front of it, but you’re not even allowed to muzzle the animal when it’s carrying food on its back. It can’t see the food anymore, but it’s still not allowed to prevent the animal from eating the food until it has fully unloaded all of it. Until then, you’re not allowed to muzzle the animal. You have to continuously allow it to eat from whatever it’s working with.