Scary stuff. More and more people willing to trade liberties for the illusion of security and safety. Unfortunately, smokers are the minority. The thing about it is, once you give them an inch, they will without fail take a mile. I do not dispute any of the adverse effect smoking has on health, that much is evident. Like it or not smoking is legal. End of discussion. If the majority non-smokers are so put off by this behavior then I suggest you lobby your representatives to criminalize tobacco. I suspect it will work about as well as prohibition did, but I could be wrong.
Smoke breaks aren't the cause of loss of productivity, the employee is. If you have a lazy employee deal with them accordingly. I can smoke a cigarette in under 4 minutes. Taking only 5 of these "breaks" a day I "waste" less time than my cubical neighbor who visibly spends 4+ hours a day surfing the web. I often wonder what they use in these studies to determine what the baseline productivity of a worker is. Seems like a load of bunk to me.
Some food for thought for the people who are allergic to cigarette smoke. I dated a girl while in college who was allergic to several different kinds of trees. Needless to say she didn't go outside if she could avoid it. Is she therefore entitled to cut down every tree her and people like her can't be around? Should we ban wireless communications because a small percentage of people are overly-sensitive to the frequencies? It is a bit of an extreme, but it is within the same train of thought. We can talk circles around this issue until doomsday, but in the end no one will be happy.
Last point, if you are so worried about second hand smoke, I suggest you get an analysis of your local air quality. There are bigger fish to fry.
TL;DR Bottom line, I sincerely hope this practice is outlawed, it is blatant discrimination. That's my two cents. I Hope someone enjoyed the read.
Smokers need not apply for a job
Scary stuff. More and more people willing to trade liberties for the illusion of security and safety. Unfortunately, smokers are the minority. The thing about it is, once you give them an inch, they will without fail take a mile. I do not dispute any of the adverse effect smoking has on health, that much is evident. Like it or not smoking is legal. End of discussion. If the majority non-smokers are so put off by this behavior then I suggest you lobby your representatives to criminalize tobacco. I suspect it will work about as well as prohibition did, but I could be wrong.
Smoke breaks aren't the cause of loss of productivity, the employee is. If you have a lazy employee deal with them accordingly. I can smoke a cigarette in under 4 minutes. Taking only 5 of these "breaks" a day I "waste" less time than my cubical neighbor who visibly spends 4+ hours a day surfing the web. I often wonder what they use in these studies to determine what the baseline productivity of a worker is. Seems like a load of bunk to me.
Some food for thought for the people who are allergic to cigarette smoke. I dated a girl while in college who was allergic to several different kinds of trees. Needless to say she didn't go outside if she could avoid it. Is she therefore entitled to cut down every tree her and people like her can't be around? Should we ban wireless communications because a small percentage of people are overly-sensitive to the frequencies? It is a bit of an extreme, but it is within the same train of thought. We can talk circles around this issue until doomsday, but in the end no one will be happy.
Last point, if you are so worried about second hand smoke, I suggest you get an analysis of your local air quality. There are bigger fish to fry.
TL;DR Bottom line, I sincerely hope this practice is outlawed, it is blatant discrimination. That's my two cents. I Hope someone enjoyed the read.