Is not hiring smokers the big thing now?

[Axxon]

Originally Posted by RomaGoth

Agree with this. If an employer is expected to pay a portion of an employee's health insurance premium, the employer should have the right to hire/not hire an employee who will invariably cost them more to employ, whether it be higher health costs or less productivity due to smoke breaks, doctor visits, etc...

Another argument for the public option then. At the very least untie employment and insurance period. Either it's an optional thing and the government stays out of it period or it's mandatory and they administrate it properly without getting the employer involved. It clearly can't be important if the government feels that shuffling off the responsibility to a party not involved at all in the transaction ( between man and doctor is not the natural position for an employer to be )is the way to go.

[Axxon]

Originally Posted by Kodos

The jury is still out on that. C'mon, Science!!! Or vampires...

What sucks is that's usually my answer in scenarios like these but here I try and make a pithy comment and I'm countered by my own reply.

[Kodos]

The foot is on the other hand now!

[DataKing]

Originally Posted by Kodos

The foot is on the other hand now!

You're getting your human appendages mixed up again, oh-multiple-tentacled-one.

[DanGarion]

Originally Posted by Axxon

Really? I thought for sure we were all 100% going to die.

You know what I meant.

[Schmidty]

Originally Posted by Lathum

Even if a smoker takes 4 ten minute smoke breaks a day that is forty minutes lost production.

That bothers the fuck out of me. It's even more annoying when a supervisor is a smoker, because they tend to make it ok for every other smoker to basically take part of the day off because of an addiction. It's bullshit.

[k0ruptr]

Originally Posted by Schmidty

That bothers the fuck out of me. It's even more annoying when a supervisor is a smoker, because they tend to make it ok for every other smoker to basically take part of the day off because of an addiction. It's bullshit.

I guess it's different some places , but I was under the impression that companies only allow a certain number of breaks a day. most places I thought was a 15 after every 2 hours, and everyone had to take it, smoker or not, and a half hour (lunch) every 4 hours. Thats the state law here in Hawaii. So that being the case, If your smoking on your mandatory breaks, I don't see how your losing production.

[sabotai]

Originally Posted by k0ruptr

I guess it's different some places , but I was under the impression that companies only allow a certain number of breaks a day. most places I thought was a 15 after every 2 hours, and everyone had to take it, smoker or not, and a half hour (lunch) every 4 hours. Thats the state law here in Hawaii. So that being the case, If your smoking on your mandatory breaks, I don't see how your losing production.

Every job I've had has been that way. Most of my jobs didn't make you take the break, but some did. But it's only been for my full-time jobs and my job in college. No part time job (other than the college one) had these rules. And I've never had a job where smokers were allowed to go on smoke breaks on top of the normal breaks.

[Suburban Rhythm]

My immediate supervisor (team of 15, including us, I'd be considered 2nd in charge) is a smoker. Her counterpart is a smoker. And the mgr they report into is a smoker.

Difference is, she comes in the same time I do, about 7:30. The counterpart rolls in around 9. The manager 10.

She takes probably 3-4 smoke breaks a day. The counterpart probably 6-8, the manager around 10...when he's not chewing in his office.

So comparatively speaking, what she does isn't all that bad. She makes up her time, eating lunch at her desk while working etc.

I will say, I would love to work at a place doing things like this, because it shows me they don't give a fuck about how certain groups feel. My company I would imagine is typical for corporate America-- they are always worried about the 1-2 idiots rather then the other 80 people showing up and doing their jobs. I'd like to see my company get rid of the dead weight, slackers, and incompetent people before getting rid of smokers.

[Drake]

The #1 thing this thread has convinced me of is that that I'm so glad I no longer work a job where I punch the clock or fill out a timesheet. Smoker or not, the whole hour management thing would drive me insane, as would having a set time when I had to show up for work in the morning. My job is almost entirely project based these days, which means that as long as I meet my deadlines, no one gripes about when I come in, when I leave, how many breaks I take, how long my lunch hour is or whether or not I even bother to show up at all vs. deciding to telecommute. Hell, I can spend the whole day surfing the web and call it "thinking about the project" and no one will say a word as long as I meet my target dates.

I really do have a good job when I think about what it could be like. I should pick up donuts for my boss in the morning.

[Lathum]

Originally Posted by Drake

The #1 thing this thread has convinced me of is that that I'm so glad I no longer work a job where I punch the clock or fill out a timesheet. Smoker or not, the whole hour management thing would drive me insane, as would having a set time when I had to show up for work in the morning. My job is almost entirely project based these days, which means that as long as I meet my deadlines, no one gripes about when I come in, when I leave, how many breaks I take, how long my lunch hour is or whether or not I even bother to show up at all vs. deciding to telecommute. Hell, I can spend the whole day surfing the web and call it "thinking about the project" and no one will say a word as long as I meet my target dates.

I really do have a good job when I think about what it could be like. I should pick up donuts for my boss in the morning.

Question for you.

Lets say you were a smoker, and for arguments sake you take 6 ten hour smoke breaks a day. Thats 5 hours a week. Over the course of a year that is about 250 hours of work lost do to smoke breaks. That equates to roughly a month and a half of work. How many more projects could you do in that month in a half?

[cartman]

Originally Posted by Lathum

Question for you.

Lets say you were a smoker, and for arguments sake you take 6 ten hour smoke breaks a day. Thats 5 hours a week. Over the course of a year that is about 250 hours of work lost do to smoke breaks. That equates to roughly a month and a half of work. How many more projects could you do in that month in a half?

Speaking for myself, I could come up with at least 10 items to challenge the Guy Fieri stuff on the menu.

[DataKing]

Speaking as someone who has worked in a project-focused job similar to what Drake described and an ex-smoker (been nearly 3 years now), I can honestly say that my smoke-breaks were not lost productivity. Alot of that time was spent thinking through the projects/problems I was working through at the time. In some cases it actually worked out to my benefit...getting away from my desk would help me to approach a problem with fresh eyes and from a different point of view.

That said, I can definitely see the loss of productivity being a problem in more of a labor-intensive job, where if you're not where you need to be there's work that isn't getting done.

And of course, I don't miss it for a second...nasty habit.

[Autumn]

Originally Posted by Lathum

dola- I agree with not hiring overweight people as well, but that is a much more slippery slope.

I think a better compromise for that would be charge them a higher premium and charge fit people a lower premium. Why should it be the same when odds dictate the healthier person will have less medical problems.

I don't think the compromise necessarily works either, though. If you're going to charge obese people more, might as well charge people with a family history of heart disease more. And then people with genes predicting breast cancer more. I like the idea of putting in financial incentives for people to be healthy but it can be very difficult to implement, and we have to be very sure that we're sticking to careful science about what health means.

[Drake]

Originally Posted by Lathum

Question for you.

Lets say you were a smoker, and for arguments sake you take 6 ten hour smoke breaks a day. Thats 5 hours a week. Over the course of a year that is about 250 hours of work lost do to smoke breaks. That equates to roughly a month and a half of work. How many more projects could you do in that month in a half?

I'm a programmer. When I'm smoking/when I somked, I *am* working. It's called changing your physical environment so you can rethink the problem.

And I can also tell you that the fact I worked through lunch 95% of the time and frequently worked at home when I was technically "off" because the solution to whatever problem I was dealing with hit me out of the blue more than made up for my smoke breaks.

I fully recognize that I work in a different sort of industry than most people, though. If I did factory work or customer service, I would have expected my non-smoking co-workers to get pissed.

Edit: Or I could have just quoted DataKing's post and said "Ditto"