AAAARRRRGGG!He said: "The cigarette break, just like the coffee break, has been part of office culture for more than a century and many employers and employees alike take them for granted. However, when you actually look at the amount of working hours wasted as staff make their way outside to smoking areas several times a day, it shows just how much they can effect productivity."The most prolific smokers we polled were found to waste around five hours per week on cigarette breaks, which is longer than taking every Friday afternoon off. Add that up throughout a typical employment year and this equates to five weeks or more than a full working month off, which is staggering."Another problem the breaks cause is the resentment which can often be harboured by non-smokers who feel they are doing more work than their smoker colleagues, which is never good for team spirit or morale."
The hardest part of reading this is knowing that it feeds prejudice and adds insult to injury for no good reason.
People who smoke have taken breaks when working very true but I have worked forever it seems and IMO people who don't smoke waste as much if not more time than smokers do.
This shows how much time the average worker wastes every single day doing things that are oddly somehow not smoke break related.
That little gem about smoker's being lazy can probably be attributed to an ASH press release here (Linked to a doc stoc because I truly desire to give ASH as little press as possible.)
The best part of this was for me Pat Nurse's comment and I'm going to quote a bit from it.
"I'd also ask those vapers who see it the same way as we do to spread the message to those who haven't quite got it yet that smokers are every bit as good as vapers who too frequently look down their nose at us.
We stand together united or we fall separately. They will be coming for vapers once they've finished with us but the divide and rule tactics suit them for now."
Pat is right. Divide and conquer is the way of the anti. If we never come together cigarette smoker,snusser,pipe smoker,e cigarette smoker,cigar smoker then we will never stand a chance and all will be lost.
Thank you. It is this kind of tolerance, common sense and compassion I hope for to try and open people's eyes to what is really going on and where it is leading.
ReplyDeleteWe really are all in this together.
Exactly.If more people felt that way then this stupidity would be done with,I truly believe that.
DeleteThe more we stand with each other the quicker this artificial divide between all of us can go away.
I have to say sorry about your comment not showing right away.
I have been flooded by our "friend" the spammer.
""The cigarette break, just like the coffee break, has been part of office culture for more than a century and many employers and employees alike take them for granted. "
ReplyDeleteBetter part of a century? Odd... just ten to twenty years ago in THE REAL WORLD most smokers smoked WHILE they worked. Have centuries been getting shorter while I wasn't looking?
And cigarette breaks were NOT just "taken for granted": they were usually a very important part of gaining acceptance and cooperation with smoking bans to begin with. Smokers were assured that they'd have such and so many breaks, often even explicitly including EXTRA break time, as long as they cooperated with the workplace bans.
Smokers, unfortunately, believed that all they had to do was "cooperate" and take the extra time and enjoy it while smoking outside and all would be well ... sort of like the smokers who figured they'd be fine smoking out on restaurant/pub patios.
Prejudice/ignorance/hatred knows know bounds: **ANY** territory that you give to those who want to gain control over your life is territory you will have to regain in blood and suffering and is territory that will simply be used as a new launching base against you.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"
P.S. Raven, in terms of spamming/hacking problems if you're having them, you might want to check out a brother-blog-in-spirit, the "Watts Up With That" blog where the global warming sceptics are talking about hacking attacks on their community.