Would the BBC dock Jeremy Clarkson's wages for taking a cigarette break?
Monday, October 22, 2012 at 17:44 Stop me if you've heard this before.
A survey carried out by consumer website Watch My Wallet (no, I've never heard of it either) claims that "more than half of British workers (58 per cent) resent colleagues who smoke and think the time they take for cigarette breaks should be docked from their wages".
This afternoon the Daily Express asked me for a quote so I responded as follows:
"Everyone is entitled to a break. Some choose to have a coffee break, others make personal phone calls. A cigarette break is no different to that.
"Rightly or wrongly many smokers believe that a cigarette break provides useful thinking time and helps them re-focus on their work. That in turn can make them more not less efficient than their non-smoking colleagues.
"People operate at different speeds and the hours we work is not the only factor when judging someone's productivity or their value to a business.
"Would the BBC dock Jeremy Clarkson's wages and argue that he is less productive because he takes the occasional smoking break?"
I'd love to see them try.
Reader Comments (25)
I remember, back in the days when we had a smoking room at work, people used to bring their work in to the smoking room, or hold one-to-one meetings. So people who took cigarette breaks were actually being more productive.
I was once a supervisor in a pub and used to let the staff go for a fag in the early evening before it got busy.
One girl complained that it wasn't fair so I told her she was welcome to take a five minute break when it was quiet.
She did it twice before she got bored.
The only place I've heard of a 'smoke break' was in a holiday job (years ago when I was a student) on a production line and we were told "Don't ask for a smoke break, you're not entitled to one." I've never heard of it since. Maybe I'm showing my age but I know little of it. Is it something recent? I, genuinely, have never heard of it.
Or maybe it's made up. Trying to give the impression that people who smoke in their normal break period are, in fact, having extra breaks? Another fantasy from the antis, eh?
How about these time wasters? http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/how-to-waste-time-at-work-19102012.html
Any place I've ever worked that gave smokers "smoke breaks" also allowed nonsmokers "whatever" breaks. The idea that smokers might be getting something nonsmokers aren't is nonsense.
Wasn’t there a local council somewhere who recently suggested a policy of “discouraging” their employees from “wasting work time” by chatting about their holidays or their social lives or their children etc when they were supposed to be nose-to-the-grindstone working? About a couple of years ago, I think, and quickly denied (although copies of the e-mail were shown on t’Internet).
But perhaps the most surprising thing was the number of commenters who supported the idea on the basis that in this council smokers were obliged to work an extra half an hour each day to make up for “time wasted” on cigarette breaks, so why not other tax-funded “time wasters” too? No doubt most of these supportive commenters would have made an exception for the times when they themselves stopped for a coffee and a chat with their colleagues, either excusing it as “an essential part of normal office life” – just in their own instance, you understand - or by arguing that they worked in the private sector and that therefore such unreasonable rules shouldn't be applied to them.
Sometimes, the naiveté of the British public is simply astounding.
Hello.
I'm a smoker and I was also part of the team that ran the survey.
I actually disagree with Amanda Sandford's comments as much as you do Simon.
My incredulity is not at people taking cigarette breaks, it's at the amount of people who said they resented their colleagues for doing so.
I think the issue is that smoke breaks are far more 'visible' than other types of break. Everyone takes a few minutes throughout the day to check the news, facebook, chat to colleagues, make a drink and so on.
If I didn't have a Facebook account or didn't drink coffee, I'm not sure I'd have the same problem with people doing those things on work time.
I sincerely doubt smokers are less productive than non-smokers just because of the breaks.
In fact, isn't it advised that we take regular breaks from our desk any way?
Cheers,
Sean
So much for Arnott and ASH's claim that they "do not attack smokers".
Sean, I appreciate your comment and I suspect we are largely in agreement, but I question the purpose and motive of the survey. Why is this issue of interest to a website like Watch My Wallet? We see a lot of surveys like this and I distrust them because smokers are an easy target for cheap publicity.
As a non-smoker I doubt that a majority are "silently seething" about colleagues taking smoking breaks, and if they are it is certainly no more annoying than someone spending hours on Facebook or making personal calls. But did you ask those questions or did you simply target cigarette breaks?
The problem with this type of one-sided survey is that it breeds intolerance towards smokers. It promotes a stereotype and encourages the likes of ASH to demand that smokers be further discriminated against.
I would be interested to know how many people you surveyed (I assume it was online), what percentage were smokers or non-smokers, and whether the poll was self-selecting.
Hi Simon,
No we asked simply 'should people who smoke at work be paid less?'
Answers were: Yes, no, stop them taking breaks, force them to make the time up at the end of the day.
It's of interest to us because of the implications smoking has on earnings and productivity, if people are earning the same as their colleagues but are doing less work, it's of interest.
Similarly, if our readers who smoke aren't taking regular breaks because they feel guilty about smoking or are being coerced into working longer hours because they take more 'visible' breaks, that's of interest too.
We had just over 3,500 poll responses, over a two month period.
Sean
Does anyone have examples of organisations which allow breaks only for the purpose of smoking?
In my career I went from typical career ladder, big multinats etc, to contracting in different places every 6 months or so. I have therefore worked for about 12 different companies so far. Not one single time have I heard anyone ever mention anything about smokers having to make time up for smoking breaks. Never. Was this survey done in some Leftie infested council office or something?
My current job is in a very small head office, about 20 people at a stretch. I'm effectively the only smoker here - the other one is out travelling most of the time - and I probably smoke around 10 cigarettes every working day. Again, no-one has ever said anything about making up time or any such nonsense.
This may in part be because I am almost always the first one in and often the last to leave, my normal working week is about 60 hours. I'm also relatively senior within the company. So I guess that most people are unlikely to say anything anyway, but I'd like someone to fucking try though.
The sorts of people who complain about this are small-minded clock-watchers who I suspect turn up on the dot of 9, take half an hour to 'settle down', make a coffee, talk about last night's brain dead television, etc. They are also the first ones out the door at 5.30. And the ones who take excessively long gossiping, tea-drinking, personal grooming, stationery cupboard raiding, weally weally important meeting having, and 'anything else they can think of doing' breaks.
The other thing that people like this will be doing is complaining. They will be complaining about something other than someone having a fag, anything, it doesn't matter what, because they have nothing better to do with their miserable little fucking lives than complain.
So, my conclusion is that anyone who complains about people having cigarette breaks is a wretched little cunt.
Sean - try asking next time whether people who spend time on social networking sites, or too long at the water cooler should be paid less.
Why single us out? I've smoked almost all my life and I resent this sort of unfounded attack which had it been promoted against any other minority group it would be hate crime.
Please try and think. Smokers are people too and we are as good as anyone who doesn't smoke.
Sean, the question you asked and the alternative responses you provided are not sensible. Asking, should smokers get paid less, suggests in the mind of the respondent that it's an accepted fact that smokers take longer breaks; or else that the question refers only to those smokers who are given special smokers' breaks.. Otherwise, why ask the question?
"Stop them taking breaks" suggests in the mind of the respondent, "stop them taking special breaks given only to smokers". Otherwise why include that response option? Everyone has breaks. And, every right minded smoker or non smoker would agree that smokers shouldn't be given special extra breaks.
The sensible question would be, "All else being equal, should people who are allowed longer breaks be paid less?" To which the answer is clearly yes. But it wouldn't have got in the Daily Express.
@humph I see that you still found time from your super important job read an article about a pretty mild survey and to call people who disagree with you 'cunts'.
Perhaps if you spent more time doing your job instead of smoking, reading inflammatory blogs and composing lengthy responses to said blogs you could leave on tile too?
Sean, from your answer it would appear that your "poll responses" were self-selecting. I have to say, too, that the question appears to have been thrashed out over a drink in the local pub. Sorry, not good enough (but standard practise these days).
Nobody seems to have noticed the fact that if smokers were allowed to light up while at their desks, as always used to be the case, then this "question" would never have arisen. The simple expedient of installing a half-way decent ventilation system would deal with all the hand-wavers. Problem solved.
Sean O'Meara
The solution is simple: allow people to smoke at work
@James Quake - if you think smokers are a legitimate target for unfounded abusive and damaging propaganda such as this, well, C U Next Tuesday, mate.
Just another worthless hack looking to make a name for his pointless site. The survey implies it is looking to maximise the profits of employers by reducing the amount of time wasted by their employees. I'm looking forward to the survey which suggests employers could boost their profit margins by stopping paying for advertising on unoriginal, re-hashed websites. You've attempted to screw a group of people over for the sake of a couple of quid and you know it. It's not the smokers who are the problem, it's greedy, slimy little bastards like you who are the problem.
In 25 years of working, from crappy Macjobs to professional positions, I have never, ever worked anywhere that gave fag breaks or even heard of such a place. Everywhere I have ever worked you had a break in the morning and afternoon and a lunch break. These were breaks everyone had and in this is when smokers had their cigarettes.
Indeed, in my experience the smokers generally had fewer breaks (or at least shorter ones), as while the non-smokers were sloping off to make cups of tea and gossip (and generally not coming back until 5 or 10 minutes after their break had supposedly finished) most of the smokers, once they'd had their cigarettes, didn't have time to make a cup of tea etc so they generally just came back to their desks. What were they going to do - just hang around for 5 minutes it for the Hell of it?
More smoker-hating propaganda.
Back in the day when I was in the workforce and pre smoking ban, it was the norm for smokers to have our smoke brakes in the loo where we could slag off the boss and the system and get it all off our chest and return to desks refreshed and heads down again, this was in addition to official breaks of 15mins morning and afternoon.
Were we happy in our work - No
But we got the bloody work done anyway and we had to pub to go to after 5pm and this was normal for all working desk jockeys.
Nowadays its all dog eat dog, difference being its not only the boss thats biting your ass but your fellow jobsworth or guys like O'Meara feeding off your labour habits to make a slimy buck.
It must be hell out there these days.
No wonder the robots and technology are taking over the diminishing human workforce.
I think that Sean is right in that now, post-ban, people who have a cigarette in their break are simply more visible than people who don’t, and that makes them a very easy “moaning target” for the complainers in any workforce. I suspect that the organisers of the survey (who I appreciate may well not have been Sean himself) were hoping that by linking it to smoking they’d be likely to get a good bit of publicity from it which they might not otherwise have got.
But they’re a bit behind the times on this – as the total lack of cover given to the results of the survey by the MSM illustrates very clearly (had anyone else on here heard even a whisper of it before Simon mentioned it?? No.) Anti-smoking stories are “old news” now, despite the increasingly-desperate attempts of many an anti-smoking organisation to breathe new life into what is essentially a dead-in-the-water issue. People are bored with being nagged at about smoking. Even most non-smokers roll their eyes these days when the latest anti-smoking ad campaign appears cheesily on their TV screens.
Much though I hate to say it, Sean and his team would have got a lot more coverage if they’d linked the story to one of the more fashionable Big Health Threats – booze.
@James Quake
'I see that you still found time'
I can always find time for the important things in life
from your super important job'
I don't believe I said that. It's just a job, it's neither important nor unimportant.
'read an article about a pretty mild survey and to call people who disagree with you 'cunts'.
I don't believe I said that. I am talking about a specific group of people who indeed are cunts. Not because they disagree with me - lots of people do that - just because they are petty and small-minded with respect to their co-workers who, let's not forget, have been forced outside by the anti-smokers in the first place to enjoy a legal product.
'Perhaps if you spent more time doing your job instead of smoking, reading inflammatory blogs and composing lengthy responses to said blogs you could leave on tile too?'
Thanks for the advice. Really tempted to follow it so I can leave on 'tile', but on second thoughts, go fuck yourself.
Too many swear words now Simon.