Posted on 11/01/2017 8:17:50 AM PDT by Simon Green
Did you ever resent your colleagues for the countless number of times they stepped out for cigarette breaks?
Finally, there is hope that you will be rewarded. A Japanese company is granting non-smoking employees extra six days of paid holidays a year.
The decision at a Tokyo-based marketing firm, Piala Inc, came after someone from a non-smoker staff put a message in its suggestion box complaining that they were working more than their colleagues, who took regular cigarette breaks.
Piala Inc’s chief executive Takao Asuka, a non-smoker, decided to take the suggestion and compensate his employees.
“I hope to encourage employees to quit smoking through incentives rather than penalties or coercion,” Asuka told Kyodo News.
According to a Telegraph report, the firm is based on the 29th floor of an office block and staff say any cigarette break lasts at least 15 minutes.
The non-smokers’ perk, which was introduced in September, has prompted four people to give up smoking and 30 of the company’s 120 employees have availed the additional days off under the new scheme.
But Piala Inc isn’t the only company to regulate in-house smoking as the Japanese government is working to prevent second-hand smoking in the country ahead of the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo.
Kyodo News reported that convenience store chain Lawson Inc introduced an all-day ban on smoking at its offices in June. It was done “with an eye toward lowering the ratio of smokers to its entire workforce by around 10 percentage points in fiscal 2018 from 33 percent in fiscal 2016”.
Japan, which has the reputation of being a smoker’s paradise, has seen strong anti-smoking campaigns in the past. Earlier this year, campaigners called on the government to make restaurants and bars smoke-free in time for the Tokyo Olympics.
Surgery in 2013 for a shredded ascending aorta from an aneurysm caused me to stop smoking at the risk of imminent death. Amazing how my productivity improved upon return to work.
I quit in March of ‘86.
The company I worked for provided me a new Chevy Caprice to drive.
It smelled so good, I couldn’t bring myself to smoke in it, so I quit.
A guy I used to work with in the Navy put in a request for a weeks leave, to compensate for his non smoking. Our Chief approved it, wit the condition he spent his time off outside on the smoke deck. If I recall the leave was never taken.
This is great.
I know some people who basically smoke for a living. They are almost never at their desk. They just hang out in the designated area and smoke all day. Management takes no action.
Japan has a big mystery:
It has the longest life expectancy in the world and very few fat people, but yeah, the market for tobacco there is absolutely huge.
like 30% of all people smoke.
Japan had almost no non smoking areas at all other than theaters, a few areas inside train stations, regular commuting trains and subways, and certain non-smoking cars on the shinkansen.
There was no such thing as smoking and non-smoking areas in side all restaurants.
the first major business to have all non-smoking was Starbucks.
I do understand though that per capita, Greece is the most smoking country on Earth, allegedly.
To this day and probably even in 5 years,compared to America, Japan will remain a Smoker’s Paradise.
GRIN...more proof that SMOKERS SUCK.
I’d like to see this catch on in the USA. I bet the smoking rate would start to drop again. I don’t like going to smoking places anymore. For years after I quit in 01 it didn’t bother me at all but slowly it started irritating me to be in smoky environments until I could no longer do it all. Weird how the body changes over time like that.
I’m glad smokers have places to go to smoke (private clubs) and be comfortable but I’m even more glad non smokers have places to go in AZ to not be around it (public venues). This is about as fair as it can be considering everything.
Wouldn’t it be more cost effective to simply reduce smoke breaks to maybe two a day, and encourage your workers to put on the patch?
Glad you survived- that is a fatal event more often than not, I’ve heard.
I understand the sentiment.
Marine Corps boot camp early 1970. When the platoon did something well we got down time to smoke as a reward. One brave soul approached the DI and asked what the non-smokers were getting from good performance. The DI sent him back to gather the non-smokers to get a consensus, within reason, of what we’d like as a reward. Almost to a man, it was extended head call time (more than 2 minutes) to do our business. The DI agreed and after a couple of days this option was so attractive that over half the smokers gave up the habit in favor of taking a leisurely dump.
Cigarette breaks have always been abused and unfair to non-smokers in terms of time and productivity.
“I know some people who basically smoke for a living. They are almost never at their desk. They just hang out in the designated area and smoke all day. Management takes no action.”
Add to that the fact that the co-workers are left at their desks to do the work the slacking smokers aren’t doing.
Sure, there will be wailing and push back. But so what? Smoke on the way in, at lunch and on the way home. Surely they can control their urges to three times per day. Or...go work someplace else.
I was too cheap to keep smoking. I vowed when the price per pack hit $1.00, I would quit. Period. $1.00 per pack was too steep for me in 1980 when the price hit that mark.
Haven't smoked since.
Give them two more weeks for not bringing their iphones to work.
God must have been watching over me. My aorta went while waiting in a doctor’s office.
Make the entire property a smoke free zone.
On the road quite a bit, I think I lit em and burned em while driving with the window cracked a bit. I went from red Winstons to gold Winstons to white Winston (packages.) The last choice featured perforations so I was drawing more air than smoke...
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