Coffee and cigarettes were essential to the founding of the art of programming.
Posted on 02/22/2013 8:25:37 PM PST by FreedomStar3028
So I go in for an interview, everything is going good. It was for an IT help desk in an office. The interviewer asks me a lot of questions, and asks do you smoke? I said yes. She immediately says, I can't give you the job then.
This is in Oregon. I looked up laws and there is a statute where companies cannot use smoking as a consideration when hiring, they can only ban smoking at work. Any advice would be great. Thanks!
Ooops, almost forgot. Long time Lurker, looking to meet some new FRiends.
I’m the one who interviewed you and you are lying. Your smoking wasn’t the reason the interview ended. It was that “I heart Obama” tattoo on your chest that did the trick.
Fecal matter, meet rotating blades.
lie, lie, lie
or someone being told we won’t hire you because you’re black...?!?
or you look too old?
again, i say you can hire who you want, just don’t be a blatant moron about it. otherwise you deserve what you get. maybe that’s how someone learns not to be a moron anymore. sometimes some people can’t figure it out without a brick to the head, not everyone’s a soft touch.
Just wait until the pot heads find out that companies are still going to enforce the drug test policies, whether marijuana is legalized or not. One beer at lunch and you’re gone, one toke the night before, and you’re gone. There is no difference.
Marijuana is said to be 9 times as carcinogenic as tobacco, with the adde effects of increased ADD, short term memory loss and paranoia. I don’t think that tobacco is nearly as bad. Companies have the right to set their own drug and health policies.
all i know is that guy’s right hand holds something other than a cigarette when he’s in front of a keyboard....
They might not lose days, but I have seen offices where folks huddle around the trash can outside the back door for five or ten minutes every hour and a half.
I wouldn’t ask the question though. It is rare enough these days that you could smell it on the clothes.
Unless you believe smokers should be protected by Americans With Disabilities Act, an employer can deny you a job for being a smoker.
In a perfect libertarian world a company should have the right to hire or fire anyone they want for any reason they want. They should also have the right to choose their customers and to refuse service to anyone for any reason.
We have become so used to the government dictating who we can hire and who we can fire and who we can sell to and who we can buy from that we have lost all of our sense of Liberty.
You should applaud the company for having principles and refusing to hire you because they don’t like your looks, the color of your shirt or the smell you emit when you walk into a room of non-smokers.
Instead you apparently are looking for advice on how you can sue them for discrimination.
As an attorney I would advise you to look for work elsewhere.
As a liberty loving conservative I would advise you to send a letter to the company thanking them for having principles even though those principles conflict with your chosen lifestyle. Then tell them that if you are someday able to kick the smoking habit, that you would consider it an honor to come to work for them.
Welcome to FR. I am sorry to hear what happened to you.
If they broke the law go after them. These health Nazis should not be tolerated.
Lesson learned: they don’t deserve the truth. Libtards can’t handle it anyway.
Do not smoke hours before any interview, so they can’t smell it on you.
If you can’t quit smoking cold turkey, then try nicotine patch or e-cigarette. E-cigs will give you the nicotine intake, will not smell, and with time you can lower the nicotine dose until you will be able to quit.
An excellent forum with a lot of good, helpful people about e-cigarettes, and how to go about it is here:
http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/
Good luck.
Note: I am not affiliated with the e-cig forum.
lol. You meant to post that to the other guy
As a current employer, I hire smokers, but vastly prefer non-smokers. The jobs I currently have are outdoor construction jobs, and in that environment, smokers perform about 80% as much work per hour as non-smokers, simply due to the time spent smoking. A non-smoker will always out-perform a smoker. In addition, smokers tire more easily and can not perform manual labor for nearly the length of time non-smokers can.
And, I have never had to tell a non-smoker to police his butts. Some smokers will willingly comply with this request, some will bad-mouth me behind my back, and some have actually physically confronted me on this issue. If I can avoid this in the hiring interview, it is best handled there--smokers can go work somewhere else.
I previous worked in management in an indoor office setting, similar to your IT position. In that environment, smokers only perform 60-70% of the work non-smokers can. In an indoor environment smokers walk to the nearest entrance, socializing with their peers all the way, smoke outdoors, socialize for a few more minutes, and then walk back to their work area. I have timed this for smokers and it takes approximately 20 minutes per hour.
The company recognized this time drag and instituted a policy of not hiring smokers. They did not fire existing employees, but are slowly eliminating smokers by attrition.
I know this is not going to be a popular set of facts with smokers, but they are the facts.
Another issue is that smokers literally stink to non-smokers. A fact that few smokers are willing to recognize. You don't have to be actively smoking to smell bad, the smoke permeates your clothes and hair so that any non-smoker can always identify a smoker from 5-10 feet away, just by smell. Why hire a newcomer who has the potential to create dissention among existing employees?
Health concerns are lower down my list, but are still a valid issue.
You need to get used to the fact that the days of "smokers' rights" are long gone, and you have a habit which puts you squarely in the lower class and makes many question your intellectual capabilities.
My advice is to quit. You will have much better employment possibilities, and will have higher advancement potential.
That may/may not be true re: wasted time outside to smoke.
I have seen a trend of late, sadly, that there is a lot of wasted time in the work place. Be it phone calls, talking, texting or surfing the internet. I read an article recently that said if Facebook wasn’t allowed on the job, folks wouldn’t take the job. Go figure.
I will say that the cauldron of different perfumes and after shave that usually exists in an office environment is equally disgusting as those stinky smokers.
Saying that smokers are in a “low class” and intellectually deficient is certainly an overstatement.
If they broke the law, then the law is an ass.
If they broke the law, then the law is an ass.
Just have to ask, are you a feminist?
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