I remember those days too.
Think it has to do with all the smoking breaks smokers have to take. It’s been shown they do have to take more breaks than non-smokers and as you said with more restrictions these smokers now have to go outside to smoke which takes even more time. It makes the non-smoking employees feel like they have to do more work and really they do, they are not outside every 15 minutes puffing on a stick.
You all blame everything but the tobacco companies. I have a friend who smokes and she tells me that before the companies added all this crap to make people so addicted that she remembers her grandpa smoking. He would come home at the end of the day and smoke one or two and that was it. It was not a case of “he had to have it” and “being chained to his box of cigaretts”. She told me they’ve done this on purpose and it’s taken the fun out of it and to kill us.