Posted on 01/28/2005 11:08:33 AM PST by Eurotwit
Employers have recently tried every carrot they can think of — including cash incentives and iPods — to persuade employees to quit smoking. Now some are trying the stick.
Pointing to rising health costs and the oversized proportion of insurance claims attributed to smokers, some employers in California and around the country are refusing to hire applicants who smoke and, sometimes, firing employees who refuse to quit.
"Employers are realizing the majority of health costs are spent on a small minority of workers," says Bill Whitmer, chief executive of the Health Enhancement Research Organization, an employer and healthcare coalition in Birmingham, Ala.
(Excerpt) Read more at story.news.yahoo.com ...
WHAT THE HELL?? What about those who never took up the modern pestilence of smoking to begin with? You just need to tell them smoking is banned from any corporate property and if they can't live with that they can find themselves other employment. Is there anything more revolting than asking your customers to wade through a toxic cloud of putrid smoke to gain entry to your place of business because of a worker's habit? Yuck. One of the draw backs of jury duty if wading through this foul thing. And they always line the damned entries.
How does smoking get such special treatment? Lazy employees always off on a smoking break while non-smokers cover their tasks. And let's not forget about cleaning bills, incidental burns and other smoker-related problems. They're a menace, a nuisance and costly.
Or posting at freerepublic, or calling their hubby, or thinking about the superbowl, or sending a text message or... and so on and so forth.
The thing is... You are not allowed to have a cigarette when you get home. I think that is primarily what riles some people.
There's a well entrenched contingent of Freepers who would be more than happy to revoke child labor laws, and reinstitute 6 day, 16 hr per work weeks.
And send all the smokers off to re-education camps, it sometimes seems.
There are plenty of other people who are gaffing off instead of doing their work...smokers that do that are just more visible. Add that to what is becoming a socially unacceptable habit, and you've got yourself a target.
Well, maybe your company ought to have a strictly enforced, designated smoking area. Smoke-free work places are great, but if you're going to move smokers outside, you can't complain when that's where they do their smoking.
Let's not forget that smoking doesn't automatically equal laziness. There are plenty of folks in any organization who aren't pulling their weight. And not all smokers do so. I guess you've never seen someone surfing the net or wandering around the cubes harrassing their co-workers with irrelevant gossip when they're supposed to be working.
If you're really for banning smoking altogether, just say so instead of saying stuff that isn't any prettier than the habit you so clearly despise..
Are you all assembly line workers?
Not that there is anything wrong with that.
Gee whiz.. Well how about old people? Oh, that's right, I can't discriminate based on age. Well if you have ever had a chronic illness, cancer, diabetes, or any major surgeory guess what? You fired. I only want young healthy, thin, and come to think of it GOOD LOOKING people at my job. Ugly, fat, sick, and those that may become pregnant NEED NOT APPLY!
Let me spell out the difference for ya...
We ALL came into this world the same way, cause our Mom's "couldn't keep their knees together" as you so elegantly put it. /sarcasm
However NONE of us, as in ZERO, came into this world with a filthy cigarette in our mouths!
Nope, do my business on the computer. Closed the store retired, and laid off 12 employees when the city said I could't smoke in my own building and office.
Me neither. Fire all unmarried women that get pregnant. Hmmm.. Come to think of it fire all unmarried women with kids since they have already demonstrated that they can't they can't be trusted not to get pregnant.
Do they really? A break in the morning, a break for lunch, a break in the afternoon, and then, if they're going to work late, a break around five? Doesn't sound excessive to me. If you're not taking one, you need to get up once in a while, move around. All that sitting is making you into an envious, self-righteous prig.
I really don't see why I can't know what my insurance policy is costing the company. How else can I evaluate the competitveness of my pay? Which reminds me of a Dilbert: In a meeting, Dilbert is asking "You say that the pay here is 'competitive', which means not the highest. Should we then reduce our productivity to a more 'competitive' level?"
Nannyism has always been too soft of a description for what this is. What this is is brownshirt tactics.
This is all just another phase in the turd-worldization of America. By that I mean socializm, of course. And many who otherwise hate socializm get sucked into this one because they don't like smoking.
This is all just another phase in the turd-worldization of America. By that I mean socializm, of course. And many who otherwise hate socializm get sucked into this one because they don't like smoking.
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