Wednesday 1 November 2017

A Breath of Fresh Air


Do you pity the poor smokers that huddle outside their workplaces puffing away to feed their addiction? I do. What a drag (pun intended) it must be to have to give in to the pull of an addiction that is so bad for one's health when you not only know what it's doing to you but that it also makes you a social pariah, huddling on your own or clustered with a fellow victim or two in some squalid corner. It must be terrible. They're forced out there no matter what the weather ...



However, while I feel sorry for the suckers standing in the street filling their lungs with poison when they should be doing their jobs, it has always occurred to me that there's a couple of things not right about this scenario. For one thing, it's just not fair for nicotine addicts to get time off work to feed their addiction while their colleagues continue to do their jobs. Also, when it's outside government offices that the poor addicts puff, it really irks me that my taxes go towards paying these people to do themselves damage - and doubly so when one takes into account the health costs involved.

But maybe a solution to this problem is on its way. In Japan where smoking rates are amongst the highest in the world, a first blow has been struck by a marketing company to address this imbalance AND help it's workers give up smoking. After complaints from non-smoking employees that their nicotine-addicted colleagues were away from their desks too long, the company decided to give non-smoking employees extra paid leave to compensate. Sounds like a great idea to me! You can read about it here. Let's hope this little ripple in one Japanese workplace becomes a tsunami that sweeps across the oceans and helps change the rates of smoking around the world. In the meantime, maybe here's another solution that will at least keep those errant workers at their desks 😜  ...