Non-smokers do more work than smokers

Non-smokers do more work than smokers.

Anyone who has worked around smoking co-workers knows that the non-smoker does more work than the smoking employee. Regardless of the line of work …usually office workers of some sort for sure, will take what they call justified smoke breaks.

I don’t smoke and I’ve personally seen this happen at very careless and expensive levels.

Summer jobs I’ve had when school is out; A courier company two woman from the dispatch office were taking 10 minute cigarette breaks every 50 to 60 minutes leaving the two non-smoking dispatchers cover their work load while they do this. In their eight-hour shift these two women manage to take breaks that add up to about an hour in cigarette breaks. This is in addition to the lunch break everyone gets. Now multiply that times 5 days a week. The wasted wages equal almost an entire shift. Now multiply that figure by 4.1 weeks, you get nearly the equivalent of an entire paycheck in wasted wages.

A car dealer I worked at, as a summer job is another great example. This place had a three person upper office. Two of them were heavy smokers and best friends. For these two women, the fact that they were on company time meant absolutely nothing to them. They would waste away their shifts by sitting outside the shop on a bench meant for customer use. For these two women, if they worked three hours out of the day …that would be surprising. The only exception to this would be when the owner of the car dealership is on site from the corporate location. In these situations …these women were at their desks the entire time the owner was on site. This is a true indication of employees that can’t be trusted.

In security …I worked with a woman that had absolutely no concept of right and wrong. One of which involved her cigarette breaks. Her job was to sit at the control center and watch the monitors for sixty-four cameras. I was out in the squad doing patrols. Several times during each shift she would call me on the two-way radio because she needed to go back to the shipping dock to smoke a cigarette. Her cigarette breaks lasted between twenty and thirty minutes. She had total disregard for the needs of our client. 

Being that this smoking problem directly affected me, after a week of this …I took action.

I began pointing a security camera at her on the shipping dock …every time she took a cigarette break. These videos are date and time stamped. After accumulating several DVD’s of such footage, I filled out a report for a non-productive officer …then turned the disks and the report in to my boss at the detective agency.

I politely explained my concerns …saying “I don’t want any part of shifts where work isn’t being done. That account is in a bad neighborhood. I can’t afford to be pulled off patrols for most of the shift while she has her nicotine fixes. Our customer is getting screwed. What if something would happen while she has me pulled off my patrols?”

The private detective (my boss), was appreciative in the way I handled it with video evidence to support my written report. He also agreed that this employee was wasted money as well as a liability to the agency. She was fired.

I guess now she has plenty of time to smoke her cigarettes.

When a non-smoker has to pick up the slack for a smoker …there are two different things happening at once. The non-smoker isn’t getting the same amount of break time as a smoker. Also …in many cases the workload of a non-smoker increases to pick up the slack of a smoker.

I know all well and good …there are people reading this article that can relate to what I’m saying.

Many employers are aware of this too. That’s why many businesses that used to say ‘smoking outside only’ are now saying ‘no smoking on company property’. Employers are well aware of smokers being able to do these things. It’s in their best financial interest to get a jump on these issues …so that they don’t lose money on wasted wages.

Reporter Joseph Toth

Washington Micro Bank BBS