Firing Smokers

Firing Smokers for Health is Just a Smokescreen ­ The Real Issue is Productivity

By Alan Brody

Now that Scott's Miracle-Go Co. has become the second highly visible company
after Weyco. Inc. to terminate workers who smoke, it might be a good time to
tell the truth about smoking in the workplace.

It just isn't an issue of health; it is an issue of time and disruption.

Committed smokers need to refuel their nicotine receptors about every 20
minutes. That means 3 times an hour they have to leave their desks, hike
down to the back door have a smoke, wave off the odor and head back to the
office.

They could be losing as much as 15 minutes an hour!

Then, there is the whole cat and mouse, deception game. Smokers are fully
aware of their needs and while they know their bosses accept their
occasional smoke break, they don¹t want them to realize just how many they
need. So the game begins: every bathroom break is also a smoke break. No
matter how cold, men never put on coats for the smoke because that would be
a giveaway. Women have learned to love cardigans that can just about keep
them warm outside while staying on at the desk.

And all off them puff a little deeper to help warm their bodies.

So what does this have to do with healthŠŠat least from the company¹s point
of view?

Not that much.

After all, if smokers get sicker or take more sick days than non-smokers,
then any number of health planners can figure that out and charge smokers a
higher premium, or co-pay. If I remember correctly, insurance companies
figured that out a long time ago. I¹ll bet there are a few retired actuaries
kicking around who¹ll be glad to calculate those rates. (Don¹t forget to
give them a break on the pensions, though. They won¹t be around as long to
enjoy Œem!)

The point is that companies are tying to shore up productivity and close the
door on subtly disruptive behavior and they don¹t have the honesty to say
so. So they roll out the ³eat your peas² argument. ³We¹re only doing what¹s
good for you!² And who can argue with that?

Well, I can.

First off, do-gooders, especially in the form of authorities, are never to
be trusted.

Let¹s look at the mother of all feel good tobacco fights, the great
attorneys-general settlement of the 90¹s with the tobacco companies that
generates about $25 billion a year in state taxes. At best, 5% has gone
towards anything remotely concerned with cigarette health issues. The rest
has gone into notorious pork-barrel projects and balancing fiscally
imprudent State¹s budgets.

The smokers, mostly blue collar and young, have footed the bill, of course.
And very little of the smoking phenomenon has entered the realm of honest
conversation.

So let¹s take a moment to consider the reality.

Firstly, no company with an aggressive sales team would do what Scott¹s is
doing because they lose a good percentage of their best performers. But, if
they were honest about it they would understand what smoking is and how to
deal with it. For the most part it is a kind of psychic medication and when
you take it away you need to consider what will replace it. In some cases,
simply encouraging workers to use a nicotine substitute during work hours is
a reasonable choice.

In other cases, you will find that smoking is self medication for long term
depression (one of the reasons that anti-depressants are among the most
effective smoke cessation tools.)

There is a reason that some of the world¹s biggest bastards were non-smokers
(we¹ll take Hitler and Dylan Kleibold, the Columbine killer, as our examples
here, with Hitler¹s veganism being an added bonus). They just weren¹t
medicating themselves. Likewise, some of our most productive leaders were
chain-smokers: people like Roosevelt, Chairman Mao, Golda Meier and
Coca-Cola¹s Goizuetta. Even Humphrey Bogart and Edwin Murrow are famous
examples.

Smoking was always quasi-mystical practice and when the big tobacco
companies discovered that, beginning say, in 1922 when Freud¹s people were
first called in, they and big government spent about 75 years feeding and
supporting that habit. They have to do a lot more than sit by idly while a
couple of two-bit corporate do-gooders try to blow it away with a corporate
memo.

Besides, once the argument is understood it is only a matter of when the
next class of undesirables will be on their way out: how long before
overeaters, loud-talkers, bad body odors, nose pickers and other miscreants
will be off the pay-roll and looking at eBay as a way to make a living?

Companies have a right to expect full participation from their workers. But
workers have a right to be themselves and there ought to be a law that says,
as long as they perform at work like everyone else you can¹t ask about their
smoking, their drinking or their sex lives.

That means smokers have to figure out how to behave like everyone else for 8
hours a days and bosses can stop acting like the saints they are not.

Or as the sign should say: Thank you for not smoking...or preaching.