I was traveling for work to another company, and this company’s headquarters is a very large campus. Like many companies now, they have a no smoking policy. But it extends not just in their building but anywhere on their campus. If an employee or a visitor wishes to take a smoke break, they would need to walk or drive their car off the campus, which is at least a quarter mile from the building to be able to light-up.
My colleague at the company said they initiated this policy about 20 years ago, and offer smoking cessation programs paid for by the company to their employees (about 3,000 on site). The company is also self insured for employer provided health insurance and they have seen their claims history on a downward trend over the past several decades.
All new hires are advised of the policy when they are offered employment.
Completely fair. Smoking is not a right, it’s unpleasant for non-smokers (sure, that smoke is definitely going to stay in the little smoker’s area. right) and it drives up the insurance costs for everyone. I wish more companies would go this route.
You want to smoke, toke, snort, or shoot up, my feeling is it should be legal. I just also think you should have the decency to do it in your home instead of making the rest of us ‘enjoy’ the smells associated with your vice.
That’s when you break the rules. It’s one thing to ban smoking indoors or within sniffing distance of an entrance. But banning smoking outdoors over acres of grassy fields and parking lots is just silly and, frankly, unenforceable. Do you think they have smoke narcs roaming the parking lots looking for the odd smoker on his lunch break listening to the radio and getting a few puffs in?
Nope, the policy and associated signage is just another reminder that you’re bad, and you deserve to feel bad, because you participate in a habit that others find offensive. And the flip side is that the employer and non-smoking employees get to feel wholesome and good, and they deserve to feel better than other, lesser people, like you, who, remember, is bad.
Fuck 'em, is what I say. And I’m not even a smoker.
Up until ACA went into effect, insurance rates were bases on the overall (generally self reported) health of the group. Companies, and by extension, employees, saved a lot of money by having workers not be smokers. Part of this decision may be based on trying to get people to quit smoking.
I’d also be willing to bet that non-smokers have less sick days.
A very large company near my store did something similar. I know they owner and head of HR. Quite a while back they limited all smoking on the entire campus to one very small area. They didn’t like giving tours to potential customers and having them walk through piles of cigarette butts and clouds of smoke at each door as they went from one building to the next. A few years later they didn’t just ban smoking on the property, but went a step further and disallowed smoking during your shift. And this wasn’t a half assed ‘no smoking’ thing. Plenty of people tried to leave the property during their break and walk a few blocks away, but they’d still get caught.
As for fair, their justification, in short, was that if you’re on their time, they can tell you you’re not allowed to smoke.
They do offer company paid smoking cessation programs (or at least they did).
Another business (a medical complex) across the street from my store implemented a no smoking on property policy a few years back. What happened was that the street got so covered in cigarette butts and there was a constant stream of nurses standing in the road that the neighbors ended up complaining about it. That one worked out to our advantage. We put out a little smoking area in our parking lot for them to sit at and it gave us an influx of customers.
It wouldn’t surprise me if productivity was also a factor. In many workplaces where smokers are allowed to go outside for a cigarette, they effectively get more break time than their non-smoking co-workers. I’ve even heard of people who started smoking in order to get the extra smoke-breaks.
Many years ago when I was driving for a courier service, one of the regular customers was a facility that produced rocket fuel.
Not only was smoking prohibited anywhere on the grounds, so was anything that could start a fire. This included magnifying lenses and road flares.
Vehicles flying red flags or lights were encountered, all other vehicles were required to pull over and shut off their engines.
When I entered the grounds, security searched the entire truck, forbidden articles were held at the gate and retrieved when leaving.
I do. I call myself that online. I am not a real doctor, medical or otherwise, by the way.
Look, I don’t condone smoking or recommend it. I just accept the reality that some people do it, and will continue to do it despite the health issues it causes. I think prohibiting smoking indoors is a legitimate policy, especially in the workplace (though I think property and business owners should get a say in that, rather than the government mandating it), but banning smoking outdoors just seems like pointless wishful thinking and, like I said, simply an excuse to pat yourself on the back for having “done something” without actually doing anything at all. Excepting, of course, gasoline storage facilities and the like where it can be an immediate danger.
Employers can prohibit smoking indoors and smoke breaks, but they can’t ban lunch, and if a smoker wants to light up on his lunch break or commute, far from any disapproving noses, in my opinion that’s their prerogative. It hurts no one but themselves. And of course there’s the practical matter that no one is enforcing these policies anyway, so smoke em if you got em. Also, smokers don’t need me to tell them that, because they already are.
Campuses that big usually have their own security force. So, in a sense: Yes.
Before I quit smoking, I used to think people were full of shit when they told me they could smell the cigarette smoke some 30 or 40 yards away outside. Now I know they weren’t bull shitting.
It doesn’t bother me personally. And frankly, for most people who complain about outdoor cigarette smoke, I tend to think they need to pull that stick out of their ass. However, people who complain about it who have respiratory issues, I totally sympathize with.
And yes, it does make grounds keeping less of a nightmare.
Uhm… private property? Would you say the same thing if you were at a neighbor’s house for a party? Say they had 3 acres, and were clear about a no smoking policy on their property. You’d say “fuck 'em” and go light up anyway?
Even if you couldn’t smell anything, smokers routinely leave butts (aka, trash) on the ground and the further they are out in “the fields” the greater a fire hazard they are.
But the bottom line is, your property, your rules. Don’t like the rules, don’t go on the property.
If dumb fuck smokers could actually put their butts in the can that is RIGHT THERE, provided for that purpose, this problem would go away. Like dipshits throwing their butts out car windows - use the ashtray, MFer.
I don’t understand it - never could. Is it entitlement? General assholishness? What?
We have a campus-wide no smoking policy. So all the smokers just walk off to the ditch by the street to smoke. And there are still butts in the landscaping along the parking lot.
Where I work, they have a smoke shack between buildings, and also used to let smokers smoke at the corners of the buildings, away from the doors, as long as you put your butts in the containers provided. But I guess this wasn’t good enough, they didn’t want it looking like people were just standing around outside loitering, so they changed the rule to where you either smoke in the smoke shack or in your car. Which to me only made things worse. Rather than having the smokers in a few areas off to the side, now they’re all over the parking lot. I can’t walk to my car without having to walk through billowing clouds of smoke. And of course butts are everywhere, because why put it out in your car when the world is your ashtray?
This is pretty common for most chemical plants, and a lot of other industrial plants. All the plants I’ve worked at have been Class 1, Division 2 locations, at least in part.
We also have a plantwide “no smoking” policy, although there is a teeny-tiny area set aside waaaay back in the plant away from everything for smoking breaks. Out in the elements, with no shelter from the weather. The company does not allow smoking in the parking lots, even in your car, and local ordinances apparently prohibit smoking on the sidewalks outside the company grounds. Some of the smokers tried claiming an area immediately around a mail box was federal ground, and therefore not subject to either company rules or local ordinances; that got slapped down.
I think our corporate HQ – which is not a plant – is “no smoking”, with no isolated, miserable smoking area even.
