i’m at work write now, and as i glance over i see about 150 to 200 bottles of open liquor. but then again i am a bartender.
good for you Otto
[QUOTE=SomeUserName]
Hey leave to poor puppies out of this 
Maybe they are the same person?
That is all kinds of fucked up.
At this point you have to decide if you want to fight it or let it go. Are there other issues at work that you are involved in that they feel they need to give you a warning about but technically can’t so they made up this shitty verbal warning as a way to scare you into dropping the other subject?
This is what happened to me.
In April of last year my boss was let go and I and several others got a new boss. Now I like her quite a bit but she is very anti-smoking. She has five employees, four are smokers.
After several months as our boss she sent out an email that was a reminder that “company policy was that if you smoked and intended to take smoke breaks that your lunch should be reduced by half to make up for the smoke breaks”
I researched and there is no company policy on smoking. The only thing the handbook states is that there is no smoking in the building and only allowed in the outside designated smoking area. There is no other policy and all of the other managers don’t give a squat about their employees going outside every hour or two for a seven minute smoke break. Hell people spend more time gabbing in the halls then I take having a smoke.
I brought the issue to HR who claims they discussed it with management and they were reviewing the smoking policy.
A month later I was dragged into the bosses office for a private meeting to discuss my attendance. By this time it was September and I still had three sick days and four vacation days left. Sure I had called off when I was sick but I still had plenty of time left. They give us 10 paid sick days a year. It was a verbal warning only, I did not receive any paperwork about it and nothing was placed into my employee file. Oh and she reminded me of the smoking policy while I was in her office.
The point was to intimidate me into dropping the smoking policy issue. I have been there over fifteen years and at this point do not want to start any rifts in my employment so I dropped it. I never went back to HR about it nor did HR get back to me as they stated they would.
I still take an hour lunch as the handbook claims I get as a full time salary employee and I still take the same about of smoke breaks as I always have. I feel in a way I won but I now have an attendence warning hanging over my head.
Anyway, is there something else going on? Is there some other issue you are involved in or they think you are involved in? Are there some bad feelings going on between you and another co-worker?
If there is nothing then I would think that someone has it out for you.
[/QUOTE]
If I were you, I definitely wouldn’t push this issue too hard. You are being paid for a half-hour to an hour a day to smoke, by your own admission. At my company, there are two smoke breaks, at 10AM and 3PM and no other breaks allowed. Before, all of the girls in the office that smoked were doing exactly what you do while us non-smokers sat inside and had to take up the slack while they were gone. I don’t blame your boss for trying to prevent this from continuing. Four people not working for at least 30 minutes a day each ends up being 10 hours a week of non-productivity. I hate strict rules but people who take advantage of a situation like yours get these rules put into effect. I think you are taking advantage of your employer and co-workers, if you are required to be doing something all throughout the day and not doing one of those jobs where you are just there until work is given to you throughout the day.
Sorry for the hijack.
I’ll second the gripe from the non-smokers. People taking breaks didn’t matter to me when I had a professional job where I would consistently show up a bit late and no one cared because I got my shit done, but when I had a job punching a clock and we weren’t allowed to sit if we weren’t on break, the smokers pissed me right off. Had I been a bit older (or more intelligent) I would have just asked for smoke breaks and gone and sat on the ground outside with the other smokers.
Jaade and BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed
First of all nobody has to take up slack for me. I am not leaving anyone to do my job when I step out for a smoke break. There are slow days that I take a break every hour or so and then there are busy days in which I may only take two or three.
My office it is very relaxed. My boss has let me and others come in over an hour late, take longer than an hour lunch and leave an hour early for personal issues with out her asking us to make up time so she is not to worried about losing a couple hours here and there. The smoke break policy she was trying to enforce was simply because she is against smoking not the time it takes to puff. If we took seven minutes every two hours to get coffee and a donut she would not care much less notice.
She herself has snuck out in the middle of the day to run to the bank or get gas because she did not want to have to stop after work as she car pools and did not want to impose on her passengers. It was not lunch time either. Just an errand she needed to run and had no problem using company time to do it.
Trust me when I say that a lot of the non-smokers use up at least an hour a day in conversation which I do not engage in. My boss is one of these people. At least a half hour every morning consists of her sitting in her office discussing her life or another employee discussing their life. There are times that I have had a question but it has to wait because they are engaged in conversation that is not work related. My cube is just outside her office so I hear it everyday.
There are also a lot of non-smokers that leave early on Friday up to almost a half day on a regular basis. There are only two departments that has assigned breaks/lunch times which is the helpdesk and operations. The helpdesk is hourly employees that must punch in and out for the start of the work day, lunch, breaks and end of day. Operations is the same but they have smokers that can take a break whenever they want and do not have to punch out.
What pissed me off so much about the “policy” that it was not a policy which is why I posted what I did.
It appeared that the same type of thing was happening to Otto. A policy was enforced that was not the policy. I have no problem with rules and I am a rule follower but the rules should apply to everyone if they are to be exercised as “Company Policy” and not as “Manager Policy”. In fact there was no policy about smoke breaks at all other than where you could and could not smoke. Nothing about manager rules or work load related issues that may conflict with breaks.
I know what is it like to have to only have a certain amount of smoke breaks. I was hourly when I started and only had two a day. When I became salary 14 years ago that did not apply anymore. My boss of 13 of those years who was a non-smoker put no restrictions on the breaks but she made sure you made up every second of time even if you were five minutes late, you had better stay five minutes over at the end of day. Salary employee or not.
There is no limit on the amount of coffee breaks a salary person can take and if while getting said coffee they engage in 15 minute conversation each time with a fellow co-worker about the wallpaper they are picking out there is no issue but my seven minutes taking a smoke is to be judged and my time accounted for.
Sorry to continue the highjack.
[QUOTE=fatgail]
The boss is giving a speech next week entitled: THINGS THAT GO WITHOUT SAYING
[/QUOTE]
I once worked at a large railroad computer center where the systems staff sent around a memo saying
The general reaction of the programming staff was that if we knew about them 2 days in advance, they wouldn’t be emergencies, would they?
[QUOTE=Baldwin]
I was told that it was an “unwritten policy” that I’d never been told about.
[/QUOTE]
To my knowledge, that’s illegal.
-FrL-
[QUOTE=Otto]
I went to my boss this morning. Usually bosses here are about as useful as tits on a boar, but for whatever reason this pissed him off. We went down to HR and he made them write, on the original warning form:
[/QUOTE]
Why did he have them write you didn’t have alcohol in your posession? You did–just not in the building.
-FrL-
[QUOTE=Frylock]
Why did he have them write you didn’t have alcohol in your posession? You did–just not in the building.
-FrL-
[/QUOTE]
Well, then… are they going to write up every employee who has a bottle at home? They have it in their possession, just not in the building.
Speaking as a nonsmoker, I have to support SomeUserName. I’m on salary so no matter how long it takes me to get the job done I’m paid the same amount. (There are some exceptions. I do get paid for working on Saturdays for instance) So if I need to be away from the office for awhile or something, as long as the work is done when needed nobody has any reason to complain.
But Otto do you know who the busybody is who actually got the warning filed in the first place? They deserve a smack down.
[QUOTE=lisacurl]
Well, then… are they going to write up every employee who has a bottle at home? They have it in their possession, just not in the building.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
-FrL-
If it makes you feel better Otto when I worked for a company in Dallas two supervisors pulled 3 employees, including me, into a meeting to tell us that we had said something that was really offensive to someone in the office. However, they would not tell us what we said, only that we had been extremely offensive. We got verbal warnings written down and put in our permanent records for being offensive to someone (we never found out who, though I have my suspicions) but we were never told what we said or the nature of the comments to prevent from doing it again in the future.
They never did say anything to the woman who hung religious and policital material in the mail room though. I guess they thought her flyer about the 15 reasons democrats are going to hell wasn’t offensive enough to mention it to her. Or maybe they did say something but wouldn’t tell her what she was doing that was offensive.
[QUOTE=Frylock]
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
[/QUOTE]
I think there’s some confusion about what is meant by posession. I think that lisacurl is using in a way much like the way you’re using, but extending it to the home. That is, it’s posession if you have it on your person, in your car, or in your home. The way Otto’s boss meant it was on Otto’s person.
[QUOTE=photopat]
Speaking as a nonsmoker, I have to support SomeUserName. I’m on salary so no matter how long it takes me to get the job done I’m paid the same amount. (There are some exceptions. I do get paid for working on Saturdays for instance) So if I need to be away from the office for awhile or something, as long as the work is done when needed nobody has any reason to complain.
But Otto do you know who the busybody is who actually got the warning filed in the first place? They deserve a smack down.
[/QUOTE]
I agree as well. I’ve been a non-smoker for over a year, and this whole bitching about smoke breaks drives me crazy. Twenty years ago, you could smoke at your desk; no need for outside smoke breaks.
Then non-smokers wanted clean indoor air and made smokers go outside to smoke. Now those SAME PEOPLE bitch because smokers are outside and not working. The reason they are outside is because of the new fucking policies you all enacted..
[QUOTE=Redwing]
Most of the places I’ve worked tend to be rather lackadaisical about booze (I had a blender in my drawer, and vodka and tequila in break room freezer). Our company has occasional socialization parties in the office, and they provide the booze for these.
[/QUOTE]
Same here. We even have a work event just before the holidays where we go to a brewery and brew beer for our open house. We have potlucks once a quarter or so and when you sign up for “drinks” it’s expected to be alcoholic.
Hourly. 8am to 4:30pm. 30 minutes unpaid lunch, two 15-minute paid breaks. If I had a dollar for every time this was stressed to me when I said things like, “I don’t have enough time to finish this today; can I come on the weekend?” I could buy you a really good lunch.
8am to 4:30pm. 30 minutes unpaid lunch, two 15-minute paid breaks translates to 8isham to 4:50ishpm. 5 minute unpaid lunch, 25 minute unpaid work; two 5-minute paid breaks.
A couple of months ago a client arrived as my boss and I were walking out of the closed, locked building together. Boss says, “Well, you can do that, can’t you?” I looked back at my boss and said, “8am to 4:30pm. Two 15-minute breaks; one unpaid 1/2 lunch; it’s 4:35 and I have a date with gramma.”
Gonna lose the war but winning the battle was enlightening.
[QUOTE=jtgain]
I agree as well. I’ve been a non-smoker for over a year, and this whole bitching about smoke breaks drives me crazy. Twenty years ago, you could smoke at your desk; no need for outside smoke breaks.
Then non-smokers wanted clean indoor air and made smokers go outside to smoke. Now those SAME PEOPLE bitch because smokers are outside and not working. The reason they are outside is because of the new fucking policies you all enacted..
[/QUOTE]
Preach it brother
Declan
[QUOTE=jtgain]
Then non-smokers wanted clean indoor air and made smokers go outside to smoke. Now those SAME PEOPLE bitch because smokers are outside and not working. The reason they are outside is because of the new fucking policies you all enacted.
[/QUOTE]
No, the reason they are outside is because they are addicted to the drugs in cigarettes, and have to go out to get their fix every hour.
It’s not our fault that they got themself addicted to nicotine.
Just to be clear, before this turns into an us vs them smoking thread, I don’t give a good poop dang wtf you do with your time if you’re a salaried employee or have a professional job. You have work to get done, you do it, and if you take 4 hours a day to smoke or take a dump or pretend to take a dump but actually have a wank it matters not one bit to me (NB: do not wank while I am trying to dump).
However, what really got me pissed was hourly jobs where we were literally not allowed to sit down unless we were on break (15 minutes every 4 hours), and smokers would pop outside every hour or so for 5 minutes. Might not sound like a lot, but an hour’s worth of breaks over an 8 hour period compared to half of that might have made my feet feel a bit less numb at the end of the night.
[QUOTE=BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed]
Just to be clear, before this turns into an us vs them smoking thread,
[/QUOTE]
Sorry – didn’t mean to hijack this thread.
[QUOTE=BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed]
However, what really got me pissed was hourly jobs where we were literally not allowed to sit down unless we were on break (15 minutes every 4 hours), and smokers would pop outside every hour or so for 5 minutes. Might not sound like a lot, but an hour’s worth of breaks over an 8 hour period compared to half of that might have made my feet feel a bit less numb at the end of the night.
[/QUOTE]
That would depend on your work enviroment , vis a vis boss tolerance for it. Where I am now, its an unauthorized break to even leave the assigned work place station and subject to diciplinary action, washroom breaks excepted.
Declan