Many Government employees who smoke take regular smoke breaks while on the clock, often wasting 10 to 15 minutes per work-hour. If an employee wishes to smoke, he/she should be required to take annual leave for the non-work time. The Federal Government should not be paying his/her salary while the employee leaves his duty station to take smoke breaks.
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Rank4024
Idea#5344
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Comments (6)
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I agree. I have to take leave when I want to be out of the office.
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Then again, we shouldn't pay an employee while he/she is taking a bathroom break, right? ;) How about while attending a pointless meeting? ;) I suspect smokers would counter the argument with "If I were allowed to smoke at my desk, I wouldn't have to go outside." The concept of "reasonable accommodation" is at work here, because these workers are addicted to a legally available substance, nicotine, and, unfortunately, their brains cannot function well without regular hits of it. It might be more cost effective to provide them with stop-smoking programs. Their improved health would probably mean fewer sick days and lower Medicare expenses when they retire.
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My position is 1/2 phone related & we are essentially charged for taking insulin, asthma inhaler, stretch, & bathroom breaks. The smokers are as well. Perhaps the same should go for traditional office workers.
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Yes, 10 to 15 minutes each hour is a little excessive, but most smokers I know take about 5 and that is on there way out and in. These people usually don't take 15 minute breaks either, like others that sit in break rooms. Supervisors usually know who the worst offenders are and counsel them. However if you want to take time to go to a stop smoking program they are charged leave or have to do it after work! I know, not much sense there! But these people are allowed the same amount of time for breaks as others, but not more as the 10 to 15 minutes each hour as stated in previous comment.
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We have already had this fight.
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That's not going to save peanuts, it will take more time to manage all that leave (and the paperwork!).
Plus, you have to make the work environment somewhat accomodating. Until we can engineer robots to do all of our work, you have to remember to deal with the human element. If want to be draconian that's fine, but will you attract the best people for the job? Will you have the biggest pool of talent if they know your workplace has no discretion, no accomodation? NO WAY. Look, if Albert Einstien smoked, I'd still hire him for my physics lab and he can take all the breaks he wants.
This isn't our problem. Peole, please realize what this survey is really all about. It's about, what you know from your particular niche in the govt and how perhaps changing or tweaking a way we do business will save time and/or money. People are commenting on all manner of topics they don't know anything about from management issues to budgets, to different branches of the government. Stick to what you do and your branch of government since this is an executive branch exercise and they can't tell congress what to do. Also, if you're not a manager or an expert in a field, consider that you may not have enough of a grasp of the problem to be wasting time here making comments. WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT WHAT YOU DO THAT CAN SAVE US MONEY?
Also, let's keep in mind that we're 14 trillion dollars in debt. Lets talk some real money here. Seriously, if I see one more comment about turning off the lights my head will explode. Is that how you balance your budget at home, really? Really, at 6 cents a kilowatt hour? Really?
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