Tuesday 28 September 2010

Clock out for coffee.

I used to work in the World of Nine to Five. In that world there were several pompous, arrogant little shits who declared that my occasional smoke-breaks were 'wasting work time' while their half-hour coffee breaks, morning and afternoon, were not. I didn't take those breaks because I couldn't smoke in their coffee room and because the banality of conversation in there drove me nuts.

Instead, we smokers would take staged five-to-ten minute breaks during natural lulls in work throughout the day. The coffee breaks the rest took were equivalent to six to twelve smoke breaks. We didn't often get anywhere near the level of indolence of the non-smokers and we didn't down tools at the designated hour of the break. Yet we were the ones 'wasting time'.

Now it's official. Non-smokers sitting on their voluminous buttocks imbibing caffeine for half an hour are still paid while doing it, but smokers taking a dose of the similar compound 'nicotine' for ten minutes are not. Smokers must clock out to smoke. Caffeine addicts don't have to.

There is bleating about 'the time it takes them to get to the designated smoking area, five miles away' and that is covered here.

What the caffeine junkies don't see is that in Righteous eyes, they are smokers too. Only they don't smoke it, they drink it. In the name of 'productivity' it is a matter of time before they have to clock out for coffee.

They'll also have to clock out to check their Facebook status or to browse RedTube. The IT department will do it for them automatically.

Still despise us? Carry on with that, because we are just the tip of the iceberg.

You're next.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

I just looked at this reported, of all places, in the Daily Mail. The comments are extraordinary. The world is apparently full of little creeps who are convinced that someone is getting something they are not and the sooner it is taken away from "them", the better. Like you I never take coffee breaks at work in the coffee room and for pretty much the same reasons. I am all for people having to clock out for breaks, if my colleagues have to clock off for their 20min(regularly morphs into 45min) coffee breaks I would be quite happy to clock out for my fag breaks. The official 30min lunch break would benefit from the clocking out system too as I never take lunch, just a fag. In the end I would be seen to be doing a longer working day than my non-smoking colleagues. Fine by me.

Rachel said...

It would take some serious effort to NOT think about work on my ciggie breaks, but if I worked for Breckland Council I'd certainly make that effort.

Anonymous said...

Surprised smokers haven't been blamed for the economic downturn.

OK, that'll be no payment alternate weeks for non rubbish collection then.

I agree though, that the procession of half wit comments in the Mail is breathtaking - it appears that the world is full of really stoopid arses utterly intent on making a rods for their own backs.

Please sir, can I go wee-wee?

Frank Davis said...

I'm sure Rose will tell you that there's nicotinic acid, aka niacin, in coffee. Which makes it more or less like liquid smoking.

English Pensioner said...

My erstwhile employer decided that private phone calls from the company phones was costing them too much so they installed a couple of payphones in the foyer. This of course cost them far more in staff costs due to the wasted time going to the phones, waiting in turn, and of course chatting to a colleague who also happened to be there at the same time. But this cost didn't come off of the Building Manager's budget!

Anonymous said...

Liquid smoking Frank?

Coffee
" Niacin is formed during the roasting process, and coffee can contain 10-40mg of niacin per 100 g, depending on the extent of roasting, thus making a significant contribution to average intakes of niacin"
http://www.answers.com/topic/coffee

Basic Chemical Reactions Occurring in the Roasting Process
"The best cup characteristic are produced when the ratio of the degradation of trigonelline to the derivation of Nicotinic Acid remains linear.
The control model of this reaction ratio is a time/temperature/energy relationship. The environment temperature (ET) establishes the pyrolysis region for the desired chemical reactions while the energy value (BTU) and system transfer efficiency (STE) determines the rate of reaction propagation and linearity of Nicotinic Acid derivation to degradation of trigonelline"
http://www.sweetmarias.com/roast.carlstaub.html

trigonelline - another pyridine alkaloid.

CONSIDER NIACIN
"One of the classic vitamin deficiency diseases is pellagra – Niacin (vitamin B3) deficiency. The classic symptoms of this condition are the '3 Ds' – dermatitis, diarrhoea and dementia.
A more extensive list of symptoms might include headaches, sleep disturbance, hallucinations, thought disorder, anxiety and depression"
http://www.foodforthebrain.org/content.asp?id_Content=1638

But then you miss out on the neurotransmitter/immune system gases and the ubiquinone which might be even more important.

Anyone would think I knew what I was talking about ...

Rose

subrosa said...

Mike Parry is banging on about this right this minute on TalkSport. Just can't believe the stupid comments he's making.

Lady Virginia Droit de Seigneur said...

Coffee breaks don't exist in the non-unionised, non-state sector world. People go to the machine and back to their desks. The smokers piss off outside for 10 mins at a time - they also drink coffee.

I don't care whether people smoke or not nor would I make them clock out. Just give the non-smokers an extra days holiday a year.

Anonymous said...

Its non-smokers that now abuse the system, I get a 30m break and since our smoking room has been taken away by the diktats of trendy wankers in Governemnt all smokers have to leave the bulding clocking in and out and grab a take-away tea and have 2 or 3 fags on a bench across the road.

The non-smokers, (or those of us smokers who can go 8 or 12 hours without a puff), can wander into the canteen and take as long as they want (and they fucking do).

So rather a non starter for all our righteous, clean living caffine addled colleagues - acyually the caffine might explain so many management decisions after their 45 minute grande-latte enemas...

Anonymous said...

Caffeine? Really? Sure?

Performance - Enhancing Foods and Drugs
"In 1941 Hitler Youth handbook declared that for young people at least, caffeine was a poison in every form and in every strength.

(Fritz Lickint declared coffee a carcinogen but Hermann Druckey challenged the idea, pointing out that Lickint's coffee beans had been roasted at artificially high temperature, producing tars and carbonized chemicals that would not normally occur in the routine process of coffee making.)"
- Nazi War on Cancer

Sound familiar?

I prefer not to rely on the views of rabid prohibitionists from the early part of last century as to which element of a substance is most important to a group of people they thoroughly disapprove of.

Rose

Anonymous said...

I suggest that every smoker that has to clock out time their non-smoking colleagues every time they leave their desk to go to the toilet, get a coffee or anything else they leave their station for.

Do this for about a fortnight then take the results to the management and say in the name of equality & fairness non-smokers leaving their work stations for such and such a time should also be subjected too clocking out. I can just about hear the screams of 'but you can't do that to us, we don't smoke. Sweet justice this would be.

Tit for tat, the only way to stop all this is for non-smokers to get the same treatment as smokers in the workplace, perhaps then they'll see just where their hatred has led.

The Daily Mail comments are vile, Victor's took the biscuit, he said he could smell smokers when they go for interviews and he'd never employ one.

I left a couple of comments in the hope one got published, true to form they wasn't. The media have become nothing but off-shoots of medical journals & comics now. Serious investigative journalism no longer exists, if it did this spiteful would never have got this far. Perhaps all the churnos are non-smokers.

Gordon the Fence Post Tortoise said...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hampshire/8231234.stm

Chained to their desks... overworked and underpaid , ohh... the cuts... strike brothers!

Anonymous said...

@anon 00.53 - similar suggestion to Victor's made by Martin Dockrell on BBC radio (interview on Taking Liberties)- we know where this is going...

yet they can't see the parallels with Nazi Germany.

Jay

Willy said...

Can you imagine how it must pain the righteous when they walk past a group of smokers, standing outside or sitting on the fire escape steps, in relaxed conversation with each other, exchanging jokes and laughing easily?

It kills them, so they have to think up new ways of twisting the knife into this happy friendly group.

I almost feel sorry for the vicious little weasels.

opinions powered by SendLove.to