Let’s talk about something today that frustrates me… work place smokers…

All right, so I come into work and there are people outside, leaning up against a wall creating their own little smog alert by puffing and coughing up smoke. I leave work for the day and guess what, there are people outside doing the same thing. About once or twice a week I have a personal phone call on my cell phone to make, so I head out the door as not to disturb the other cube monkeys around me and guess what again?… people out there smoking! But you know what bewilders me? It is when I see the same few people out there all the time… regardless of when I go outside, they always seem to be out there taking a ‘smoke break’.

Are you catching my drift yet?

I want to know how much time these smokers are outside increasing my chances of someday actually getting social security benefits. How many cigarettes does the average smoker go through in the course of an eight-hour workday? Let’s just say one while walking in, one during lunch, one before they leave, and one more at some point in the day. So four. That is a rather conservative estimate; do you disagree? If they spend 10 minutes with each cigarette that means 40 minutes a day is spent outside smoking.

Wait! But what about the time cushion around the actual smoking. You can grab a pack of cigarettes and get out of your cube probably pretty quickly, so let’s say only 1.5 minutes of pre-smoking time (getting up, grabbing your cigarettes, walking to the door, getting to the smoker shack out front). But I think where the killer is, is in the return to the cube. You have to get back inside and return to your cube which is probably the same 1.5 minutes repeated in reverse, but then you have to get your mind out of the outside world with the birds you are giving lung disease and back to the computer screen along your coworkers around who just thought you set off a stink bomb. (Side note, don’t you see people crinkle their noses or cough when walking by you on the street… doesn’t that say anything???) Let’s go with an additional 5 minutes. So now we’re up to 18 minutes per smoke break.

18 x 4 = 72 minutes… just over an hour

If a person is paid 45K a year with working 52 weeks a year (paid vacations) let’s break it down to the hour
45,000 per year
865 per week
173 per day
21.63 per hour

Sounds to me like that person just made about 25 dollars by smoking every day! Now let’s do the reverse math
25 per day
125 per week
6500 per year

That’s right, one eighth of the salary! I really hope people don’t spend a full hour smoking outside every single day.

My complaint isn’t really that they are allowed to go on smoke breaks whenever they want as long as they are getting their work done… my complaint is from my own perspective. Here is the question of the hour: What if I spent one hour every day walking through all the cube hallways letting out one long stream of farts? That’s right, fluctuations… toots… poofers? For one thing, depending on what I ate for lunch, I might smell better than the smokers… but really, you get what I’m saying?

There’s really no way to conclude this post other than to say… Here’s what all of us non-smokers should do next time we see our coworkers outside trying to be their own little cloud making machines. Whenever you walk by a smoker, just pass gas… simple as that!

Cheers to fighting fire with fire… well that’s all for now, but come next week you’ll know where to find me, I’ll be the one carrying my trusty 5-pound can of corn and beans!