I find it mildly infuriating that some coworkers think entering a break room gives them license to play loud music over speakers, use obscene language (especially to and about other coworkers), and disrupt the fifteen minutes of peace and quiet some of us crave in the workplace.
I also can’t stand the fact that smokers can take unlimited ‘breaks’ whenever they please just to come back stinking up an entire room with their smoke.
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I’m missing something… what about this photo makes your coworkers terrible?
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oh, uh… Rod did that too? hmm
The post pertains to break room etiquette. The header image is a break room.
Workers taking smoke breaks is fine. Anything that gives workers more breaks is good. You can takethose breaks too. Just tell them its a smoke break. If management says anything, tell them you have just as much need for it as anyone who smokes. Don’t get mad at your fellow workers. Get mad at the employer.
As a former smoker I can relate to both sides. Cigs are pointless crap and I hate them even when I’m smoker myself (I went out of addiction and back several times over years).
Having short breaks for smoke or whatever else is perfectly fine for me, unless everyone do their job. For me personally they’re help, not distraction. If smokers have a special privilege for some reason, it’s super stupid, but that’s on the employee, not smokers.
i used to call them passive smokos
Anything that gives workers more breaks is good.
You’ve got me there; lung cancer and heart disease do make for irrefutable excuses to cut out.
Anyway, my complaint was more about the smell of smoke and how it lingers on clothes and in the air for nonsmokers. It wasn’t mentioned in-post, but I’m constantly hearing wet coughs as well, which is both disruptive to my workflow and is just gross (especially in a post-pandemic work environment where people refuse to even cover their mouths or use sanitizer anymore).
Wow. You’re really sensitive to external stimuli, huh? Even just hearing someone cough disrupts your entire workflow? You know that’s not typical, right?
I also can’t stand the fact that smokers can take unlimited ‘breaks’ whenever they please just to come back stinking up an entire room with their smoke.
That feels like a workplace problem. Why would a workplace give them unlimited breaks? And why would nonsmokers not be allowed comparable breaks? This feels odd to me. My recent jobs have been ones where nobody is micromanaging my time, so anyone can take whatever breaks they want. As long as productivity doesn’t obviously suffer, nobody cares. My past jobs in retail didn’t allow smokers to take extra breaks. They’d get the same breaks as everyone else (for an 8 hour shift, that meant a 30 min lunch and 2 x 15 min coffee breaks).
If you want peace and quiet a workplace generally isn‘t it. Cities and towns in general, I think it drives a lot of us crazy this constant noise and bustle, so little quiet places. I found a corner behind some building in my workplace where rarely anyone ventures to take my break and that‘s the best I could do.
Don’t you have HR-manager/department to deal with such issues? Personally I wouldn’t hesitate to report it if it affected me and I don’t speak about going for some hard consequences. There are plenty of things HR could do in such situations to improve the work place culture. Maybe they’re used to do what they were always doing back in high school days and need to learn that work place isn’t exactly like that?
