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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Other staffs endless cigarette breaks. AIBU?

123 replies

ChrisTrepidation · 19/10/2022 07:27

Quite a number of the small staff team where I work are smokers. In fact we probably have more smokers than none smokers. I don't smoke.

The smokers are in the habit of stepping out for a cigarette break on a very regular basis. I worked a shift with smoker staff yesterday and they were going outside for five minute breaks approximately every half hour!

I don't begrudge anybody taking a break but AIBU to be starting to get annoyed at all the extra off the floor time the smokers are gaining? If I took a break every half hour it would be considered very odd but the smokers just get away with it.

I'm considering raising the issue with my line manager. Would I be in the right to do so?

OP posts:
Original poster
ChrisTrepidation · 19/10/2022 07:46

The overall manager isn't a smoker but isn't in the building that often.

OP posts:
MrsTimRiggins · 19/10/2022 07:47

If you’re absolutely sure they aren’t taking a shorter lunch break because of their many mini breaks, I would raise it with management. I’m usually very live and let live but I used to work with a chap like this, he disappeared every 30-45 minutes and would be gone for ages, like 10-20 minutes sometimes!! Plus he used to smoke on site… in one of the wood sheds… so I went to management in the end. He was taking the piss.

Brefugee · 19/10/2022 07:48

i worked at a place where we had to clock in and out at beginning and end of day, and for lunchbreaks. The smokers were taking the piss so the building was rigged so that you had to clock out to leave the building - and magically the smoke breaks were greatly reduced.

Original poster
ChrisTrepidation · 19/10/2022 07:50

@MrsTimRiggins None of the staff get official breaks or lunch breaks where I work.

@Brefugee That would work a treat I bet :)

OP posts:
Livpool · 19/10/2022 07:52

Brefugee · 19/10/2022 07:48

i worked at a place where we had to clock in and out at beginning and end of day, and for lunchbreaks. The smokers were taking the piss so the building was rigged so that you had to clock out to leave the building - and magically the smoke breaks were greatly reduced.

Same in my old job. The smokers all complained and were surprised the rest of us didn't support them!

WetLettuce2 · 19/10/2022 07:55

And when the smokers go out with the crew and dont even light up - because they’re scared of missing something and are just lazy skivers !

Its not fair OP but you won’t be thanked for raising it, not even by Mgment.

rocketfromthecrypt · 19/10/2022 07:56

Abei · 19/10/2022 07:31

It would be petty to raise it with your line managers.

No it isn't. They're taking the piss. If OP decided she was going outside to read a magazine for five minutes every half hour I'm sure they'd take issue with it.

Whiskers4 · 19/10/2022 07:58

Both of my jobs, I'd be sacked for this. I have to be present in room of work, unless I'm desperate for the toilet (even then you have to wait for a quieter moment). One of my bosses is a smoker, he gets 2x20mins break on nine hour shift and has to smoke in that time.

rocketfromthecrypt · 19/10/2022 07:58

Why should smokers get any extra breaks (assuming the breaks aren't then deducted from their lunch break or similar)? Being a smoker isn't a protected characteristic, so why should employers accommodate it if some people are addicts and/or dim enough to smoke?

Original poster
ChrisTrepidation · 19/10/2022 07:59

@rocketfromthecrypt Exactly. I'd be shirking my duties if I did that but it suddenly becomes fine if I've got a cigarette in my hand!

OP posts:
Quincythequince · 19/10/2022 08:02

10 mins an hours.
So 75/80 mins a day smoking.

Then coffee and lunch breaks too??

YANBU

Original poster
ChrisTrepidation · 19/10/2022 08:04

@Quincythequince We don't get any other breaks. They are getting breaks that I don't get at all!

OP posts:
orangeisthenewpuce · 19/10/2022 08:07

I'm amazed they are allowed to do this. Definitely complain.

LumpyandBumps · 19/10/2022 08:07

None of the staff get official breaks or lunch breaks where I work

Do you all work part days? If not why do you not get breaks?

Quincythequince · 19/10/2022 08:07

Why aren’t you getting any breaks?
I didn’t think that was allowed?
Can your line manager not see this happening?

MrsTimRiggins · 19/10/2022 08:08

ChrisTrepidation · 19/10/2022 07:50

@MrsTimRiggins None of the staff get official breaks or lunch breaks where I work.

@Brefugee That would work a treat I bet :)

Okay. Can’t quite picture the set up there but it still stands that I would complain I think. Unless their time sheets reflect their frequent breaks, which I expect they don’t.

Quveas · 19/10/2022 08:09

ChrisTrepidation · 19/10/2022 07:50

@MrsTimRiggins None of the staff get official breaks or lunch breaks where I work.

@Brefugee That would work a treat I bet :)

No breaks at all, not even for lunch? If in the UK that is illegal.

If that is the case, then I would not report it - I would just ensure that I took similar amounts of breaks from work. If your employer doesn't care about it (and they clearly don't or they would have done something about it) and doesn't give proper breaks in the working day either then I wouldn't be about to rat out my colleagues.

Quincythequince · 19/10/2022 08:09

rocketfromthecrypt · 19/10/2022 07:58

Why should smokers get any extra breaks (assuming the breaks aren't then deducted from their lunch break or similar)? Being a smoker isn't a protected characteristic, so why should employers accommodate it if some people are addicts and/or dim enough to smoke?

Smokers who do this, take the piss!

Obviously not al smokers.

Its not on.

Wear a patch during the day, or chew some damn Nicolette if you need your fix that badly.

girlmom21 · 19/10/2022 08:12

Is it causing you any extra work? Are they all going out together?

Are you working part time? That's the only way it makes sense to have no breaks. If you're working less than 6 hours and they can't go without a cigarette you have a problem.

Coffeetree · 19/10/2022 08:12

Yeah I agree. And the problem with trying to take like-for-like breaks is that the OP royally has no interested in interrupting herself so often. I mean, personally I'd never get anything done.

I can't work with smokers. Even when they're present, they're jittering and jiving their way to the next fix and can't focus on a damn thing. They've just handed their lives over to nicotine.

nannybeach · 19/10/2022 08:16

I had this in every single job,in a nursing home and hospitals, my last post smoking on site, Theoretically banned,(you should have seen the patients outside wheeling their IV stands,so staff would go right down the drive. Never smoked,not did our matrons (nursing home) I did complain because in winter/bad weather it was in the staff room. At this point regulations already stated non smokers had to have their own space. I started having my meal/drink breaks in the patients dining room. At one point I got so sick of the hourly disappearing,I said I am going to save up all this time,and go off home for a "sexbreak"(I worked nights)

blackheartsgirl · 19/10/2022 08:16

Every time they go outside for a smoke, stop what you’re doing and either join them or sit at your desk and do nothing.

I had this at a previous job and the final straw was when one of us was given a warning for being five minutes late from a break when all the smokers were having an extra five minutes at thier end of their break, plus all the breaks in between.

it caused uproar.

new rules were put in, wasn’t popular with the smokers but hey ho. Lazy gits

LookItsMeAgain · 19/10/2022 08:16

You need to be the one to raise this through management - right up to the top and your company/business should be promoting a healthy workforce and offering staff company sponsored 'give up smoking' schemes.
If you're not allowed to leave the floor unattended, as soon as the smokers return (stinking of smoke I'd imagine), you leave straight away and go for a coffee/tea/soft drink/water and take the same amount of time as they did.

Make it a management problem that they have to resolve.

I got pulled up on the fact that I used to leave the office to go get a coffee (not from our canteen but from a coffee shop around the corner, literally in the same block of buildings as the office I was working in). When I pointed out that my colleagues were going out on a regular basis for a smoke and they weren't being pulled up on their 'lack of attendance in the office', plus the fact was I only had one coffee a day and they were in and out like they were doing the Hokey Cokey, management realised that they couldn't do anything about my one coffee issue unless they were going to tackle the wider smokers issue and they did tackle the smokers issue. They rolled out a health plan where staff could get discounted nicotine patches and sprays and what have you in order to give up smoking. The number of smokers vs non-smokers changed significantly as a result. We now have significantly fewer smokers to non-smokers.
All because of one coffee a day! At least I like to think so 😁

Fatkittylittleballoffur · 19/10/2022 08:16

This used to be a real problem when I worked in retail in the nineties and noughties.

Especially as depending on your hours the only break you were legally entitled to was your lunch hour. The manager used to give fifteen minutes morning and afternoon at non busy times, but at busy times they vanished.
Unless you were a smoker. They still got the breaks, got themselves a coffee and had the full fifteen minutes instead of the intended 'quick step out'.

I don't know the answer op, as a non smoking teen I never had the confidence to address it. Now I'd probably just insist tbh but years of unreasonable demands by bosses, including trying to dictate I wear make up and hair in the way they like even though not health and safety or in my contract, being made to dress more formally than male employees etc have made me a bit more vocal. I just tend to be a bit blaze as I know not many people can or are willing to do my job so I've wiggle room.
It's totally unfair though and always has been!

Oysterbabe · 19/10/2022 08:16

It's surprising that's there's such a high proportion of smokers. I can't think of a single person at work who smokes. I thought it was a habit which is dying out.