Whiney, Complaining Non-Smokers At Japanese Company Granted Extra Vacation Time To Make Up For The Employees Who Take Smoke Breaks

NY Times- Over the summer, employees at a Japanese marketing firm noticed that not all of their colleagues were working the same number of hours.

About one-third of the people at the company, Piala, were smokers and stepped away from their desks during the day for cigarette breaks. Despite the time the smokers were away from work, everyone left the office for the night at the same time.

Nonsmokers at the agency complained about the unfairness to the chief executive, whose response in September has drawn attention in a country where tobacco use remains popular and workers take few days off. Employees at Piala who did not smoke, the company announced, would be rewarded with up to six additional vacation days a year.

“I hope to encourage employees to quit smoking through incentives rather than penalties or coercion,” Takao Asuka, the company’s chief executive, told The Japan Times.

So far, the incentive has had some success. After the offer was announced in September, four employees decided to give up smoking, the company said.

What a bunch of whining, whinging losers. Oh boohoo, Haruto from PR takes 6 cigarette breaks a day, at 15 minutes each, which amounts to an hour and a half that he’s not at his desk. Meanwhile, I’m over here typing away like a good boy, not smoking, and yet we leave at the same time? So unfair!

Guess what dickwad, there’s a simpler solution: take up smoking. You know what smokers hate? Snitches. You know who they love? Other smokers. Instead of complaining about unequal hours because of a common, social habit, why not light one up and catch up in the basement with the other cool kids?

The company’s offices are on the 29th floor, but the smoking area is in the building’s basement, meaning employees are away on breaks for up to 15 minutes at a time.

Dear God, what a bleak picture. Imagine being a cube monkey in Japan, where the only bright spot of your day is when you take the elevator down 30 floors to the basement for a cig? Like a coal miner descending into the black belly of the earth. They don’t even get to go outside. They head to the basement, where they have a special pit dedicated to their purpose. The floor is covered with old newspapers and sometimes a dog fighting ring shares the space with them.

Speaking of vacation days, we–like many “fun” companies–have a policy of “unlimited vacation days.” In other words, don’t take vacation. That’s what that means. Unlimited vacation = if you take time off, you’re abusing a friendly policy. You’re saying “I don’t want to come to work.” When you work for a company that gives you 10 allocated vacation days a year, you use every one of those days and you don’t feel bad about it; you don’t want to be the moron who left any days on the table. I much prefer the old way.