dagny recently posted a link to a hufpo article about Hertz firing 26 muslims who insisted on praying on company time.

here is my take.

back about 20 years ago NYC banned smoking in public buildings.

this means that for the smokers, they had to take their smoking breaks outside.

In Manhattan that means 10 minutes to leave their posts, take the elevator down, exit the building. 10 minutes to smoke and then another 10 minutes to return to their posts.

So while smokers are accomodated 30 minutes (three times a day) to feed their habit, their non-smoking co-worker are spending 90 minutes a day taking up the slack.

Is this fair? No. It's bullshit.

How is this different from muslims expecting to be accommodated by their non-need-a-fix-o-praying co-workers.

It's not. It's bullshit.

smoke on your dime. pray on your dime.

But you have no right to get your fix on my dime.

People are allowed to take breaks. In fact it is mandatory.I got yelled at once for taking too short a break. My employers could have been fined because I went back to work a minute early.. As far as I could tell, the Muslims were praying during their breaks.As far as smoking, I agree to some extent, but I have known smokers who became agitated if they didn't get their fix. What is worse? Letting them have their cig or putting up with their bad temper and lack of productivity? What about someone who needs frequent bathroom breaks due to a medical condition or a new mother who needs to pump breast milk? We accomodate a lot of people.It needs to be reasonable, of course, but a little flexibility doesn't hurt either. I'm not sure what I think of the Muslim situation. Sounds like a moutnain out of a molehill which makes me wonder if there isn't something else going on.

No matter how busy things got some smokers I worked with could find a break. I felt like a sucker for not taking a break because there was too much to do. I felt resentful that they never missed a break no matter how it dumped on everyone else.

Now I've noticed a new problem in the workplace: texting. People go hide in the bathroom or out of view and text. You'll notice their phone vibrates. They they'll say, "I'll be right back. I've got to go to the bathroom."

The strange thing is that so many people are out of work and yet such a large percentage of the workforce are slackers. You'd think they would be glad to have a job and not be squirreling around.

A lot of employees are time thieves, that's for sure. I'm salaried and task oriented. I end up working an hour or two a day for free because that's what it takes to own the job.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/2011 10:37PM by dagny.

Then there are the workers who surf the web all day.

I think a lot of places have guidelines for acceptable internet use.

The IT guys can know anything that goes on with the computers in my company. I wouldn't risk it at work, even on a break. Besides, I don't have time. Plus the 3 people in my office can see what each other has on the screen. It is not abused where I work like texting is.

There are a lot of ways to slack off at work. I had a part time job at a private school and some of the aides thought nothing of coming in 20 minutes late and signing in on time. Not only were they cheating the school, they were leaving the rest of us shorthanded and until they decided to grace us with their presence.Nobody dared tell the boss because she thought they were perfect.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/2011 11:03PM by bona dea.

...Smokers aren't hired to smoke, Muslims aren't hired to pray. No one is hared to do personal stuff during work hours. It's not part of their job, it's not what they're being paid to do. So they should either clock out (if they're not salaried employees) or accept fractionally lower pay to compensate for the time they're doing personal things.