A Company Is Offering Nonsmokers 6 Extra Vacation Days to Make up for Smoke Breaks

In some fields of work, about an hour throughout the day can be spent outside lighting up.

Companies are always looking for ways to improve workflow. When it comes time to work, smoke breaks come with the territory. The time smokers need to take those puffs at work eventually add up.
According to littlethings.com, in a survey by a site called Halo Cigs, smokers spend about 20 minutes having smoke breaks. Over a year, that can add up to about 20 days, according to the survey.

It's important to disclose that the survey-takers, Halo Cigs, is an electronic cigarette company that produces nicotine-based products. So it would seem that a company that makes money off nicotine, that then conducts a survey about smoking and non-smoking in the workplace, would stand to benefit somehow from wading into the controversy. So these survey results need to be taken with a grain of salt.

According to a survey by Halo Cigs, 81.2% of smokers say these smoke breaks are a fair deal. Unsurprisingly, only about 25.2% of nonsmokers agree.

Nonsmokers are none too happy about those extra breaks.

According to the Halo Cigs survey, 80% of nonsmokers think they should get more time off, too, about an extra vacation day. More than 50% want three or more vacation days. Again, (big surprise), smokers don't agree here.

A company in Japan called Piala, Inc., is apparently giving their employees — the nonsmokers, anyway — six extra vacation days.

According to the CEO in a story by The Telegraph, “One of our non-smoking staff put a message in the company suggestion box earlier in the year saying that smoking breaks were causing problems. Our CEO saw the comment and agreed, so we are giving non-smokers some extra time off to compensate.”

According to the survey, when smokers were posed the question, "Would you be convinced to quit smoking if you got six extra vacation days?" women said they'd want 11 extra days to quit, while men wanted 12. Keep dreaming.