Just the other day at work an office wide email was sent around about employees who smoke, which does include me. It pointed out to ALL employees that "workplace exposure to passive smoking is a signigicant occupational health and safety hazard. Passive smoking exposure causes cancer, heart disease and exacerbates asthma." It further states "Section 19 (1) of the Occupational Health, Safety and Welfare Act 1986, imposes on all employers a duty to ensure, so far as is reasonably practical, that their workers are safe from injury and risks to health while at work."

This means that when smoking outside of the building all smokers must be at least 5 metres from the entrance. That's fine by me because I could understand how disgusting it would be to be greeted with a cloud of smoke upon entering or exiting a building. But, the problem is, this is being done. My work associate and I both smoke 20 metres away! Some others only smoke 5 metres away. But then the issue, at 5 metres away the smoke floats up and into the OPEN WINDOWS of the second floor. So people whinge and are bothered by that. Fair enough, 20 metres it is right?

Well, the email continues to say, "Section 4.11 of the current Employment Policies Manual reads... Smoking breaks during work hours are a privilege and not a right. Employees are encouraged to reduce their smoking to outside of company time, or during their lunch breaks. Any staff member who is observed to be taking smoking breaks outside of scheduled break periods will be subject to disciplinary action." Well fuck me, doesn't that sound like high school? Yeah, okay, fair point - I should be working, not smoking.

But this is why I'm pissed off:

SMOKERS ARE AN EASY TARGET.

It has now become socially acceptable behaviour to HATE smokers. Some people are so enraged by the actions of a smoker they will literally BLURT OUT a stupid fucking comment to someone they see smoking. Eg. "Excuse me! Do you mind!? *cough cough*. Yes, I do fucking mind - I'm trying to unwind here - GET OUT OF MY FACE, CUNT! I'm aware that smokers weight down the health system, but so do drinkers, obsese cunts and hypercondriacts. Okay, the fact is smoking kills you. Well, it kills a large majority of smokers. Even then, the idea that smoking single handedly caused the death, may not be 100%. But anyway, yes, smoking is bad for you. So it's easy to target smokers because they're stupid or dumb or foolish to be paying money for their own death. But why the fuck is it not socially acceptable to pick on an obese person? Or start yelling at someone with a shitty car exhaust. Fuck it, we all sit in traffic jams with our cars purring away and we have plenty of options to avoid that - but do we? No. So fuck this whole socially accepted dislike for smokers. The fact is humans are weak and insecure creatures. Any chance we have to band together as a majority to outcast a minority and we will avidly go at it. The fucking days of witch burning anyone? Pathetic, fear driven human instinct and behaviour doesn't disappear, it is just moulded into more "civilised" (and I use the word civilised in a very loose way) forms as time moves on.

It's not even THAT that is pissing me off about this particular work email. What's pissing me off is this. Complaints are being made that the exposure to second hand smoke is detramental to employees health and they're oh-so fucking concerned for the health of the employees. People are walking through clouds of smoke at the entrance, smoking is wafting in through open windows, people are having at least FIVE SMOKES A DAY! AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! IT'S FUCKING CHAOS! Where's Rolland Emerich when we need him to film the end of the world as we know it!? :|

But you know what... the office for the department I work in is a fucking death trap. It's a small cave like office that used to have a double door fire exit, until the powers that be sealed it in and cut a small door shape in another. That's our entrance to our office now. Did I mention this hole leads into the kitchen? As in, we would need to evacuate the building through the kitchen. The KITCHEN!? You know, the place where all those fire hazards are!? So this means when the kitchen catches on fire from the fridge/toaster/kettle/coffee machine/ microwave/powerboards we would either have to run through the flames kamikaze style or put it out with a fire extuing... Oh wait, no we can't. The fire extinguisher is out in the lobby... beyond the kitchen!

So now you're asking, "But surely you could just jump out the window, you silly wanker?" But the answer is NO! The window in THIS particular section of the building don't open! That's how fucking well this building has been designed! Did I mention that I work for a company that deals primarily in construction and civil works? Did I also mention the building is designed by the owner of the company? Fuck me, that is pure gold. The windows are made of double insulated wired safety glass. Even if we did find the axe (which is probably in the kitchen) to bash vigourously through the window - two of these windows don't lead outside. In some morbid display of building design, they lead out to the fucking basement level.

Unfortunately, that's not the worst of it. The office is poorly ventilated. At the best of times it is at least 10 degrees warmer in the office than the rest of the building/outside. So that means a 25 degree day when the rest of the office is comfortable and loving the weather, we're sweltering in an office THAT'S 35 DEGREES! Turn the airconditioning on right? No, you can't - because then everyone else will get cold! It is literally so warm in the office that when everyone walks in they stop and go, "Ooh, it's warm in here isn't it?" Even management does that. They've been fixing the situation for a fucking year now. Yes, it is warm, you say that every time you enter the fucking office! How about a solution? Well, I would say that to them but I'm too busy cooking bacon on the top of my aluminium harddrive case.

Lastly, the time factor. I generally do anywhere up to 5 hours FREE overtime every pay week. Surely, a few five minute breaks is not going to break the bank? Fuck knows I certainly don't pester management about doing unpaid overtime. I tell you what, I would like to see any of you work in an office as hot as the one I work in without needing to go out and get some air every now and then! Shit, I go out to COOL DOWN when it's fucking over 30C outside! Plus, I don't see any of the head honchos here running late from their "meetings" and "luncheons" getting talked to. Hmmm is that discrimination I smell? Of course it is, but it doesn't matter because you're only discriminating a smoker. Why don't you just throw out into the cotton fields, give us seperate water fountains to drink from and start putting up signs outside of stores "SORRY - NO SMOKERS".

You know what a bunch of fucking bullshit hypocrisy it all is when they insist their acting for the good of the company and it's employees, even though I'm working in a non-ventilated, fire trap for an office and all of those issues have been known by management for at least 18 months.

So you will have to excuse me if I couldn't give a fuck that you're getting a little bit of smoke through your window when I've been working under POOR AT BEST office conditions for the past 18 months, whilst seeing no movement from management to have the problem sorted.

The only thing that will kill me before smoking does is the fucking whinging from pathetic wankers. Socially acceptable discrimination is discriminatin at it's worst. *lights up a fucking smoke*