Not content with having 30 allocated breaks throughout the day, they have decided to colonise zone after zone outside the work premises.
The small, corrugated iron-covered, bike shed-a-like hut that was once the cell for all smokers during the wet, drab, cold autumn/winter/spring has been spurned.
Disregarding the signs scattered everywhere like dandruff on a Welshman’s collar, they have started to smoke by the main doors. Smoke by the back doors. They are smoking by the main car park. They are smoking by the grass outside the front.
I think they are sharing cigarettes. I know they are throwing cigarettes everywhere. I can see fag butts more than I can see chewing gum stains on the concrete.
I don’t actually care (being a reformed smoker). A lot of people do care however. The chief executive’s palatial office provides a nice overview of 8-10 fat, bronchial office workers (on average) sucking like rats on their cancer sticks. I am assuming that he has had enough, as we received an email issuing Diktat 2388# of the Glorious 18th Republic.
Hence forth no-one is allowed to smoke on the business park. Not in the smoking hutch, not by the bins, not in their car. There was just one problem with his Diktat apart from the obvious civil rights infringement and freaky, out of control, control freakery. The owners of the work premises didn’t approve his Diktat.
His order was humiliatingly withdrawn. It might be my imagination but I am sure he has had a slightly wounded expression on his face ever since, much like a man who has caught himself in a slammed drawer. A victory for the coughing, little man.
For more from The Insider, click HERE.
