The poor economy is leading workers to cut back on their lunch breaks, both because they want to save money in case they lose their jobs and because they don’t want to look like slackers in case a cut is coming. The unexpected result has been an increase in smoker envy. It seems that even though everybody is cutting back on time spent away from their desks at lunch, the smokers are still taking those frequent smoke breaks. A recent CareerBuilder survey of 4500 working adults revealed that non-smokers are just about fed up with their smoking peers cutting out and leaving them behind to do the work.
This is more proof that the world works in mysterious ways. We can’t get people incensed enough to quit smoking for health reasons, but the tension created by the workplace smoke break may turn into the catalyst that draws down the number of smokers – at least working smokers.
