Let me start this by saying that I am not a smoker. And let me say I also do not work for Tribune.
But when I read this, it kinda pissed me off.
Basically, Tribune is going to start charging employees who smoke or an additional $100 a month. If they don't smoke, but have dependent(s) on their insurance who smoke, that also will cost $100 a month.
The author raises good questions. Who is next? Where does it stop?
Will be be charged for excessive drinking? If so, who determines what is excessive?
What about weight? Should fat people have to pay more than thin people?
I am worried about how slippery this slope is gonna get.
As the blogger also points out: The other thing that gets me is that there’s no reward for not being a smoker. If the company imposed a surcharge on smokers and then gave a proportionate break to all the non-smokers I could maybe be a little more positive about the whole thing.
Yeah. Because if they are going to start charging me for my fat ass, I am going to need to get that break from not smoking.
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Nothing more than ramblings, observations and questions about life, love and my own pursuit of happiness.
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10 comments:
I half-disagree, Jill. I think companies lose lots of time and productivity to workers who won't take care of themselves. Subsidizing health-care costs really hurts a company's bottom line — and I don't have a problem with them trying to motivate employees to live healthier lives.
That said, I wish they'd do it through POSITIVE reinforcement, not NEGATIVE. Like you said, why not reward the non-smokers and the height-weight-proportionate and the active-lifestyle folk with breaks on their contributions to their health-care costs? Why accentuate the negative? I don't think the Tribune is going to wind up with happier and healthier employees by making overweight people and smokers feel ashamed of themselves.
But workers who don't care of themselves hurt everybody around them. I have a colleague in my office who is good at what she does — only she's overweight, brings big bags of fast food to work each day, and calls in sick more than twice as often as she's entitled to. (We have eight days' sick leave per year — last year, she called in sick 16 times, and this year she's at 14 or 15 so far.) Every time she bails out, she makes life much, much harder on the rest of us on those days.
I'm not perfect. But I exercise, I don't smoke, I eat better and I've lost weight. And I've called in sick just once in each of the last three years.
I like my co-worker, even as her fragile health is a constant source of concern and exasperation for me. But I think a forward-thinking company would motivate her to do better by herself by seeing how it rewards me for my choices rather than punishing her for hers.
I don't blame the companies for doing SOMETHING, however.
I agree with you both. What's next should always be on the minds of those in subordination when something like this is implemented. (Oooooh, sounds just like a college paper I once wrote.)
Charging people for smoking makes my ears perk up. But I also am not a let's-throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bath-water kind of person, so I'm more inclined to let the slippery slope go until it hurts in a bigger way and then deal with it there. If I ran around trying to stop all the rock slides in my life, I'd die of a heart attack. Some rock slides aren't that big and don't cause a lot of damage.
HOWEVER, I completely agree that most of us (if not all of us) are infinitely more motivated by rewards as opposed to punishments. Does life and society have to be a combination of both? Probably. When I try to use only rewards with my daughter and no punishments, her behavior goes to shit quickly.
And shame. I hate shame. I think shame sucks and does a million times more damage than good. I don't think that shaming people is ever the answer.
I keep wanting to research companies like Google and Starbucks who (we are told) have happy employees and find out what they are doing differently than the rest of us.
And, as a final comment, some people just don't get it. When those people get in places of authority, watch out!
I don't disagree that something needs to be done.
But as Angela said, shame is probably not the best route.
And I don't blame employers for the bad habits fo their employees.
Not completely anyway.
But as out industry continues to downsize it's staffs and upsize the amount of work those people do, those habits are bound to get worse not better.
I know at my office a lot of people eat at their desks because we are busy and no one feels like they have time to get up and have a proper meal away from the computer.
I agree that there is a huge degree of personal responsibility when it comes to smoking, drinking, fast food, etc.
I get pissed when I hear people saying that fast food places are making us all fat.
Um, no. You sitting on your ass in the drive-thru 5 days a week ordering your McHeart Attack is what is making you fat.
And as for your colleague who calls in sick more times than allowed: Does the company punish her in any way for that?
Does that start to come off her vacation time? Does she take those days without pay?
Do they bother to sit down and try to find out what the problem is and try to find a solution?
This whole thing is just another sign of how broken our health care system is.
My whole thing is just that once they take this one step, the next step gets a little easier, then the next and pretty soon they are at a run with these things.
Fix the problem, don't tax the problem.
I was this co-worker's manager last year, and one of my last acts before being downsized out of management was to write her performance review. As her absences were really the only negative, I went to HR to check to see what could be done.
Basically, we can require her to bring in a doctor's note (after the eight days are used) for each absence, and if she doesn't, the absences can be considered unexcused and she won't get paid for the lost time. I'm not certain if her manager now is going that route.
And we're not really allowed to ask her about her personal health issues. If she wants to talk about them, she can, but we can't delve into it on our own.
Jill, you're hilarious.
Jim, I am curious... Would you feel the same way if you hadn't recently started a diet and exercise regimen?
Which I think is a great thing to do. But I am just wondering.
Thanks Connie.
I try.
Why don't they ask the tabacco companies to pay them the extra money?
Then, if you worked for a tabacco company that wanted to install the same policy, it would matter anyway.
I'm inclined to believe this is about authority more than anything and it's just one more indication of the Neo-conservative Conspiracy.
I knew someone who did some consulting work for a tobacco company.
She worked there about 6 months.
She said every Friday someone came around and gave all the employees a carton of cigarettes.
Nice bonus.
"Good job, here's some cancer in a box."
Yes, I would feel the same. Just with more self-loathing.
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