It seems to me that in our modern society discrimination is heavily frowned upon, unless it's against smokers. Sure Sure it's bad for me, but I've always preferred the "My body, my choice" attitude. As the dangers of second hand smoke became apparent, and in my mind extremely hyped, smokers have been further and further marganalized. And in many ways it's not such a bad thing.
I have no problem eliminating smoking from airplanes... but not when you remove any place in the entire frickin airport for somebody to smoke between flights. I've got no problem when you can't smoke in restaurants... but when you eliminate it from every bar, club, restaurant, and park bench... then it's a little overboard. Or when you can't smoke on the street... that's just stupid.
Anyway today I find out that in thier infinite free time the executives at my work are looking into the legalities of discriminating against hiring smokers. (it's not like they have things like, oh i don't know, running the business to worry about) I can't even believe this is a topic of discussion. The arguement that smokers are less productive is crap... if anything I work better after a smoke. Is that 10 minutes a day I'm outside really affect things? No. Now the company that I work for is in a healthcare related field. Thus lending the arguement that because we're supposed to be helping people get healthy we shouldn't ourselves be unhealthy. Does that mean we should discriminate against fat people? And if not, how is that different? because it's ok to discriminate against smokers? smokers are worse employees? I'm a little pissed. Mostly because I see it as none of my company's business. My question for the kos community is if there is legal ways to discriminate against smokers? I thought this was America... but these days who knows... Thanks for any insights.
Smoke em if ya got em.