Smoke breaks to come off meal allowance?

[Mezza]

The initial purpose was not to seek support for something RM have long since ruled out, merely to gauge the situation for staff in other offices regarding this.

I guess my whole point is that if i am no longer allowed to take the odd smoke break, but have to work my full hours, then why does nobody else.
I cannot leave work early as i am in the RLE, i have to work to finish every day. There are no consequences for staff going home early - in fact most days the DOM will say goodbye and wave them off as they leave some 2-3 hours before their finish time.

Also will management now stop staff from popping over the road to get their newspapers, food and drink etc. Will they monitor staff eating as they prep and deduct time from their meal allowance, will they pull up those that seem to need the toilet 15 times in 3 hours every morning?

No, of course they won't. Yet whenever we have a manager that smokes, the goalposts move yet again.

[bandit650]

Think all DOM's, managers have all been given the same from the top i think they deem smoke breaks as part of your M/R now and seem to be leaning on staff a lot harder,it's been happening in ours for a few weeks now,staff are getting a bit ratty with all that is going on in the office at the moment.

[Mezza]

There is certainly a policy of continuous punishment for anyone who dares to cross our DOm in our office.

If you simply get your delivery done and go home, then you are left well alone - you can make as much time on a daily basis as you like and will never be asked to do any more.
If you are asked to do more, you can claim O?T even if you still finish within your duty time.

If you cut off, you are given even more, if you smoke it now comes off your meal break.
If you take out a grievance(as i did) and lose your level 3, even though it totally contradicts existing and previous local and national agreements, you are given a 2 hr delivery to do within your duty time (even though you had a full duty anyway in the RLE), you are then given an additional 50 delivery points and the latest is i have to cover the callers meal break. All told that's about 3 hours extra work added to my duty each day.
It doesn't bother me, i simply come in, do my time and go home.
Summer resourcing specifically mentions resource to workload and utilising all paid hours - never even been mentioned in my office-another agreement swept under the carpet.

To those that say get your rep to do something - forget it - he's not interested (makes too much time each day) and even with my grievance at level 3, the local and divisional reps were not interested. There have even been letters sent to DSM's and Union HQ - nothing happens.

Rumour has it our DOM may be off soon....i won't hold my breath and if he doesn't things are just going to get worse.

[CharlesSpooner]

And still everyone misses the whole point of this thread........

If your on delivery and smoke then taking a few minutes here and there for a smoke that has to come off your meal allowance isn't really an issue.
If your out on delivery you can smoke yourself stupid and nobody will know that all those fags should have come off your meal allowance.

Why not do this then? You've clearly stated you have a 1h 30m window of opportunity to do this.

I'm indoor staff - i have a 1.30 delivery within my duty, but for the rest of my shift i'm indoors. If i take 5 mins per fag off my meal allowance i end up with no meal break. Ok perhaps that seems fair,especially to a non smoker. But why should a smoker on delivery have the opportunity to have more fags than me and still claim most of their meal allowance when i can't?

You can - you have an outdoor part of your duty in which to revel in this forbidden pleasure. I'm sure there's plenty of smokers with 5h+ delivery spans who'd be more than willing to cut that down to 1h 30m in exchange for only being able to smoke during their meal relief.

And for the countless people that say smokers should just quit, why should smokers be allowed to skive etc etc etc.
In the same way us smokers could quit, you could start smoking, but it's still not what this thread was about in the first place, a fact about 90% of posters seem to have ignored !

But taking up smoking doesn't and shouldn't give someone the automatic right to extra breaks. Most of us are grown up enough to realise this.

[Mezza]

My god i'm jealous, it must be wonderful to be so perfect, a non smoker that has spent all their money on rose tinted glasses obviously.

And still everyone misses the whole point of this thread........

If your on delivery and smoke then taking a few minutes here and there for a smoke that has to come off your meal allowance isn't really an issue.
If your out on delivery you can smoke yourself stupid and nobody will know that all those fags should have come off your meal allowance.

Why not do this then? You've clearly stated you have a 1h 30m window of opportunity to do this.
.

I'm indoor staff - i have a 1.30 delivery within my duty, but for the rest of my shift i'm indoors. If i take 5 mins per fag off my meal allowance i end up with no meal break. Ok perhaps that seems fair,especially to a non smoker. But why should a smoker on delivery have the opportunity to have more fags than me and still claim most of their meal allowance when i can't?

You can - you have an outdoor part of your duty in which to revel in this forbidden pleasure. I'm sure there's plenty of smokers with 5h+ delivery spans who'd be more than willing to cut that down to 1h 30m in exchange for only being able to smoke during their meal relief.

And for the countless people that say smokers should just quit, why should smokers be allowed to skive etc etc etc.
In the same way us smokers could quit, you could start smoking, but it's still not what this thread was about in the first place, a fact about 90% of posters seem to have ignored !

But taking up smoking doesn't and shouldn't give someone the automatic right to extra breaks. Most of us are grown up enough to realise this.

My delivery is along the High St where i regularly pass managers on their way to and from the bank or Greggs, so unlikely to get away with that
We don't have a single delivery that goes over even 4.5 hrs on a really bad day. 90% of the office are home by 2pm on a weekday. Nobody wants an indoor duty as it means actually working your hours.
Most of us are grown up enough to realise that a non smoker will never agree with a smoker and that the purpose of the thread wasn't to hear from non smokers bleating about smokers wanting a fag break.
I didn't expect much from this thread as i stated in my first post, lesson learnt.

[Budfrog]

And still everyone misses the whole point of this thread........

If your on delivery and smoke then taking a few minutes here and there for a smoke that has to come off your meal allowance isn't really an issue.
If your out on delivery you can smoke yourself stupid and nobody will know that all those fags should have come off your meal allowance.

Why not do this then? You've clearly stated you have a 1h 30m window of opportunity to do this.

I'm indoor staff - i have a 1.30 delivery within my duty, but for the rest of my shift i'm indoors. If i take 5 mins per fag off my meal allowance i end up with no meal break. Ok perhaps that seems fair,especially to a non smoker. But why should a smoker on delivery have the opportunity to have more fags than me and still claim most of their meal allowance when i can't?

You can - you have an outdoor part of your duty in which to revel in this forbidden pleasure. I'm sure there's plenty of smokers with 5h+ delivery spans who'd be more than willing to cut that down to 1h 30m in exchange for only being able to smoke during their meal relief.

And for the countless people that say smokers should just quit, why should smokers be allowed to skive etc etc etc.
In the same way us smokers could quit, you could start smoking, but it's still not what this thread was about in the first place, a fact about 90% of posters seem to have ignored !

But taking up smoking doesn't and shouldn't give someone the automatic right to extra breaks. Most of us are grown up enough to realise this.

I agree - the only way that a smoking break should be allowed outside of a scheduled meal break is if the employee foregoes a part of their relaxation allowance but this is almost impossible to police.

[CharlesSpooner]

My god i'm jealous, it must be wonderful to be so perfect, a non smoker that has spent all their money on rose tinted glasses obviously.

I'll just remove the rose tinted spectacles then and go back to an earlier point of yours....

Are staff allowed to go to the toilet 10 times a day if they feel the need?
Are staff allowed to sit about chatting on their mobiles when they should be on IPS, prepping their walks or on delivery?
Are staff allowed to have something to eat whilst prepping or out on delivery - only to get back to the office at 1.15 and say they had no meal break and go home?

The answer in my office to the 3 questions above is yes, so why can i not have a smoke when i have a break in jobs?

The answer in my office is....

10 Toilet breaks? Not unless they have some kind of medical problem and do genuinely feel the need - in which case an intense campaign of bullying will commence. If the employee doesn't snap and quit or snap and do something stupid that gets them sacked then medical payoff will be considered as a last resort.
Sit around? Nope - always plenty of other work needs doing if they've not got enough to do. Either that or take another duty or three out so there is more work to be done.
Claiming no meal break - You'll be told it's mandatory and as far as RM are concerned you've had it at the time your duty plan says to take it. If you want to spend that time working then tough. Use it or lose it.

Different offices are often ran very differently. In ours the smoke break is long gone and if someone wants a cig they wait till break. Same for eating, drinking or making phone calls. You can have a smoke when there's a break in jobs - it'll be part of your allocated meal relief that's all.

One of your gripes is that those on delivery have the opportunity to sneak a cig, have a meal or some other kind of non-work activity when they should be working. I agree with you that the opportunity is there for most but it is only an opportunity for them to do something they technically shouldn't be doing. I know of one case locally (not my office but close by) where one bloke was nipping to his mum's for a cuppa once or twice a week for 10-15 mins while on his walk. He sometimes booked OT on heavy days (regardless of whether he'd been to his mum's) which his DOM didn't like and one day he came out of his mums and two IB came and said hello. Job gone.

I've no doubt that they often followed him and saw him to be working properly - they just waited till he gave them something to pounce on. And there's the chance that every OPG who stops for a cig or a cuppa on delivery will get the same treatment. I can't see that the fact they have the chance to do something wrong means you should have the right to extra breaks for you to do the same thing legitimately.

Has your DOM specifically aimed this smoke rule at you or is there any friction between you and your lino or DOM about your workload? Or is the ruling perhaps aimed at a more general attitude amongst other people in your office to disappearing from IPS or other indoor work for a cig & coffee? Judging by what you said about delivery staff getting finished early then there's a good chance someone further up will think your DOM isn't being nearly arsey enough.

[Mezza]

In our office pre - revision we had spare time in abundance, but everything got done, every day.

Post-revision, we have about 75% of duties finishing early, and about 65% of those finishing really early by anything up to 3 hours most days.
The duties that don't finish early are far too big - everyone knows it and there is not a single person in the office that can complete one of these duties before the finish time.
The staff on these big duties soon realised they were doing far more of a days work than most others, so they work as they should - they start on time, they take their breaks, they do everything by the book and if need be they cut off.
Just after the revision the staff on these big duties would go over their time - agreeing with management that perhaps when they got used to the duty they would make some time and not need to work over their duty time. They did get O?T when needed.

They then told management that after 3 months of this they would no longer work past their duty time, they did not want O?T and would cut off if need be.
Of course then we heard whispers of Summer Resourcing and thought that could be used to balance out the walks for the time being - but no, Summer Resourcing has never even been mentioned by management. 2 duties have been lapsed and the big duties have had extra put on them. O

Of the 4 big duties, 2 are done by staff who smoke, so management are using the smoke break/ meal relief thing to try and get them working harder - in some bizarre way i guess this is fair.

As far as my duty is concerned i was left alone in the RLE until i filed my grievance for changes to working hours and duty rotation. Having had it rejected at level 3, my DOM agreed my new hours were a joke and restored them to my original hours - YAY i thought.
But no, because since then i have had a 2 hr delivery dumped on me, a meal break to cover in the callers, an extra 50 delivery points added to my delivery and so much other stuff i really can't remember it all.
I never had a spare 10 mins originally, so you can imagine my duty now.

It is bullying and harassment, but from previous experiences i know there is no point in trying to do anything about it. Easier to come in, do my hours, do whatever they want, go home.

[CharlesSpooner]

I think the question sometimes gets lost when we use terms like "smoke break".

Straight away you get non-smokers (like me) getting miffed by the perceived special treatment "smokers" get and the entire question gets lost. In my defence there is a small clique of golden boys and gals who are very often nipping for a cig & coffee with one of our linos - nothing said by the DOM. Plus a bloke a couple of frames down from me who constantly moans about not being able to go for a cig even though he's finished a lot earlier than most people every single day.

It's a grace break and it's at the discretion of the manager whether it's given or not - and as with a lot of things the grace break is history in huge parts of RM. It's not efficient and with summer lapsing and the drastic cuts in hours there just isn't the same time to take it that there used to be.

[Bert66]

In our office pre - revision we had spare time in abundance, but everything got done, every day.

Post-revision, we have about 75% of duties finishing early, and about 65% of those finishing really early by anything up to 3 hours most days.
The duties that don't finish early are far too big - everyone knows it and there is not a single person in the office that can complete one of these duties before the finish time.
The staff on these big duties soon realised they were doing far more of a days work than most others, so they work as they should - they start on time, they take their breaks, they do everything by the book and if need be they cut off.
Just after the revision the staff on these big duties would go over their time - agreeing with management that perhaps when they got used to the duty they would make some time and not need to work over their duty time. They did get O?T when needed.

They then told management that after 3 months of this they would no longer work past their duty time, they did not want O?T and would cut off if need be.
Of course then we heard whispers of Summer Resourcing and thought that could be used to balance out the walks for the time being - but no, Summer Resourcing has never even been mentioned by management. 2 duties have been lapsed and the big duties have had extra put on them. O

Of the 4 big duties, 2 are done by staff who smoke, so management are using the smoke break/ meal relief thing to try and get them working harder - in some bizarre way i guess this is fair.

As far as my duty is concerned i was left alone in the RLE until i filed my grievance for changes to working hours and duty rotation. Having had it rejected at level 3, my DOM agreed my new hours were a joke and restored them to my original hours - YAY i thought.
But no, because since then i have had a 2 hr delivery dumped on me, a meal break to cover in the callers, an extra 50 delivery points added to my delivery and so much other stuff i really can't remember it all.
I never had a spare 10 mins originally, so you can imagine my duty now.

It is bullying and harassment, but from previous experiences i know there is no point in trying to do anything about it. Easier to come in, do my hours, do whatever they want, go home.

I am just curious, if you say you didnt have 10 mins to spare to start off with and now have a 2 hour delivery to do plus coverage of a M/R (20 mins or so) who does all the work you cant do then? Surely something must be left over each day?

[Mezza]

Something is left over erveryday.

I rarely fill in the returns sheet to show what each duty has returned - there's piles of it by the time i get back from my meal break - i simply scan the items and put them away.
The drivers keys and PDA's aren't logged back in - most are back by the time i've had my meal break and i have no idea what time they got back.
I tray up what re-di's i can each morning, the rest are left till tomorrow.
I return what tracked or Sd items i can each day, the rest are again left till tomorrow.

I no longer get rid of paperwork that has a one year retention - i don't have time.
I don't keep a secure locker and have people queuing up for stuff, i leave the door open and they help themselves.
I no longer try to fix PDA's. they get returned when i have time and if need be the delivery has to take a card when i have no PDA's available.
I order stationary when i have time - which doesn't always fit in with when it's needed.

There's plenty of other bits that are now forgotten on a daily basis.
The DOm and managers are well aware of the problems, but chose to ignore it all.

I look forward to our next audit (due soon) when we will be picked up on most of these issues.

[CharlesSpooner]

That sounds exactly like our office. Years and years of managers just adding the one "little" task to a duty. It all adds up.