Company firing employees who smoke
Tuesday, 25 January 2005 | 234 readers so far
A nation of whiners and welfare babies is a weak nation destined to mediocrity.
A health care company in Michigan is firing employees who smoke or are suspected of smoking. It fired employees who refused to take a drug test.
I have mixed feelings about this one. I think employers should be able to fire people who are actively pursuing unhealthy lifestyles, since they are forced by their employees choices to assume additional costs and liability. This would include big fat losers, chain smoking fools and self-important shits who do cocaine. Hell, I think you should be able to fire an employee for any reason at any time.
The whole key in not getting fired should be to make yourself important enough to the employer that you are indispensable or at least expensive to fire. Employers care about their bottom line and that’s the way it should be. I speak as someone who has been laid off in the last year from a job I held six years.
Your rights as an employee should only go as far as the contract you signed when you started with any given firm. Read the employee manual and hold your company to it. If they say everyone has to wear pink dildo suits on Fridays, then plan on wearing them every Friday. If the manual says you can be fired for any reason at any time, then count on that as a possibility and make sure you have savings.
Employers who cannot discriminate cannot run a business efficiently. Government should not have the power to artificially limit a company by telling it who it can and cannot hire. Companies that make bad decisions about which employees to hire will fail without hand holding from the government. It makes me sad to see the poll results showing that only 22% (at least when I last looked) of voters think companies should be free to fire unhealthy employees who are unhealthy by choice. Each passing year, it becomes harder and harder to survive as a company in this nation. That’s because choices that a business owner could once make that would add to the bottom line and ensure the financial health and survival of the firm are now being made by government regulators who are supported by ignorant, uninformed couch potatoes with no real world business experience.
A nation of whiners and welfare babies is a weak nation destined to mediocrity. We are destroying ourselves with political correctness and the idea that everyone should be treated equally even when they aren’t.
UPDATE: Boortz has some thoughts on being fired for smoking today as well. His are probably more cogent than mine, and his daily notes are always worth reading.
I’m not sure why that was a tangent, but I’m glad you feel similarly. You’re absolutely right, I don’t feel confident when I arrive for a doctor’s appointment and my receptionist weighs 500 pounds and looks like she should be on the cover of Coronary Weekly. And that happens a lot.
Reply to TrevorLooked at healthcare providers recently? The vast majority of them are morbidly obese and diehard smokers. What exactly does that mean for the employer? That these gelatenous smoke stacks are spending too much time eating and taking smoke breaks while on the clock, as opposed to spending time coordinating patient care or providing a real life example of what healthshould look like. But what does our government have to say about that? Hopefully as little as possible. The less they are involved in the day to day running of my life, the better. I agree, people need to make themselves indispensible, if they want to keep whatever position they value. Isn’t it like that every where, in every arena of life? What ever happened to personal responsibility. I choose my actions, I accept the outcome. Hm… novel idea. But unfortunately the climate of our grand country has changed to I do what I want, you pay the consequences for me. Oh, what a tangent… sorry.
Reply to Elena