Healthcare Reform Bill IS THE Law

[Angel]

My god, they better be testing cholesterol levels, do liver function tests, etc. etc. Do employment standard laws not exist there???

[FORD]

I don't believe that being a nicotine addict is grounds for termination, however anyone who works in a hospital, and sees the results of smoking every day, yet chooses to remain a nicotine addict, probably could use a mental evaluation.

[bueno bob]

I don't believe that being a nicotine addict is grounds for termination, however anyone who works in a hospital, and sees the results of smoking every day, yet chooses to remain a nicotine addict, probably could use a mental evaluation.

Unrelated, but it is at PDX. A few years back, I went into the Hilton downtown for a job fair sort of thing for one of the airlines. When the meeting started out, they greeted us all by saying "Hello...we have on our register 80 people here in the room - within the next four hours, 25 of you will be left and by the end of the day, we'll be down to about 10 candidates."

I thought to myself, "Well, my resume is pretty awesome, I'm dressed well and fairly articulate and outgoing when need be...I'll probably be one of the last 25, at least..."

The next thing the speaker said was "There are a few things that we do need to discuss immediately, and those are behaviors that PDX will not tolerate as an employer - one of those is the use of tobacco. Tobacco use is not allowed by any employee of PDX, we do not have areas for you to smoke at while on your break or lunch, and if you show up to your job smelling at all like cigarette smoke, you'll be asked to go home, shower and change your clothes. If it happens twice, you will be terminated."

At that point, I got up and walked out, making myself victim #1 of the PDX hiring process, and in a perverse way somewhat proud to be so...



Not that it mattered much, considering I quit about two months later - cold turkey and never went back.

Ah well.

[Guitar Shark]

Congrats on kicking the habit, b...

[Seshmeister]

Unrelated, but it is at PDX. A few years back, I went into the Hilton downtown for a job fair sort of thing for one of the airlines. When the meeting started out, they greeted us all by saying "Hello...we have on our register 80 people here in the room - within the next four hours, 25 of you will be left and by the end of the day, we'll be down to about 10 candidates."

I thought to myself, "Well, my resume is pretty awesome, I'm dressed well and fairly articulate and outgoing when need be...I'll probably be one of the last 25, at least..."

The next thing the speaker said was "There are a few things that we do need to discuss immediately, and those are behaviors that PDX will not tolerate as an employer - one of those is the use of tobacco. Tobacco use is not allowed by any employee of PDX, we do not have areas for you to smoke at while on your break or lunch, and if you show up to your job smelling at all like cigarette smoke, you'll be asked to go home, shower and change your clothes. If it happens twice, you will be terminated."

At that point, I got up and walked out, making myself victim #1 of the PDX hiring process, and in a perverse way somewhat proud to be so...



Not that it mattered much, considering I quit about two months later - cold turkey and never went back.

Ah well.

Good for you.

I'm an ex smoker too but I would never work for a company that thought it had the right to tell me I couldn't smoke in my own time.

I had a pal who got a job at Arthur Andersen back in the day one of the big 5 management consultancy/accountancy firms in the world and he showed me the list of rules for working for them. THis thing was a few pages long including stuff like no facial hair, the color of suits and ties that were acceptable and so on. I asked him how he could possibly sell his soul to these pricks.

Of course a few years later they went bust when they were found to be a bunch of lying thieving corrupt cunts when the Enron thing came to light...

[Seshmeister]

And another thing.

For all you people who seem to believe the shit the Australian billionaire keeps feeding you about how public healthcare is somehow an infringement of your liberty.

It is exactly the opposite of that.

In a private healthcare model private companies can cite healthcare costs as an excuse to tell you what you have to do. Like in the example here they can say no smokers because the insurance will be too high. What could be a bigger infringement of freedom than telling people that they can't do a legal actvity in their own home in their own time?

That can't happen in a public healthcare system because firstly the company isn't paying for your healthcare directly and secondly the state can't legislate something like that because it would lose them too many votes and there are millions of heroin addicts to worry about before you get to the smokers/drinkers/eaters.