h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Great posting!

This is the sort of thing I want to print off for our own night staff (40 bed residential care home for the elderly - three staff on every night)as they'd appreciate it!

Problem is, our night staff do not have the option of ducking out of the door for a fag in the cool night air. Reasons are:-

i) Security: old people with Alzheimers are surprisingly mobile and in some cases will deny they are resident in the building - all of a sudden it's 1961 again and they need to get home to look after their baby children. An open door is a gift, as is an all-night bus service running up and down the main road outside the home!

ii) Security: we are based in a part of a big city which is very much inner-city with all that entails: start leaving doors and windows open and you may be sure local wildlife will be encouraged to forage for money and medical heroin/temazepan. Although night staff are issued very large heavy torches that they can get a really good swing with, against this eventuality.

However, my previous Home had a night care senior who was married to a police sergeant... any police mobile active in that part of Manchester knew where to go for a bacon buttie at three in the morning, which made it perhaps the most secure old people's home in the city...

As the firm is, in its naivety, going completely non-smoking in January, it'll be interesting to see how night staff cope with this and what their legendary ingenuity comes up with, by way of getting round the smoking ban... perhaps residents who smoke and cannot sleep will be encouraged to get up and have a ciggie in the smoking room, and then a member of staff naturally has to be on hand to observe...

Glad you found it useful. I used to smoke, but now I tend to just choof in the social setting, not at work. That's because all the hospitals in my area have gone smoke-free now. Not even a smoke room. I used to smoke most during a night shift because of the fact I could go to the smoke room and socialise with fellow smokers, or nip outside and look at the stars. But it's become a thing of the past. There was some mention of civil liberites and freedom of choice, but that was swiftly disposed of by management.

My argument for smoking for patients was this. Let's say you smoke. You've suffered an injury that means you're bebound for a bit, but it would do you a world of good if you could get up for a wander every now and then. So, the best way to get yourself up is the thought that you could go for a ciggie. Now though, that incentive has gone. So you don't bother trying to mobilise, and so suffer from pressure sores...

Anyways. I'm sure the gang at the home will think of some way of getting around it. We did. There's a bustop nearby? They make great smoking shelters at 3 in the morning

Civil Liberties? For proles like us? Only when it suits 'em!

Far be it from me to malign the motives of senior management, but the unworthy thought did occur to me that imposing a 100% smoking ban in the workplace is only incidental to the good health and wellbeing of employees.

Much more to the point, if you own a large business, and you can demonstrate to your insurance company that one source of fires at work has been completely eliminated*, does this mean you save lots of cash by getting a reduced insurance premium? I can see a lot of firms being far more motivated by this aspect of a no-smoking policy...



*Smokers, I regret to say, can be careless with the matches and the dog-ends....