It's not as if the boss came in one day and told people "Everyone gets 2 x 15 minutes of breaks a day. Except for smokers, you guys can take all the breaks you want."
If my employer gives me 2 x 15 minutes of breaks a day, I'll take those even if I don't smoke.
Everywhere I have worked the breaks were defined in the work contract. Right under my salaries, benefits, etc. I have a clause that more or less says: "You are entitled to take a 30-minute break after working five consecutive hours. This 30 minutes can be split through the day but not used to leave early or lengthen your lunch break."
Anyone taking more breaks than that will simply be fired.
The only exception being bathroom breaks because let's face it, we are all adult enough not to need to ask a supervisor to take a leak. I use this time to brew and enjoy a coffee in the lounge in the morning and to take a walk around the office during the afternoon. A smoker would probably split those 30 minutes into 6 cigarette breaks and that's fine.
Nobody gets extra breaks because they smoke. Is this different elsewhere?
Every salaried job I've had never had anyone watching my breaks, arrival, or departure times as long as I got my work done. There is a general expectation that I will usually be present during normal business hours but that's about it.
An assembly line worker will stick to the letter, a software developer will never consider it.
As a developer, I get to work for some pretty relax workplaces. At those places, the breaks are not monitored but you are expected to respect the limit. 30 minutes of paid lunch (and 30 more minutes of unpaid lunch if you choose to) and 15 minutes of paid break in the morning along with 15 minutes of paid break in the evening. Note that by law, employers here are only required to give you an unpaid 30-minute break for every 5 hours of work. What I am describing here is living the good life as a developer.
Even then, most developer at big agencies (100+ programmers) here work by the clock & timesheet and have to log their worktime to the minute and are unpaid the missed time.
Perhaps I should put emphasis on the fact that those are paid breaks I'm talking about.
I guess that you could "disappear" every hours but the culture would make it so that your coworkers would start to ask questions, your supervisor start to worry, you yearly evaluation suffer and your bonus or salary increase might be lower than the previous year.
I am lucky enough to work somewhere pretty relax with a "startup" culture. This allows me to start at the time I want and leave at the time I want. That being said, I'm expected to do 7.5 hours every day, to be present between 9h and 15h and to respect the allowed time when taking breaks.
> I wouldn't talk with my friends or family, I wouldn't watch youtube or TV series, I wouldn't even walk
Are you doing those things on the clock? I'm confused.
Is this the same community that raves about sleeping breaks to incease productivity? I think this is useful regulation.
And it's actually easy to handle: My employers always gave everyone the same breaks - how you use them is up to you. Smoking, eating, chatting - all of it. However smoking outside those breaks was a no-go. And as a former smoker I don't even see how this is up for discussion.