Flash : : : Smoke in Flash

It's a little house outside the factory. Maybe not really a house, since it's walls are only mesh and it's intended use is shelter for the smokers on break.

I've never been inside but the sidewalk runs right by it. I hear the voices from inside. They are sharing minutes of their lives and puffs of smoke.

When I started work I had a cold and I was coughing and hoarse. I was a scary individual. No problem - I was accepted as another smoker. I hated to tell them I wasn't a smoker, I was just sick.

The fraternity of smokers is a strong one. I remember years ago at my old old job. I overheard a couple of slightly more than middle management types discussing smokers. The guys were standing in a glass windowed office overlooking the plant floor. They were waiting.

They were waiting for the men they were meeting to return from a smoke break. One said to the other - Think of the time the company loses to smoking. How unfair it is to us virtuous non-smokers. Implication was that non-smokers devote more time to their jobs, even if it's time spent waiting for the smokers to reappear.

Smoking has become a kind of class habit. It's remarkable how common it is among factory workers. A good percentage of smokers in the winter run their cars on break time to give themselves a warm place to light up.

Bosses seem to accept the habit. The mesh-walled building is a symptom of how much management caters to tobacco habits. When I went to a lunch with the plant manager - cheerfully called a skipping levels lunch - we were told smokers could take an extra fifteen minutes to have their cigarettes. The rest of us went back to work.

I try to figure what the company gets out of employing smokers. Are they more docile? Are they what's left to do the kind of work the factory wants done at the price the company can pay? Does the automatic anticipation of the next smoke fit into a buzzer ruled environment?

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This isn't fiction, sorry. Next time.