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Let me play devils advocate. Having a kid is a choice isn't it? Why should someone get more time for their elective activities than someone else? Should smokers

Let me play devils advocate. Having a kid is a choice isn't it? Why should someone get more time for their elective activities than someone else? Should smokers get extra breaks to smoke that others don't get? Rather than paternity leave, why not more general leave for everyone?

st3v3r 10y ago
I'm sorry, but that is an extremely shitty position to take.
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  I was thinking that things like parental leave and bereavement leave generally don't happen during the same era of your life. Why couldn't they fall into a more generalized category of leave? Unless your parents were heavy smokers, and you are the youngest of many siblings, you're probably going to take parental leave for all your kids before taking bereavement leave for either parent. If you base the leave on some kind of verifiable qualifying event, the accounting would probably be satisfied by the company paying premiums to an insurer. So you could give people time off whenever they are likely to be very distracted from work. It doesn't just have to be because a crying baby is making an ordinary sleep schedule impossible. Jury duty with sequestration could be distracting. A tornado or house fire might be a bit stressful. Having your car totaled might be worth a few days off to sort out the crisis during regular business hours. I'm not really very personally invested in parental leave any more, now that I think maybe I won't have to change any more diapers until the first grandchild. But I can think of all kinds of hypothetical circumstances beyond my direct control that might cause me to take some PTO here and there, which can easily chisel away the amount of actual vacation I can take, until I'm down to maybe extending a 3-day [holiday] weekend into 5 consecutive days away from work, and then not getting sick for the next 3 months. That's not the kind of leave that reverses burnout. Alternately, maybe just flush the PTO experiment into the toilet of history, reinstitute sick leave and true vacation, and give people enough of each that they can absorb those life events that eventually happen to everyone.
  - Paul-ish 10y ago
    > Alternately, maybe just flush the PTO experiment into the toilet of history, reinstitute sick leave and true vacation, and give people enough of each that they can absorb those life events that eventually happen to everyone. This is what I propose, although you say it more eloquently. Rather than trying to carve out cases, why not offer x months of time off for every y unit of time? Those who want to spend that time with their kids can do that. Why should I remain chained to my desk because that's not what I want to do?
- Paul-ish 10y ago
  Why is that?
influnza 10y ago
Your position sucks, dude. Everyone should get more, not less. So yes, non smokers should be getting 'smoke' breaks that they can use for a walk, for example. And everyone will be happier.
- Paul-ish 10y ago
  Agreed. This is exactly what I was saying in my last sentence.
  - iamatworknow 10y ago
    I agree with you as well, even if your position isn't a popular one. My employer has a strict 9 to 5 attendance policy (which I disagree with for a number of reasons), but one thing that really bugs me about it is that it applies to days when the roads are hard to navigate due to winter weather. Even if there's a state of emergency and the roads are "closed", we're expected to be here because our customers are all around the country, and they didn't have a snow storm, so we need to be here to support them. Employees with children tend to get leniency in terms of coming in late on days like that, typically because they had to arrange alternative care for their kids with schools closed. But I have no kids, so if I get stuck behind a snow plow and end up getting to the office at 9:05 I'm probably going to get a lecture on how being late is me being disrespectful to the boss and the company.
lr4444lr 10y ago
We have a collective interest in supporting stable families that can raise children, whether you personally decide to have children or not, regardless of your values around parenthood, especially in the early weeks when the infant is cross-culturally identical for most intents and purposes. We have no similar collective interest in supporting smokers. In fact, we should be rewarding people who stop or who never picked up smoking in our health care system to continue that line of reasoning.
alxmdev 10y ago
Having children is the choice that, if nobody were to make, would lead to humanity's literal extinction. For many it's also a natural biological drive, and nobody should be pressured about it one way or the other. Calling it an "elective" is stretching it even for devil's advocate.
halbritt 10y ago
Not having kids implies having a shrinking workforce which will have deleterious economic effects for everyone. At least until the robots replace most of us.
criley2 10y ago
Having a child is to society what eating food is to the individual. You can choose not to eat food, but the individual will not last long. You can choose not to have kids but the society won't last long. It's in our interest to support the human part of humanity. We do that with breaks, meal breaks, sick time, vacation time, and other things. But it's also in our interest to benefit society, not just the individual. So we incentivize choices which are mandatory to the health and success of our society, such as creating the next generation to replace those aging out of the workforce.
- Paul-ish 10y ago
  It would be in the general interest of society if I took some time off to volunteer my efforts in aid to those in need in other countries (or maybe my own). Maybe I would rather do that than have kids. Should we create a special category of time off for that?
  - ythn 10y ago
    Now that you mention it, I'd like to take some time off to hit the gym and get into shape instead of having kids. Improving individuals improves society, and if everyone had this benefit, there might be less obesity.
    - criley2 10y ago
      Many workplaces do offer a wide variety of fitness related benefits. Free on-site gyms, fitness programs like walking or stretching offered on company time, memberships to nearby fitness facilities, etc. Other cultures tackle it differently to. In Japan, organized stretching before work is commonplace. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqPW6H3soKA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqPW6H3soKA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biGPteoP2jg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biGPteoP2jg However, it's very silly to compare procreation with fitness. The fat procreator still benefits the society far more than the slim non...procreator, because on a 100 year or 200 year scale, both are dead, and the society only contains the progeny of one of them. Put it this way: would you rather have a phone that can be upgraded a ton but will eventually wear out and stop working, or have a phone which can be endlessly replaced such that it is always modern and working, even if it isn't top of the line?

st3v3r 10y ago

I'm sorry, but that is an extremely shitty position to take.

logfromblammo 10y ago
I was thinking that things like parental leave and bereavement leave generally don't happen during the same era of your life. Why couldn't they fall into a more generalized category of leave? Unless your parents were heavy smokers, and you are the youngest of many siblings, you're probably going to take parental leave for all your kids before taking bereavement leave for either parent. If you base the leave on some kind of verifiable qualifying event, the accounting would probably be satisfied by the company paying premiums to an insurer. So you could give people time off whenever they are likely to be very distracted from work. It doesn't just have to be because a crying baby is making an ordinary sleep schedule impossible. Jury duty with sequestration could be distracting. A tornado or house fire might be a bit stressful. Having your car totaled might be worth a few days off to sort out the crisis during regular business hours. I'm not really very personally invested in parental leave any more, now that I think maybe I won't have to change any more diapers until the first grandchild. But I can think of all kinds of hypothetical circumstances beyond my direct control that might cause me to take some PTO here and there, which can easily chisel away the amount of actual vacation I can take, until I'm down to maybe extending a 3-day [holiday] weekend into 5 consecutive days away from work, and then not getting sick for the next 3 months. That's not the kind of leave that reverses burnout. Alternately, maybe just flush the PTO experiment into the toilet of history, reinstitute sick leave and true vacation, and give people enough of each that they can absorb those life events that eventually happen to everyone.
- Paul-ish 10y ago
  > Alternately, maybe just flush the PTO experiment into the toilet of history, reinstitute sick leave and true vacation, and give people enough of each that they can absorb those life events that eventually happen to everyone. This is what I propose, although you say it more eloquently. Rather than trying to carve out cases, why not offer x months of time off for every y unit of time? Those who want to spend that time with their kids can do that. Why should I remain chained to my desk because that's not what I want to do?
Paul-ish 10y ago
Why is that?

influnza 10y ago

Your position sucks, dude. Everyone should get more, not less. So yes, non smokers should be getting 'smoke' breaks that they can use for a walk, for example. And everyone will be happier.

Paul-ish 10y ago
Agreed. This is exactly what I was saying in my last sentence.
- iamatworknow 10y ago
  I agree with you as well, even if your position isn't a popular one. My employer has a strict 9 to 5 attendance policy (which I disagree with for a number of reasons), but one thing that really bugs me about it is that it applies to days when the roads are hard to navigate due to winter weather. Even if there's a state of emergency and the roads are "closed", we're expected to be here because our customers are all around the country, and they didn't have a snow storm, so we need to be here to support them. Employees with children tend to get leniency in terms of coming in late on days like that, typically because they had to arrange alternative care for their kids with schools closed. But I have no kids, so if I get stuck behind a snow plow and end up getting to the office at 9:05 I'm probably going to get a lecture on how being late is me being disrespectful to the boss and the company.

lr4444lr 10y ago

We have a collective interest in supporting stable families that can raise children, whether you personally decide to have children or not, regardless of your values around parenthood, especially in the early weeks when the infant is cross-culturally identical for most intents and purposes. We have no similar collective interest in supporting smokers. In fact, we should be rewarding people who stop or who never picked up smoking in our health care system to continue that line of reasoning.

alxmdev 10y ago

Having children is the choice that, if nobody were to make, would lead to humanity's literal extinction. For many it's also a natural biological drive, and nobody should be pressured about it one way or the other. Calling it an "elective" is stretching it even for devil's advocate.

halbritt 10y ago

Not having kids implies having a shrinking workforce which will have deleterious economic effects for everyone. At least until the robots replace most of us.

criley2 10y ago

Having a child is to society what eating food is to the individual. You can choose not to eat food, but the individual will not last long. You can choose not to have kids but the society won't last long. It's in our interest to support the human part of humanity. We do that with breaks, meal breaks, sick time, vacation time, and other things. But it's also in our interest to benefit society, not just the individual. So we incentivize choices which are mandatory to the health and success of our society, such as creating the next generation to replace those aging out of the workforce.

Paul-ish 10y ago
It would be in the general interest of society if I took some time off to volunteer my efforts in aid to those in need in other countries (or maybe my own). Maybe I would rather do that than have kids. Should we create a special category of time off for that?
- ythn 10y ago
  Now that you mention it, I'd like to take some time off to hit the gym and get into shape instead of having kids. Improving individuals improves society, and if everyone had this benefit, there might be less obesity.
  - criley2 10y ago
    Many workplaces do offer a wide variety of fitness related benefits. Free on-site gyms, fitness programs like walking or stretching offered on company time, memberships to nearby fitness facilities, etc. Other cultures tackle it differently to. In Japan, organized stretching before work is commonplace. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqPW6H3soKA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqPW6H3soKA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biGPteoP2jg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biGPteoP2jg However, it's very silly to compare procreation with fitness. The fat procreator still benefits the society far more than the slim non...procreator, because on a 100 year or 200 year scale, both are dead, and the society only contains the progeny of one of them. Put it this way: would you rather have a phone that can be upgraded a ton but will eventually wear out and stop working, or have a phone which can be endlessly replaced such that it is always modern and working, even if it isn't top of the line?