Friday 17th August 2012 - Timing a cigarette break

This will be a very short post - but possibly a controversial one. 

Every morning I notice a couple of University staff who I know are on timed contracts (in other words, they are paid for a certain number of hours per week, rather than having contracts relating to the overall fulfilment of duties with no set hours of work) having a cigarette break.  I also notice that sometimes such breaks seem to last rather a long time.  I see this on other occasions walking round the university - colleagues who are often to be seen standing outside their buildings with a cigarette in hand, and who I then sometimes see again later in
'normal' coffee settings having a break.

Are smokers allowed to work fewer hours per day than non-smokers?  Or are they expected to make up the extra time they have spent on cigarette breaks by staying at work longer?  Or is the cigarette so refreshing that when they've had a break they make up the time they've lost through increased productivity?   Or is the reduced life expectancy of smokers such that allowing them time off to smoke actually increases the overall pension benefits of non-smokers who will, on average, live longer?  Is there an equality of treatment issue here?

Monday 6th August 2012 - Reading e-mails whenever and wherever

When I go on leave I try to restrain myself from reading e-mails until a day or two before the end of my holiday.  I then check to see if there is anything that needs dealing with before I get back into work, or anything that has changed the schedule of my diary for the first few days back.  A number of people in the university have my mobile phone number and if anything really eneds my attention they know they can ring me.  Generally no one does, although I remember one occasion when a colleague and I had a long phonecall about an urgent matter at the end of which she said "Could we meet up for a coffee later today to talk this over" only for me to inform her that I was standing just outside a department store in Regensburg, Bavaria.

The Vice-Chancellor went off on holiday at the weekend, and before he went and told him not to read his e-mails - and he promised to try not to. I am standing in for him.  Indeed, today I have no sign that he has opened his inbox, but I suspect that within a few days it will become clear that he has done so when osther people tell me about his views on various new matters - showing that he has been in touch.  

The problem is that it is so easy to get into e-mails - while waiting for a train, sitting in a bar waiting for the drinks to arrive, or surreptitiously behind a newspapers.  Today I have had four e-mails from people who I know are said to be on holiday.  None was urgent - all of them could have waited.  Two of them came from 'behind' bounceback messages. In other words the individuals concerned had put up a vacation message to say they were away and would not be responding to anything until a given future date - but they had then gone on reading their mail, and answering at least some of it.

Perhaps I'm very old-fashioned, but I think a holiday is a holiday.  Work and non-work time get intermingled during the rest of the year, but they shouldn't do so during a holiday.  I'm taking a week off at the beginning of September.  If anybody catches me reading and sending e-mails before late on the Thursday of that week I will have broken my resolution and failed to take my own advice!