On visiting his local hostelry last weekend, Guru couldn’t help but notice what the public house described as a ‘smokers’ paradise gazebo’ hastily constructed in the beer garden to provide his nicotine-addicted chums with a semi-open shelter in which to desecrate their lungs.
Not only does the ‘temporary’ pub gazebo get around all planning regulations, it is about as tacky a piece of architecture as you’re ever like to see. The rear of the local now looks like a backside from the back of beyond. It has fake wooden tiles, chintzy chairs and ‘agreeable’ (it says in the pub’s introductory leaflet) pine flooring – always useful for stubbing out cigarettes in a fire-hazard kind of way.
This got Guru thinking that the gazebo should make its debut in all UK workplaces across the country.
He advocates placing one of these great monstrosities outside every office, so that the grey-skinned stinkers can look even more foolish than they already do. For if the embarrassment of having to puff away in a mini-bandstand that looks like its been transported from the imaginary fields of Midsomer Murders does not put off the nation’s smokers, then nothing will.
At the very least, though, it would save the NHS millions of pounds as the dopey fumers would no longer be catching double pneumonia after standing in the rain and suffering heinous complications before dying a hideous death while using up tank-loads of oxygen and buckets of toxic pain relief pills and being waited on hand-and-foot (until it’s amputated) by the nation’s doctors and nurses.
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In fact, Patricia Hewitt could make building ‘smoke shacks’ her next NHS initiative, seeing as she has a £500m wad burning a hole in her pocket after the NHS failed to spend enough cash.
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