Smoking area

It’s funny how you can see the culture of a company by the behaviour in the smoking area.

I work in a building with two fairly large companies and both have a considerable amount of smokers. Both companies allow regular smoke breaks, so you can expect at least a couple representatives from each company outside smoking at any point in the day.

There tends to be two kinds of smokers, the ones who smoke in the designated smoking area and the ones who find isolated areas in the car park to smoke alone.

Which doesn’t sound very interesting, but when you scrutinize the two different groups you notice that the majority of the group that smokes in the smoking area work for one company and those who smoke on their own work for the other.

So from just the smoking behaviour of these employees you can glean a sense of the two different cultures. One company’s employees isolate themselves and don’t interact with others. Whether as the other company’s employees utilize their smoking time to socialise with their colleagues and others.

I don’t smoke but I know which company I’d prefer to work for.