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At the end of a particularly exhausting day, where my mental reserves were drained by trying to solve a coding problem, I ended up on LinkedIn posting I was hiring. I saw this post or rather this poll asking if it was okay to smoke during a zoom and immediately my brain started to yell at my heart “Don’t! just don’t!… For the love of Christ stay away from the keyboard!!!” To no avail.
In this day and age of promoting acceptance to the point of discrimination against normal people, I figured smoking in your own home, something that is legal by the way, shouldn’t be met by hard stances yelling “I fired people for this!!” I was caught quite off guard. Where were those Nazis coming from???
People were getting fired for this? Where’s the acceptance, the tolerance of the differences amongst us? What was going on here? And then it came out as I protested over this: “Norms are changing”.
Oh, the ever pervasive systemic, emergent problem of intolerance that will forever plague the human mind had found a new hiding place in that poster’s words. “Norms are changing” What was so infuriating was how most people didn’t see the disguise. Poetically speaking, the Nazis had won again. Marching under the flag of Norms.
To expand upon your thought here let me take a slightly different approach. When you hire on to a company, you are generally made aware of that company’s “norms” or “policies” as it were. If the company policy is to forbid smoking whether at the office or even on Zoom calls, then you abide by their policy or you find another job. Why would they require this? Possibly to publicly discourage smoking which is a health hazard. Some private schools have dress codes and school uniforms. When parents register their children to go to that school, they know beforehand what the dress codes are. So it would be fairly disingenuous to insist that your child be allowed to dress anyway he/she wanted in order to individually express him/herself. But believe it or not, parents actually do this and become incensed when they run into a road block. But here’s the thing: you still have freedom. You have the freedom to find another school for your child and you have the freedom to find another job that has a different approach to regulating smoking among its employees. I think it’s a reasonably simple answer.
Hi there,
While in the framework of a school’s or employer’s terms I agree with you, I may not have been clear that this survey didn’t indicate anything like this.
It was really how do you feel if someone smokes on a Zoom call?
And it is here, when no pre-agreed limitations have been set by an employer or anyone, that I find we are quite intolerant.
We hide this intolerance under ‘norms’ etc. Case in point: But smoking a cigar would be fine and make you look classy in most cases.
What says thou?
I don’t see smoking anything as classy, shaare. My grandfather and my mother both died of cancer and both were smokers so I’m coming at this from a biased position. From my perspective, some things are “right” and some are “wrong” and as such the idea of tolerance allowing those “wrong” things to be done becomes moot. Let’s go back to smoking. Would I forbid smoking under all circumstances? Not at all. If someone wants to smoke in his own space and time, then that is his prerogative. The fact that he is doing it in his own home is only part of the equation here; there is the question of “time”. He is smoking on an office time on Zoom and the company for which he works evidently has a policy of no smoking… period. So, he needs to honor the company’s policy during the Zoom call and smoke when the calls ends. Freedom to do things is an interesting concept. I’m free to cut my lawn with a gas mower… right? But I’m not free to cut the lawn at 3 a.m. when my neighbor is trying to sleep. My freedom does not trump my neighbor’s freedom to sleep. Whatever one’s views on smoking might be (or even recreational drugs might enter this scenario), the company has the right to insist upon its policies being followed during working hours if it involves the company being present physically or cyber-wise. I guess that’s how I see it, 🙂
Its interesting reading your reply for many reasons. I just started writing a blog. I find it therapeutic I guess. It relaxes me. What I am curious to know is how would you feel if someone did smoke in a zoom call with you, knowing their company is fine with this?
I’d be okay with it.
Addendum: I’m also Canadian, shaare. Born and raised in Ontario and now in my mid-70’s living in the US but still pensioned via Canada pension and a teacher’s pension. We live in a rapidly changing world (and in my view.. changing not for the better it would seem). When I was in university we were encouraged to question everything and to freely offer alternate points of view. Today’s educational system does just the opposite. And we’ve both witnessed the hypocrisy of the Trudeau government regarding the rights and freedoms of hard-working Canadians to protest unwarranted mandates. Now we must be in lockstep with the government, with Big Tech (or be censored or shadow-banned), with the Teachers’ unions and so forth. Freedoms are being rapidly eroded.
I thought that giving you a thumbnail sketch of who Kerygma is (to a degree…haha) might help in sorting out some of my opinions. Take care.
My name is Antoine, by the way.
You see, when talking reasonably we get to agree between you and me that smoking on a call if not against the organizational rules is fine.
The first post I wrote to this blog addresses the reasons which I believe to be propping up the 87% against smoking in a zoom. Its incredible how fast to judgment people have been trained to be thanks to the snap judgment nature, nay, requirement of those little black slabs everyone holds dearly in their hands all the time.
People think they’re past Nazis but if one thing psychology proved, anyone can be moulded into one. The worst part is how people wrap themselves in the blanket of our western history and feel immune to any wrong doing. Not understanding that intolerance disguises as norms is still intolerance.
I had a discussion with my daughter yesterday about this.
She said, initially, that she wouldn’t think it respectful because its bad for you to smoke.
So I said, hence what you feel is good is respectful and therefore allowed?
She got the point that when you’re not hurting anyone as in the example of the zoom call smoking, forcing our beliefs unto others is intolerance. She didn’t see at first, because of that blanket I guess.
I had to unpack it a little then she got it.
She told me 80 years ago it would have been why black people can’t sit in the front of the bus.
And the normal folks would go ‘its customary, its norms, etc’ not really wanting to see it for what it was : intolerance, racism in this case.
What was missing from the initial post were the qualifiers. Once those were established, we found common ground. Good to meet you, Antoine.