Zak Gunter took on a smoker at Health Canada for lighting up where she wasn’t supposed to, and the smoker won.
Gunter, 24, was stunned when he lost his job with a fire-alarm testing company as a result of a confrontation with a public servant who had been smoking near the main entrance of Health Canada’s Jeanne Mance Building at Tunney’s Pasture.
Gunter’s troubles began near the end of his second day at Jeanne Mance, on April 7, when he noticed yet another smoker, a couple of metres outside the lobby’s main doors, puffing away beside a No Smoking sign. He says that, as he was working in the lobby area and the main doors were in constant use, he had to put up with continuous bursts of cigarette smoke and odour from groups of smokers who were huddled near the entrance. The weather was pretty crummy both days that he worked there, with snow, rain, wind and cool temperatures…
As he had done on eight or nine other occasions with other smokers over the two days at Jeanne Mance, Gunter rapped on the window, got the attention of the woman, and pointed to the No Smoking sign near where she was standing.
But unlike the other smokers, who he says sheepishly took the hint and finished their cigarettes away from the main entrance, the middle-aged woman gestured at Gunter to leave her alone. When she came inside, she confronted Gunter and gave him a piece of her mind.
She told him that his rapping on the window frightened her and that he had no business telling her what to do.
When he arrived for work the next morning, Gunter was told by Siemens to leave the premises because the company was investigating his “altercation” with the woman. The next day, Gunter was told that he had been relieved of his job. When Gunter defended his rights as a non-smoker, he says a Siemens supervisor told him, “I don’t care about your rights.”
Forget reason, forget law!
One of the pitfalls of working for a temporary agency is that the placement does not have to follow any law in dismissing you.
Life sucks but the anti-labor laws enforced by so many years of right wing rule has left so few rights for the people.
Not letting people smoke outside either? When will liberals stop?
A fire alarm testing company probably needs smokers more than non-smokers.
More BS from the But Nazis.
Good, a freedom hating lib loses his job.
Cripes! What a lot of cigarette Nazis.
Can’t kick the habit, eh?
“…a Siemens supervisor told him, ‘I don’t care about your rights.'”
I wonder if the supervisor is a smoker. A little revenge perhaps for his feeling of being oppressed?
I’d fire his ass for wasting his time confronting smokers all day.
Mr. Fusion is right. Never mind temp workers, but any worker who is still under probational period, 60 – 90 days, needs to keep their head down. Until then, a company feels it cannot risk any bad PR. I don’t agree, but that’s the way it is.
I don’t think that the Butt Nazis are strictly “commie left wing liberals,” but come in every stripe.
A couple of weeks ago I was at a conference in NYC, called “The Left Forum,” and during breaks, there were plenty of smokers outside. If these people weren’t progressive liberals, there are none!
SO DON’T GENERALIZE, you only lose your credibility!
I have a feeling this isn’t over….
I’ve found that smokers tend to be the rudest people on the planet. Keep the habit to yourself. Keep your butts in your ashtray, and stay away from me with your disgusting habit.
We have a city mandated rule for our company of 50feet from all entrances, because we participate in a healthy company campaign. Most all the smokers would huddle right outside of the door during the winter and the smoke would blow directly into our cubicle area whenever the door opened. We finally had them move to an area in the parking lot with a butt canister…but for some reason the smokers cannot get it through their head that putting paper trash into the container is a bad idea. I’ve had to put out 5 fires that were smoldering/flaming inside of the canister.
What other addiction is it OK for someone to force you to experience something, something some are allergic too? Then get irate when everyone else who doesn’t share that addiction expresses concern for their comfort. You made the choice to smoke. Deal with it and the consequences.
I found that people who make unfounded generalizations are by far the rudest. What assholes.
=)
The Jim Crow laws against smokers have gone overboard. Glad this happened the other way and the smoking Nazi got canned instead.
If he would have tested alarms instead of meddling in other peoples business, he would have still had a job.
In my town the stupid outlawing of cigarette smoking in bars made all the bar people stand outside the bar and smoke. If they let them smoke inside the bar, then the smoke wouldn’t waft up into my living room.
Stop trying to fix the smoking problem. Leave people alone and the problem will fix itself.
Quoting Mark Twain “Quitting smoking is easy- I’ve done it hundreds of times.”
I think the guy probably bitched about more than just smokers. Probably a convenient excuse to can the guy.
I like the smell of skunk. Actually I think I’m addicted to it. If I don’t spray myself with skunk odor at least 10 times a day, I get the jitters and cranky. Health Canada says that inhaling low molecular weight thiol compounds are bad for me, but I don’t care. They also say that inhaling second-hand low molecular weight thiol compounds are bad for the people around me, but I don’t care. People are allowed to drive cars and make me breathe exhaust… right?
I was told not to come to work smelling like a skunk or I’d be fired, but my union rep got them to back off unless all the smokers were fired for stinking like stale cigarettes at work. Their awful cigarette stink makes me choke, and if it weren’t for my skunk odor addiction, I would quit spraying just to get rid of their cigarette stink.
I can’t spray myself inside any more though. Pain in the ass if you ask me… I have my rights you know. But fair is fair so I spray myself in the smoking area outside. It was a struggle every day cause the smokers and me tried to get upwind of each other, but now they’ve gone somewhere else… thank the gods! Their stink made me sick and they also say that second-hand smoke can give you cancer.
To JIMR:
they say Marijuana is bad for you too.
yet, Vioxx was supposed to be GOOD for you.
So, that negates anything “THEY” may have said.
I am a smoker. I curtail my habit to myself, without breaking the rules. If I am outside, smoking, and see a NO SMOKING Sign, I move to where there are no signs.
Its a Courtesy.
Both for ME, and others.
Some people are just Not Courteous.
Some are just plain stupid.
There are a lot of each. If people can’t extend the same courtesies, then we have a situation, which can develop into Anarchy.
If both sides would learn this, maybe there wouldn’t be sides.
Mr. Fusion certainly is NOT right. I mean really. Do you want to be told who and under what terms YOU can employ for every job?
This guy was harassing the customers (tenants) of his employer’s customer (the building management). He was an absolute idiot, an obnoxious one at that, and his impulse to direct the lady’s actions was an authoritarian impulse.
I took a comparative politics class as an undergrad and in an effort to describe what political culture is, the professor told an anecdote about a time he went to a public sauna in Germany. He changed in the dressing room, wrapped a towel around his waist, and went to sit in the sauna. He was very surprised when one of the other men in there came to him and tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to the sign on the wall, which indicated that that sauna was a nude sauna, and his towel was not permitted. The whole class laughed about how alien the impulse that drove that German man to tap on the professor’s shoulder was.
Our (US) political culture is better than that – more libertarian and (small -r) republican. If we are slipping down to an authoritarian level, that’s a seriously – even profoundly – bad thing for everyone, left right and other.
Re: #18, “If people can’t extend the same courtesies, then we have a situation, which can develop into Anarchy.”
Exactly dennis. That’s why I stand outside a restaurant and spray myself and well away from the door, before going back in.
I hate tattletales. Good riddance.
Um, brm… the tattletale didn’t get fired…
He got fired for not telling her it in French.
“Gunter, 24, was stunned when he lost his job with a fire-alarm testing company as a result of a confrontation with a public servant ….”
I think everyone is missing a fine point here that the person he was confronting was a PUBIC SERVANT. Public servants are God’s chosen people and it is a given that they do not need to follow the same rules as us ordinary serfs. Anyone doubting this fact only needs to look at the actions of the California State legislature recently who increased state taxes by the largest amount in the history of the United States rather than reduce the pay or benefits to any state workers.
It is very clear who they work for.
JIMR:
Well, good for you then. Glad you can at least approach your addiction with an adult attitude.
#20, bob,
I wonder if your first name is Neil.
Mr. Fusion certainly is NOT right. I mean really. Do you want to be told who and under what terms YOU can employ for every job?
So you disagree and then confirm my points. Which do you want it to be?
Ya know, this whole Anti-Smoking is disingenuous BS. The Health arguments of second hand smoke are nothing but untrustworthy junk science with the conclusion predetermined.
But going after it making the claim that Nicotine should be a controlled substance along the lines of other highly addictive drugs that are a substances that effectively take away your free will, now that’s a justifiable argument instead of lying through your teeth.
#29 – Breetai
Perhaps people want to breathe fresh air…
Two days in and a temp is causing verbal altercations (no matter what the reason) in the lobby of your company??? Of course he got canned.
End of story.
This happened in Canada, it was not a just cause for firing…he will get money, Siemens will pay (must have been an American).
The guy would have made even more had he been on the other side of the river in Hull.
That being said, I am a lifelong non-smoker, smoke makes me feel ill. I have never once asked someone to move, this guy who did is a f’ing tool.