There are generally no legal smoking breaks. But according to a survey of 1,000 smokers in Austria, more than two hours of their weekly working time are spent smoking in a five-day working week. If you take vacation and public holidays into account, you get two weeks extra free time per year.
Anyone who works more than six hours a day is legally entitled to a 30-minute break. Apart from that, some employers want to keep track of exactly how often their employees take a cigarette break and also have this recorded as time off – others don’t take it so seriously.
Five smoke breaks a day
In the Censuswide survey (on behalf of online retailer Haypp), 19 percent of respondents said they leave work for a cigarette five times a day. 13 percent go outside four times a day, twelve percent three times. Almost one in ten respondents even takes six time-outs per day.
When it comes to the length of individual absences, five minutes was the most common answer (39 percent). Extrapolated to an entire working week, this amounts to approximately two hours. Some people shorten their normal lunch break to such an extent that it balances out cigarette breaks. However, you can assume that not every smoker does this.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
