Japanese civil servant fined $11,000 for taking 4,500 smoke breaks at work (2 photos)

Smokers are always warned that this bad habit costly, but in the case of a civil servant from Osaka, this is an ominous the prediction came true in an unexpectedly literal form: the Japanese were forced to return part of the salary for all the smoke breaks that he went away for 14 years of work.





61-year-old civil servant at the director level I had to return 1.44 million yen (almost 11 thousand dollars). As it turned out, over the past 14 and a half years, the Japanese was absent from the workplace for smoke breaks a total of 4512 times, and so, according to employers, he wasted 355 hours and 19 minutes of working time.

For the first time on the bad habit of a man and two of his colleagues from Osaka prefectural authorities noticed in September 2022, when the HR department received anonymous complaints from other employees. However, smokers did not heed the warnings of leaders and lied about their habit in a conversation with HR.

The Mainichi Shimbun newspaper reported that the civil servant was recognized guilty of violating the "duty of loyalty" under the Law on local civil service, and the man was forced to return 1.44 million yen from his salary; also as a penalty the following half a year he will receive 10% less. Thorough investigation showed that over the past 14 and a half years, a Japanese man smoked at work 4512 times.



Osaka has some of the strictest smoking laws in the world. the world. Smoking ban in government premises such as offices and public schools, was introduced over 20 years ago, and in 2019 government employees were banned from smoking during working hours.

The reaction of netizens to the harsh punishment was generally sympathetic. Some argue that the need to go out for a smoke far away from the office would lead to the loss of even more working time, while others note that someone spends time at work drinking tea, snacking or just chatting with colleagues, but for this they no one is punished.

A similar case was reported in 2019 when teachers in Japan demanded the return of one million yen from the salary for 3400 illegal smoke breaks during working hours.