Should Companies Interfere with our Personal Lives?
By Nate Feldman
In class today, we were reading about companies that had a policy of firing workers that smoked during their free time away from work. Although it is good to encourage a healthy workforce, my initial reaction to this policy is that it was wrong for a couple of reasons. First of all, the main goal of any company is to have worker's perform the things they need to do while at the office or wherever they are working. What they do in their spare time should be completely separate from that. In addition, the idea that the company is monitoring your habits away from the office seems kind of creepy if you ask me. I personally value my time away from my work as just that: my time. Some might say it is good to promote a healthy lifestyle, especially if the company says that its objectives is encouraging good health. The problem is telling people not to smoke is just the beginning. People will also have to monitor how much sugar they eat, how much exercise they do, or how much fried food they eat. We can encourage people to be healthy, but we can't coerce it. It is for these reasons that we should not have draconian policies in place to prohibit people from having habits we don't approve of, but can't really do anything to stop.
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