Why do restaurant employees smoke so much?

I've worked in several restaurants and noticed that an amazingly high precentage of the employees smoke. This includes the lowly kitchen workers up to the managers.
I once asked a server why this was. She told me it was because it was such a stressful job. That answer seems to fall short as I do not think it is necessarily much more stressful than many other jobs.
Is it that they are generally uneducated? I think that less educated people smoke more. Is it that they do not make a lot of money? Smoking seems to have a negative correlation with income.
I'm reminded of one "Everyday Economics" articles on Slate.com. Restaurant workers tend to be young and unmarried, which is correlated with smoking.
How about this? Do these workers resist delaying gratification? The immediate pleasure of smoking overcomes the long term benefit of health. Servers recieve their money immediately each night. They do not wait for a paycheck. Does this type of work select for people who prefer instant gratification?
Deferred gratification is connected to economic success and education, so does that help to explain the apparent relationship between restaurant employees and smoking?

 

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I think you basically hit it with that last sentence.

 

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I would have to say that restaurant work is stressful, when it isn't completely boring. But the workers most likely smoked before getting this type of work. Deferred gratification certainly seems like a likely scenario. I also noticed that everyone working in restaurants were pretty much party hounds as well. It would be an interesting scientific study.

 

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Same with the military. Go to any building on any base, and see if there's not people on the smoke pad smoking. Partying seems to be the main source of entertainment, too.

 

http://www.statcan.ca/english/studies/82-003/archive/1998/hrar1998010003s0a03.pdf
Canadian study of smoking vs occupation.
33% of Service workers smoked. They lagged slightly behind the blue collar workers who had a smoking prevalence of 28-43%.
43% of miners smoked. Thats understandable as their job is very stressful and probably selects for risk lovers.
White collar workers averaged 18%. The document does not really try to explain why the numbers are the way they are.

 

I think with the military, there is a "smoke em if you get em" type rule. And if you don't smoke, well, keep working. In some restaurants it is the same way, when things get a little slack in the kitchen, smokers will duck outside to smoke, the nonsmokers have no such incentive. If they try to do the same thing, they're just standing around looking nonproductive.

 

I've seen it estimated that the average food service worker inhales the equivalent of a pack of smokes (Second-hand smoke) in an 8 hour shift. If that's the case it would
explain their collective addiction.

 

tru dat...

Also, cash in hand (for waiters especially) makes smoking easy. If your pulling in 100 or 150 bucks a night in tips... what's $5. I'd be willing to be that people who have jobs where they are paid on a daily basis with cash smoke more than people who have jobs that pay direct deposit to bank accounts.

 

My dad teaches adult education. In other words, he teches people who dropped out of high school. Only two people in his class don't smoke. Maybe there is a link between stress, situation, economics, education and smoking.

 

I once read of some study, where the researchers studied deferred gratification in children. They gave each child one marshmallow and told the child that if they did not eat the first marshmallow after a period of time they would be given a second marshmallow. Some children ate the first marshmallow right away and some waited for a little while to get the second marshmallow. The children who waited ended up being better students and scored higher on the SAT.
So, if we consider smoking to be an indicator of a personality that prefers immediate gratification, then we can assume that smokers tend to be less successful in the academic/employment realm. As we can see they often end up in low skill jobs such as food service.

 

Interesting point of view. I personally don't find cigarettes gratifying, but that was interesting.

 

I would have thrown the marshmallow to the ground and found something better to do. I hate marshmallows. Although if the object were something that I did desire? I'll never know, cause I'm not a kid anymore.

 

there's an exception to every rule. I'm one. I don't smoke and have been a waitress for years. Also, the day that I don't have to wait tables will be a happy, happy day.

 

I work in a cafe, and i dont smoke, but thats because i never have done. The reason alot of my workmates smoke when theyre off on their break is becuase put simply - the public are a complete bunch of wankers. Complain this, complain that, they think your some sort of human sub-species, and dont realise somehow that they will be doing their own unfulfilling job on Monday, with the same morons complaining to them about fuck all (no salad cream? i dont give a shit!). Cafe/Restaurant employees smoke alot becuase it calms them down, in a job that is actually quite stressful.

 

You must be to some seedy places then because I never see em smoking.

 

I didnt think of food smell. I will add that being in a nasty kitchen all day does leave you smelling like an arse.

 

I live in Vegas of all places, I think I should know if employees smoke.

Then again, here's my input:

I've seen 95 year old ladies (really old) with oxygen tanks, who are smoking cigarettes and playing slot machines.
I see some of the older ppl who work in grocery stores come out occasionally for a smoke.
If you have ever been to a Vegas casino, the stench is simply unbearable. Worst of all, even worse than dying from second hand smoke, your clothes smell of cigarettes.

I call for a ban on smoking in any public places. If we can't walk around naked, we shouldn't be allowed to smoke either.