Palm Beach County Tax Collector Anne Gannon would like to charge us all with smoking. Gannon announced yesterday that she is going to stop hiring anybody who "regularly uses tobacco products" for jobs with the tax collector's office. Juice finds itself in the itchy position of agreeing with that irrepressible Republican Sid Dinnerstein on this one, who was quoted yesterday in the Sun-Sentinel:
"If you can pick on people because they smoke, you can pick on people because they eat fatty foods. … You can go down a very long list of telling people how they should live their lives."
And furthermore, Gannon says, existing employees who already are smokers will have to pay...[here we interrupt our scheduled rant for a moving trip down memory lane]
um, anyway, will have to pay higher health insurance premiums -- as much as 20 percent more.
Gannon is beginning to strike us as one of those insufferable busybodies, a person who would be no fun at a party, and certainly even less fun at the office. She's already got her staff competing on "Biggest Loser" teams, which presumably means no more doughnut runs. Doubtless her secretaries are taking healthful jogs on their 15 minute breaks, and peeing into cups twice a week. They probably make annoying crunching noises at their desks as they devour calorie-deficit snacks like celery sticks and melba toast, or loudly smack their Nicorette gum. We bet they all use condoms when they have sex and have never jumped off a bridge wearing only a bungee cord.
Thanks, Anne. But you know what you can do with your job?
