If the image of you standing in the street in the middle of the day sucking on a cigarette after riding an elevator from the seventh floor isn’t enough, here’s another incentive to stop: six days.

Yup, a Japanese company is granting non-smoking employees a whole six days of extra paid leave, after the non-smokers complained they “were working more than staff who took time off for cigarette breaks,” reports Telegraph:

Tokyo-based marketing firm Piala Inc. only introduced the non-smokers’ perk in September, but employees have been quick to take advantage.

“One of our non-smoking staff put a message in the company suggestion box earlier in the year saying that smoking breaks were causing problems”, said Hirotaka Matsushima, a spokesman for the company.

“Our CEO saw the comment and agreed, so we are giving non-smokers some extra time off to compensate”, Mr Matsushma told The Telegraph.

Apparently resentment grew because the company’s head office is on the 29th floor, which means a smoke break lasted around 15 minutes instead of what should only really take about four. So the non-smokers were getting a little bleak. Typical.

Located in Tokyo’s Ebisu district, Piala Inc.’s CEO Takao Asuka explained why he decided to implement the suggestion:

I hope to encourage employees to quit smoking through incentives rather than penalties or coercion.

Well, almost immediately after the fact, around 30 of the company’s 120 employees booked off the additional days, but the good news is that the incentive did work: four people gave up smoking. At least during work hours, that is.

Feel like a smoke? Me too.

[source:telegraph]