The Air Force was the same way, unfortunately. I don't know if this is still true, but I used to work on the flight line, and it didn't matter if your jet was flying or not; there was always something to do, and if you didn't smoke, you had to go out of your way to hide for a 15 minute break. The higher ups that worked indoors would task you if they caught you sitting around and bs-ing, but they could see you outside smoking and bs-ing and could care less. I know many folks who learned that lesson early on.
Hopefully it's on the way out. I know it seemed far less prevalent during the latter portion of my career. Of course, I had changed job fields at that point, so that may have affected it as well.