riddle me this.

Ok, so I worked for a small company of maybe 10 staff total. One guy is self employed yet doing the same job as the rest of us. Over the years our bosses have been complaining about cigarette butt's on the car park floor and haven't even bothered to provide bins etc to place them into. So after years of nagging some of us including myself have managed to kinda give up the habit but have turned to vaping. Now we have been told no vaping inside of the buildings and no vaping during working hours either and if caught then we are to expect punishment. Fair enough, however this guy who is self employed has been told by the bosses that he is an accepmtion from the rules because he is self employed. I'm struggling to see the difference here in workers equality and how the rules and signs can vary between workers in the same building. Also administration are allowed to smoke during hours because there jobs are different from ours. Am I being daft, or is it that my bosses are just on one big power trip.