Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

I hate the stink of cigarette smoke! So if you're a smoker reading my blog, yes, this is a rant about your fellow smokers. I have an urge to lump all you smokers together in this rant, but I know that it'd be a huge generalization and would do injustice to some very considerate pleasant smokers.

I've been "blessed" with a very acute sense of smell (check out Sensory Integration Disorder), which means I smell some odors way before anyone else notices. I'm the canary bird of this stinking world. And believe me, it stinks! I get headaches when anyone uses cleaning detergents or sprays in the same room (may it be large as a football stadium). Some smells are easy to avoid and I've adjusted to life by simply not going into the ice cream parlor or other strong smelling places. But there's one thing I find difficult to tolerate - the #*@ing smokers who think that if there's no roof above them it means they're outside and are not emitting foul smells right at the entrance and exit from a building.

While there may not be a roof above you, that smell does not just go away - poof, gone! Those toxic particles remain in the air for a very long time after you're gone. And if more of you stand there at the entrance every single day, that smell never goes away. That stink you leave in the elevator when you leave is absolutely intolerable to some of us non-smokers. Not to mention, working next to you, is like putting on an ashtray for an oxygen mask. That stink clings to your clothes, your breath, your body. It does NOT go away just because you smoked outside.

How did this even come about? I work here in a trailer, outside the building, across the smoke-shack. The governmental smoke shack, where your tax dollars are at work. Believe me, if you sat here all day and saw what I see every day you'd begin to rethink this strategy of accommodating all smokers. There's this one lady, that I swear to dog, she must work a whopping 15 minutes inside the building, because the rest of it, she's right across our trailer with a cigarette in her hand. And I'll be darned if WL and I did not count 27 seconds and 31 seconds between each of her cigarettes. She's one of those seriously addicted, who is out there at 7am smoking on her own, without any company, or in blazing heat of 94 degrees farenheit smoking one after the other. She's a fixture in our backyard. She waves to each guard that drive in their cart around the building on a regular basis. They know her. Who doesn't?! What I want to know, she gets a government salary, a killer benefits package (including medical insurance) - our tax dollars - for working 40 hours a week, yet I see her out there 35 hours a week. Are we seriously paying her to smoke??? I find it difficult to believe that her bosses believe she does any valuable work when she's hardly ever in the office.

Now if she were the only one, this wouldn't be a worthy post. But she has friends. Many of them. Avid smokers who keep her company through the day. I think the only positive thing about this woman is that she's so obese that she has to sit down in the smoking shack. But there are others, that apparently cannot stand her hysterical laugh every five minutes, so they stand on the ramp to the back door to the building. And yes, that is the ramp that I must enter the building several times a day. And that is where that smoke smell annoys me to no end. One day I feel like taking a can of some nasty smelling detergent and spray it right there and see if anyone says anything to me. I dare them!

Then there's the subcontractor who works with us. Smokes right under our window, so we can't open it through the day (this was particularly intolerable when our air-conditioner broke). Then he puts out his cigarette (God forbid these smokers put it out in an ashtray provided in the smoking-shack ten feet away), and comes into our trailer emitting odors of stink all around him. As pleasant as he may be in person, I find that stink so off putting that I can't even smile to the man when he comes in.

There's a shopping mall in our town, where kids, and I'm talking 13 year olds and 15 year olds, smoke right at the entrance to the mall. I stopped entering from the front entrance. I can no longer tolerate entering the smoking tunnel to enter the food court. I lose my appetite not only from the smoke but seeing so many clueless kids light up. Where are their parents? Smoking, too? Where's the legal system that doesn't allow selling cigarettes to minors but does nothing to stop minors from smoking - especially in public!

So all the research out there has proven time and again that smoking is bad for you. What will it take for you to take this seriously and find an addiction program to join and get rid of this deadly habit? Your kids getting ill from second-hand smoking? Your father dying from lung cancer? Your loved one suffering in the hospital with a ventilator? (all of which I've witnessed) Do you honestly think only old age brings disease? Have you never seen young kids suffer from second-hand smoke afflicted diseases? Do you not realise that this addiction is labeling you as a Smoker, a weakling, and an inconsiderate selfish human being? Of course you realise it. And you're all angry at us non-smokers who judge you this way. Screw you! You're digging your own hole, it's not our #*@ing fault that YOU had chosen to live this way. Go ahead and ask every ex-smoker and they will outright tell you that they cannot for the life of them understand why they smoked for so many years and how they no longer can enter a bar filled with smoke. I know, I'm married to one (an ex-smoker, not a bar).

Your habit is annoying and making us angry passive smokers in this hostile environment. Why does the workplace accommodate you and give you those 15 minute smoke break, yet check their watch should a non-smoker leave their desk for 5 minutes? And how come no one ever checks how MANY 15 minutes smoke breaks you're taking through the day. Because we all know, that you, the addict, cannot possibly live on just one 15 minute smoke break in the morning and one in the afternoon. You abuse the system and have no qualms about it, because god forbid someone takes you up to task and you'll shout in innocence, "But I'm allowed 15 minute smoke break" - as if that's really all you take every day.

You know what, it's a useless post, because the seriously addicted will never see themselves in this post. They're in denial (and outside smoking right now). They don't look at their watches. They don't look at our disgusted faces when we pass them. They just don't care if they stink the elevator. All that matters in the world to them is that tobacco and the toxins they inhale. Heck, they don't even care about having their kids watch them die in pain from a smoke-related illness. They just don't care. And I hate people who don't care.

<. /End Rant>