Minor Smoking Rant

[thesummerqueen]

I'm going to post the FB thread that inspired this to shorten the story slightly:




For those of you who don't know, I'm "Rachel".

Beyond what I already said in the thread, I'd like to explain a few things about allergy sufferers.

Most of us aren't like the yahoos you see who complain about stupid little things and expect others to cater to their whims in order to avoid their own discomfort. Those yahoos are merely the vocal portion of the allergy suffering population, OR, in the case of some poor peanut allergy sufferers, people who have been hung out to dry by the media. (Stories about accommodations made in schools for kids who have extreme nut allergy problems have been particularly vicious).

Most of us are, in fact, quite willing to allow you all to indulge in your favorite foods, vices, and activities without a murmur of complaint. After all, we have our own vices and habits that might be distasteful to you as well.

All that we ask is that you do the decent, humane action, when alerted to it, to minimize the contact between us and the allergen you are bringing in by choice. You are, of course, not obligated to do so.

Most of us don't ask for much. In my case, while the ideal situation would be for my coworkers not to smoke during work hours, the only thing I ask is that they do not smoke in the bathroom out in the warehouse, which is connected by vent to the bathroom and cubicle corral I work in. They shouldn't be smoking in the warehouse anyway, yet some people continue to do it, possibly to hide the extra breaks they are taking. I assiduously avoid situations I know will be smoky in order to allow my friends to indulge their habits. If I make the choice to go outside onto a balcony with other smokers, I understand that is my choice, not theirs, and thus I will have to take my health into my own hands. I do not ask them to put out their cigarettes.

But at work and in some other situations, we are not there by "choice" and it is not fair that you should subject us to something that is not only distasteful, but discomforting in the extreme and sometimes dangerous. Taking a belligerent and unsympathetic attitude towards this only alerts me to the fact that you lack goodwill towards your fellow humans. I don't expect you to know and quit everything and anything that could possibly bother someone...but when you immediately defend your own disgusting habit which could be relegated to some place where it doesn't affect me, you reveal yourself to be an absolute cock.

You see, you don't "NEED" to smoke. I DO need to breathe. And despite that life-affirming fact, I'm not asking you to quit...simply to be more respectful and considerate. It is, perhaps, a mark of how free (or not) a society we really are that we have to bitch about not being allowed to smoke in certain public places for the health reasons of all.