You didn’t. As a child you got sick a lot with respiratory illnesses and ear infections, and you went to school reeking of cigs. But you didn’t realize it because you were surrounded by it. The quality of what you ate was often not as good either, because your parents couldn’t taste their food. And we’re probably still dealing with the long term health effects without knowing it.
It’s also fun whe you have to scrape the nicotine stains off the windows and scrub the walls when you finally sell your parents home.
It’s also fun whe you have to scrape the nicotine stains off the windows and scrub the walls when you finally sell your parents home.
I recently bought my house. I thought it was an odd choice for the walls to be done in a pale yellow color, It was only when I started redecorating that I realized it was actually white paint. It also explains why all the rooms in the house have the same carpet, their estate agent probably made them change the carpet when they sold the house because it’s brand new, and the cheapest option.
You grew up in it and didn’t notice.
But after the bans the first thing that stood out is you don’t need to bleach every piece of fabric you took outside every day. The first time I went out, woke up the next day and my clothes didn’t smell… you know, smoky I was very confused. Up until that point I assumed that was just what happened to dirty clothes, I didn’t realize it was all the cigarettes.
My wife tells me that when she used to go clubbing she would come home with burn marks/holes in her dresses all the time.
Being a non-smoker back then was a giant pain-in-the-ass at any workplace too because any smoker could and would take a break for a cigarette once an hour and then so would the manager and they’d get to be buddies but if you were known as a non-smoker you didn’t get a break because you “didn’t need one” I knew dozens of people, especially in healthcare, who took up smoking because that was the time to be social with each other and the managers.
The hospital I worked at caught a LOT of flak when they started making people clock in and out for smoke breaks in the early 2000s. The smokers complained they only took a couple breaks a day for only a few minutes. Within the first month they found out people spent over half their days on smoke breaks.
Lul that happens in my office but it’s small and they either all know each other or are related. I take desk breaks and because I’m the unofficial office IT nobody says anything. Someone tried once, Im magically never available to help them with IT stuff. Word spreads around this office. Even the owner of the company an office over doesn’t say anything if he sees me on my phone at my desk. I know my worth, they know my worth.
Smokers getting better chances at promotion because they smoked with the bosses was standard when I started working.
This was an issue in the military too. The smokers would take their smoking breaks. So I started taking non-smoker breaks. lol
that was the time to be social with each other and the managers.
sadly it’s still a bit true, a friend of mine who was in the same office told me the only time his manager was social was during smoking breaks or after office hours (like at parking spaces etc…)
he quit smoking when i first met him but all the pressure and stuff made him pick smoking again, hope he quits it again.
Wow. Dozens of people started smoking to be outside with the smokers? That’s crazy. That must have been during the denial phase in smoking’s history.
Dozens of the people I’ve known personally and most of this was in the 90s and early 2000s. I was part of the “smoke free” class of 2000 and the anti-smoking education started in Kindergarten for us. Imagine dozens of 5 year olds crying as their teachers explained with songs and videos how the adults in our lives were all going to die horrible deaths and it was up to us kids to educate them and help them quit. In school, at least twice a year. Yet by the time we reached the workforce, smoking was still a big part of the working culture and I watched pretty much everyone I knew with a full time job take up smoking at one point or another.
Growing up in the 1960s, my father was a chainsmoker. I never noticed. It was the water that little fish me swam in.
He quit when I was, I dunno, maybe 12 or 13. Suddenly, I noticed tobacco smoke when I encountered it, and it was revolting. I deeply resented having to work in an office in the 1980s that allowed smoking. I deeply resented restaurants with “smoking sections” that were just a half-wall separating me and smokers. I hated flying, with the stench from the “smoking section” filling my air.
How did I survive? Resentfully.
I grew up in the 80’s / early 90s when smoking indoors was still common (restaurants, buses, etc). You just kind of got used to it.
Eventually I started smoking, and it was less of a bother 😆 (have since quit).
The thing I never could figure out, even as a smoker, was how people smoked in a car with the windows rolled up. It was unbearable even being the one smoking. Even in the dead of winter and negative one million degrees outside, I always had to have a window cracked.
Same here. My Dad was a smoker and I remember sitting on the top deck of buses with him whilst he smoked. Can’t remember ever noticing the smell really. I started smoking myself at 15. Quit about 10 years later. Now I can smell it so clearly. I can tell if someone is a smoker as soon as I get anywhere near them.
