Smoke and Doors

As a means of full disclosure - I don’t smoke. Sure, I tried it and thankfully it didn’t take. I don’t have anything against smokers. Now, I don’t want to be around smoking, especially when I’m out to eat, but I certainly don’t hate smokers – smoking just isn’t for me. The debate rages on about going smoke free in our city and state and frankly that conversation is for people more qualified and intelligent than me. I’m just a guy who notices things.
I have two observations about smokers. The first is this: for whatever reason it is completely acceptable in our culture to lambaste someone for smoking. I mean you can just go off on someone and everyone seems to have that look on his or her face like, “yeah, he’s got a point there.” We’ve all seen it. Your friends find out an acquaintance or co-worker doubles as a smoker. The person in questions doesn’t seem to fit the profile and someone lets them have it. The tirade doesn’t stop with the health ramifications no, the rant goes to talk about appearance and quickly hits on what their smoking says about them as a person. Wow. But, that’s acceptable. You can call a smoker stupid. No one will stop you or tell you that’s not nice.
The second observation is smoker behavior. Like most office buildings, mine is non-smoking and the outside of the building, regardless of time or year or day, always sees a healthy gathering of smokers. What’s interesting is watching smokers exit the revolving doors of the building as they come outside. As a smoker makes their way into the door the cigarette appears in their mouth with Copperfieldian speed and like Superman in the phone booth – boom that stick is glowing by the time the fresh air hits them – all just as they appear outdoors. It’s impressive. One minute a guy is walking in the door, two pushes of the door and his mouth is on fire. The guess here is that these folks want to maximize their break time and the city breeze makes lighting the cigarette a little challenging.