No Smoking Allowed

This weekend, I stopped in at the local gas station to get gas (at $2.85 a gallon). I went up to the cash register and noticed an innocuous little box sitting on the counter. The items had names like Valiant, and I thought about the movie, which we had just rented and watched the week before. Then I looked closer.

Candy cigarettes have returned. Maybe they never really left the market. However, it has been years since I saw any for sale in this area (east central Illinois). It must have been in the late 1980s when I remember begging my mom to buy me some. Which she did, of course.

I did not have my daughter with me in the gas station that day; she was waiting out in the car. However, if she had been with me, I never would have allowed her to beg me to buy them. In our household, no one smokes and we generally think it's a nasty, disgusting habit. In fact, my grandfather-in-law is now suffering from emphysema--he cannot breathe without the aid of oxygen in little tanks he has to carry everywhere; he has had a stomach aneurysm repaired; and he has had a colostomy. Back in the 1980s, the year he quit smoking for good, he saved up enough money to buy a new truck and a camping trailer. Another elderly woman I knew needed oxygen as well, but she never gave up smoking. She'd smoke through the hole in the mask.

Candy cigarettes are candy, I know. Harmless fun. However, I think that some kids will be tempted to try real cigarettes because they played pretend with the fake ones. I was never tempted, but I can only recall that one time when my mom bought us the candy. The candy tasted like crap, by the way. We were a non-smoking household growing up, so it was probably more of a case of emulating my parents for why I never smoked, in addition to the fact that I think it's a disgusting habit.

Another disgusting thing I see quite often is employees who smoke right outside in front of the establishment. When I see the employees smoking away, it makes me want to go somewhere else. If employees need to smoke, employers should set a policy on where they can and cannot smoke on work property and during work hours. Go to your car. Don't stand in front of the door, or right next to the door, and expect me to walk around you. Don't stand there and gossip idly about other employees or your boss. Even if you are just a gas station employee, it's unprofessional and rude. I have actually refrained from going to places where employees are commonly seen smoking in front of the entrance.

Smokers can smoke if they want to--if you want to kill yourself, go right ahead. Just don't expect me to keep returning to your business if I have to walk past your noxious cloud to enter the building.