September 2, 2003

Smoke This

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Just like our current President Bush and Vice President Cheney called their former oil business buddies together to formulate a national energy policy, so will the smokers of my newspaper get together to formulate a new smoking policy at the paper.

Get this. This was the body of an e-mail which was sent not 20 minutes ago.

• We are going to make some changes to the smoking policy at The (newspaper name omitted). I'd like to pull together a committee of smokers to make recommendations for the design of that new policy. Please send me your name if you are willing to help. I'll gather the names, set a time for us to meet and get back to you.

Let me lay it out for you. Currently, our smoking area is just outside the rear entry/exit of the building, forcing non-smokers who park, or having designated parking spaces like photographers, in the rear of the building to endure a billow of nicotine and nasty smelling smoke. Since I don’t smoke, I would like to exercise my right not to be forced to inhale that nastiness.

I mean, where do these smokers get off thinking they have the right to say where they can smoke and where we, the non-smokers, have to put up with it? It’s like the U.S. Congress voting a pay raise for themselves. The fucking gall!!!

You better believe that I wrote something right back to the author of that e-mail without passing Go or collecting my $200.

It just burns my ass.

- Rich