any smoking roadgeeks?

[Brandon]

This thread makes me think more of this (at 0:17):

[Laura]

It have encountered it used for heroin, marijuana, all drugs in general, and of course performance-enhancing drugs in sports (doping).

Same here. At least this was the case 10 years ago, when I was in high school.


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[jeffandnicole]

I smoked around 1 1/2 packs in my life.  Basically, that was around the time of college.  My wife absolutely hates smoking (even though her parents always smoked).  She couldn't get them to stop, but man we will have a fight and a half if I puffed on a cig.  Last time I did we were in New Orleans and a few friends of mine were smoking. I had a puff and she saw me.  Oh, we were screaming up and down Canal Street with each other about that one.  (It was about 330am.  A few alcoholic beverages may have had something to do with that).

Between the ages of 16 & 21, I worked in bowling alleys.  Casinos don't even come close the level of smoke bowling alleys had back then - you could barely see one end to the other.  I came home every night reeking of smoke. 

My mom never smoked, but my dad always smoked thin cigars (cheaper than cigs).  He stopped cold turkey when he was in the hospital for appendicitis (early 1980's I believe)...figuring if he could go several days there without one, he didn't need them at all at home either.  Other than a regular cigar a handful of times since, he's never smoked again.

[Scott5114]

Between the ages of 16 & 21, I worked in bowling alleys.  Casinos don't even come close the level of smoke bowling alleys had back then - you could barely see one end to the other.  I came home every night reeking of smoke. 

This will probably let a few people familiar with the OKC casino scene guess where I work, but the casino I work in now is partly made of temporary trailer buildings. Most of these buildings were put up during the early 2000s and over time their ventilation systems have done a nose dive in quality. Their interiors are dark, so it probably does a fairly faithful impression of your bowling alley. Even when I worked in a properly-ventilated casino I still smelled of smoke when I came home; at the new casino, even more so, to the point where when my girlfriend comes home on days that I don't work I accurately can guess which section of the casino she was assigned to based on the strength of the smoke smell.

Even in a well-ventilated environment working around smokers is annoying. Some people seem oblivious to the fact that the smoke still exists when they blow it out their nicotine-hole and will blow it directly in your face, or hold the cigarette at eye level so a constant stream of it wafts into your nose. They don't seem to realize or care that some people working in a smoke-friendly environment might not smoke themselves and find it unpleasant. And because you are doing your job you can't just remove yourself from the situation.

The main irritant for a casino floor attendant, though, is ashes; they get everywhere. There was a constant shortage of ashtrays at the casino I worked at previously, due mostly to the fact that good quality ashtrays are expensive (if I remember correctly the price they were getting them at was something like 12/$100), and careless patrons and employees would knock them onto the floor and other careless patrons and employees would step on them and break them. Many smokers couldn't be arsed to go find an ashtray so they'd just sit down at a machine and get their ashes all over the place: in between the machines, all over the button panel, etc. Ashes would find their way into the machine cabinets and cause all manner of problems, mostly raining down on you when you go to open certain doors or getting sucked into the machine's ventilation system, causing overheating (the inside of a slot machine cabinet can reach 160°F) and bitchy customers when the machine would reboot to deal with the overheat condition. We even had a few fires where someone would leave a burger wrapper somewhere instead of throwing it away like a civilized person and then people would toss lit cigarettes on top.

[bugo]

snip

This is why I hate humans. Livestock are more civilized.

There is a special level of hell for smokers who throw their butts on the ground. Sometimes there will be a butt can 2 feet away and they still throw them on the ground. Then there are the smokers who inhale, go into a building, then exhale. I had to run a customer off for doing this at my last job.

[NE2]

[Alps]

mods, can someone merge this with the other smoking thread?  I can't find it offhand.

Mods, hope this helps:

https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=8530.0

And another merge.

[Laura]

snip

This is why I hate humans. Livestock are more civilized.

There is a special level of hell for smokers who throw their butts on the ground. Sometimes there will be a butt can 2 feet away and they still throw them on the ground. Then there are the smokers who inhale, go into a building, then exhale. I had to run a customer off for doing this at my last job.

Ugh, I completely agree. My in-laws will do this (throw their butts on the ground) and I cannot understand why. Would you throw any other kind of trash on the ground? What makes cigarette butts okay? It's disgusting.

After cringing over these stories about smoking in bowling alleys and casinos, I am so glad Maryland is smoke free inside of buildings. It's weird, though - when I was a kid, more older people smoked in their houses and cars, and it didn't bother me. Now that everywhere is smoke free and most people instinctively go outside to smoke, I can't stand going someplace smoky (like my in-laws' house). It feels so suffocating.


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[SteveG1988]

When i visited a casino in Philly you could smell the smoke all over, compared to a NJ casino, i wonder if PA has lower standards for filtration, or they just don't give two shits where people smoke in the casino in the overnight hours?

[Pete from Boston]

What scares the crap out of me is the concentration of smoking materials and oxygen tanks in casinos.

[J N Winkler]

In regard to Scott's observations about smokers in casinos and their uncivilized behavior, in Kansas the casinos lobbied hard for and received a special carve-out from the state's indoor smoking ban.  The rationale was quite simple.  Gambling is a vice; after talking about the issue for 20 years, the state made a conscious decision to allow this particular vice, and collect revenues from it; why should the state partially rescind this decision by requiring virtuous behavior in a den of vice?

Meanwhile, Nevada does have an indoor smoking ban that applies to every indoor part of a resort casino except the casino floor itself.  It gets kind of tricky to sign the areas where smoking is and is not permitted.

Part of the burden of working in an industry that has traditionally been classified as a vice, and this is true of prostitution and other forms of sex work as well as gambling, is having to deal with a high proportion of customers who feel they are entitled to a holiday from civilized norms in general.

[SteveG1988]

In regard to Scott's observations about smokers in casinos and their uncivilized behavior, in Kansas the casinos lobbied hard for and received a special carve-out from the state's indoor smoking ban.  The rationale was quite simple.  Gambling is a vice; after talking about the issue for 20 years, the state made a conscious decision to allow this particular vice, and collect revenues from it; why should the state partially rescind this decision by requiring virtuous behavior in a den of vice?

Meanwhile, Nevada does have an indoor smoking ban that applies to every indoor part of a resort casino except the casino floor itself.  It gets kind of tricky to sign the areas where smoking is and is not permitted.

Part of the burden of working in an industry that has traditionally been classified as a vice, and this is true of prostitution and other forms of sex work as well as gambling, is having to deal with a high proportion of customers who feel they are entitled to a holiday from civilized norms in general.

In NJ the casino floor is the only non tobacco bar/cigarbar/etc (whatever you want to call it) place that is allowed to have smoking, but it is limited to no more than 25% of said floor, and air filtration is required.

[empirestate]

Ugh, I completely agree. My in-laws will do this (throw their butts on the ground) and I cannot understand why. Would you throw any other kind of trash on the ground? What makes cigarette butts okay? It's disgusting.

I actually know the answer to this. The rationale is that we've always been taught (from back in the day when smoking was commonplace and acceptable) how dangerous it is to discard cigarette butts in the trash can, because of the obvious risk of fire, and that ashtrays must always be used. As smoking became less acceptable, ashtrays were far less often provided, yet the perceived danger of throwing butts in the trash remained.

Now of course, some percentage of butts thrown on the ground is just due to people being lousy, the same types who'd throw the packaging of an entire McDonald's meal out their car window. But a significant percentage is due to a choice of the lesser of two perceived evils: "Well, I hate to throw this on the ground, but there's no ashtray around and it's not safe to put it in the trash. At least I'll try to aim for the curb or the sewer grate, where trash is meant to collect anyway."

And to be sure, there is an easy way to safely discard cigarette butts in the trash by first rolling out the flaming plant material onto the ground and just throwing the paper and filter away. But that wasn't part of everyone's upbringing, because that's based on ashtrays being available.

[hbelkins]

I used to enjoy an occasional visit to a casino, but not so much anymore because of the smoke. Even special smoke-free areas aren't physically separated from the smoking areas, so the entire place reeks of smoke. It's worse on the riverboat casinos.

[Scott5114]

I don't know if there's a particular smoking carve-out for casinos in Oklahoma law, but even if there is not making it "stick" would be difficult because the vast majority of casinos in the state are tribally-run. A tribe is not going to unilaterally convert their casinos to non-smoking because they fear that their casinos would be abandoned by the smokers in favor of a nearby smoking-friendly casino.

None of the casinos I've worked in have had a non-smoking area, but I've heard that they tend to underperform compared to the rest of the casino floor. As a result, they tend to become a graveyard for unpopular machines since the slot managers reason that they're not going to be making much money anyway, so they may as well use it as a dumping ground for the stuff nobody plays (or worse, problematic machines that require a lot of attendant/tech attention).

If smoke bothers you, you can play poker (for whatever reason poker rooms usually ban smoking while blackjack doesn't) or choose to go at non-peak times like the morning or the wee hours of the night during the week.

[GeauxLSU]

I'm thinking about starting smoking. I smoked a pack of Marlboros and I loved it. It's kewl to smoke cigarettes and all the kewl kids do it, and I want to be kewl, you know?

[Brandon]

I'm thinking about starting smoking. I smoked a pack of Marlboros and I loved it. It's kewl to smoke cigarettes and all the kewl kids do it, and I want to be kewl, you know?

Bad idea.  It's not kewl or cool.  Do you like standing 15 feet away from a building entrance in subzero weather to get your fix for your addiction to nicotine?  Do you want to have preventable lung cancer in 10, 20, 30 years?  Do you want people to stand upwind of you so they don't have to smell that shit?

[J N Winkler]

I'm thinking about starting smoking. I smoked a pack of Marlboros and I loved it. It's kewl to smoke cigarettes and all the kewl kids do it, and I want to be kewl, you know?

I wouldn't even joke about this--Stage IV lung cancer is an awful way to go.

[PHLBOS]

I'm thinking about starting smoking. I smoked a pack of Marlboros and I loved it. It's kewl to smoke cigarettes and all the kewl kids do it, and I want to be kewl, you know?

I wouldn't even joke about this--Stage IV lung cancer is an awful way to go.

Not to mention the money that one spends on purchasing cigarettes.  It's a very expensive habit when one totals the purchases plus the long-term health-related costs.

[plain]

I smoke but never cigarettes (can't stand them)... a black n mild once or twice a day do me juuusssst fine. A little greenery doesn't hurt either...

[Rothman]

Hm.  Smells like trolling.

[J N Winkler]

Hm.  Smells like trolling.

Yeah, that's what I thought too, and it wouldn't surprise me if others thought the same thing.  This is why I deliberately phrased my reply in limply matter-of-fact terms.

[plain]

Hm.  Smells like trolling.

Yeah, that's what I thought too, and it wouldn't surprise me if others thought the same thing.  This is why I deliberately phrased my reply in limply matter-of-fact terms.

Who's trolling??? I hope you didn't mean me because all I did was answer the question

[seicer]

No, about the kewl cigarettes.

[hotdogPi]

Hm.  Smells like trolling.

Yeah, that's what I thought too, and it wouldn't surprise me if others thought the same thing.  This is why I deliberately phrased my reply in limply matter-of-fact terms.

Who's trolling??? I hope you didn't mean me because all I did was answer the question

Not you. He is saying that the 14 year old who asked if he wanted to start smoking because it is "kewl" (possible sock) is trolling.