For a few reasons - [ul][li]It’s my car[]She works (indirectly) for me[]The health effects as far as can be determined are pretty close to zero, especially as compared to the effects of the carbon monoxide from every other car, to which she apparently does not object, and [*]because it’s my car.[/ul][/li][quote]
Again, I don’t see why the empahsis on “he was in his own car.” He was also in her work space.
[/quote]
No, he actually was next door to her work space, with the great outdoors in between.
Damn close to it - like I said, I rather doubt she is going to die from the eight seconds exposure it takes to make change, or hand him a taco.
She can object if she wants to.
As long as she doesn’t object to being ignored at best, or told to keep her mind on getting the order right at worst.
My point is that she is obviously willing to accept a certain amount of risk to her health. I don’t believe there is much, if any, increased risk if one in fifty of her customers is smoking in the car into which she hands the burrito special.
And I believe that is the only basis - health risk - that anyone gets to object to smoking by anyone else. If I am not hurting you, then the fact that you don’t like it doesn’t entitle you to tell me to stop. Especially on my own property, which is what my car is.
I mean, I can drive my car on the public highway, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures in my car. IYSWIM.
I didn’t say it was.
Because it is my car. And the Taco Bell chick doesn’t get to tell me what to do in my car.
Regards,
Shodan
ETA: This is all theoretical - I only smoke cigars, and never in the car.
And yet there are laws against smoking in public places, but not against wearing perfume in the same places. Why is that, do you suppose?
Nope. I actually kind of like the smell of diesel- I guess it reminds me of spending summers at my grandmother’s house, and helping out with the farm. On the other hand, my mother smoked all throughout my childhood, and I still *loathe *the smell of tobacco. I also smell cigarettes a hell of a lot more often than I smell diesel.
It seems to me that the only ones getting their panties in a bunch are the smokers, indignant over the supposed “rights” that the rest of us want to strip from them.
Nonsense. She works for her employer. Providing a service to you isn’t the same as working for you.
You guess wrong. I can smell two things at the same time, and since I drove a car that burned diesel for years, and I’ve been around smokers for even more years, it is trivially easy to distinguish the odors. Even when I don’t want to.
Again with a completely crappy argument. “I bet you don’t even smell the smoke!” Yes, actually, I do. Outside my building, where the Banished must now practice their habit, and the innocent must crash through a crowd of smoke to enter. My panties are bunched by cigarette smoke, not by the sight of cigarettes.
But otherwise, I am now completely convinced. By politely asking the OP’er to refrain from doing something he is not by law supposed to do, and suspected at the time he was not supposed to do, this girl has transgressed all standards of decency and ground her dainty foot in the collective face of oppressed smokers everywhere. Clearly the only thing to do is for the OP’er to begin carrying a large rock in his car, so that he can chuck it through the drive thru window and bean her in the head should she again dare to suggest that he is out of line. I now believe that the outrageousness of her offense really calls for nothing less.
And her employer clearly isn’t bothered enough to post a sign, as the OP has indicated he has seen before. Ergo, this cashier should be aware that her job may involve her being as close as a few feet away from a smoker at times.
If the cashier is truly bothered, she should point out to her employer that some folks are doing it, it bothers her, and it’s illegal. Then they might post a sign, which the OP has also indicated he’s heeded before.
Generally, Taco Bell chick isn’t empowered to deny you service. You’d probably need to involve Taco Bell manager, who may or may not agree with her request.
…? Okay? How is that relevant to whether or not a sign would be effective in this case? The OP pointed out that he has seen signs posted at other drive thrus, and has obeyed them. Even if he chose to ignore them, then the cashier would at least be assured of backup from management if she chose to enforce the policy.
Interestingly enough, this uncertainty would have been completely cleared up (and the health of the worker protected) if the restaurant installed the legally mandated strawmen.
Someone upthread said that smokers have always claimed that they will be happy to put out their smokes if someone asks nicely, and yet this thread shows the opposite. I felt the need to point this out again.
Smokers are now saying that they have the RIGHT to smoke, and nobody has the right to ask them to put out their smokes. This has always been my experience. I’ve never seen a smoker put out a smoke or go elsewhere quietly and politely. Usually they kick up an enormous fuss about how they have the RIGHT to smoke. I’m pretty sure that this is the main reason we have such stringent anti-smoking laws now. For instance, the hospital/doctor’s building I go to has gone completely tobacco-free, and it’s probably because some smokers used to congregate right outside the doors, making it impossible for people who are sensitive to smoke to walk through the crowd. Again, asking the smokers to move or put out the things always resulted in the smokers refusing to do so, and in some cases, in the smokers puffing smoke in the nonsmokers’ faces. Nope, sorry, I don’t feel a lot of sympathy for most smokers.
I’ve met a few smokers who are quite considerate…but I only knew that they smoked because they smelled of it. They didn’t light up around nonsmokers.
While one instance of a smoker getting his taco fix might last a few seconds, one has to consider that this instance is multiplied by the hour and by the shift. One smoker might have the cigarette in his right hand, but many smokers seem to be oblivious that they are using their cigarette hand to pass over change and such. I don’t know how many times people used to move that cigarette very close to me when I worked as a cashier. I don’t think it’s deliberate, in most cases, but it does pose a risk to the cashier.
I have also noticed that smokers often light up before they interact with people. Smoking only looks cool to a teenager, so lighting up before talking to someone doesn’t impress them. Again, I think it’s ingrained habit. They probably started smoking as a teen, it impressed their peers, and now they do it subconciously.
And I feel the need to point out how rarely I’m asked nicely. There’s no sneering in “nice”. And the sneerers can FOAD, if I’m in an area where smoking is allowed. There aren’t very many, after all, so it’s much easier for them to find somewhere else to stand than it is for me.
But see, this exactly the problem that’s reflected in this thread – that smokers (or many of them) are so fucking touchy and so invested in their own persectution complexes that everything becomes “sneering.” If this thread shows anything, it’s that the is literally no way to ask a smoker not to smoke where they are smoking, that the smoker won’t be offended by.
The woman said “Please don’t smoke when you come through drive throughs.” She gave a further explanation for the request – she suggested that cashiers have been burned by cigarettes before. The smoker suspected that legally he shouldn’t be smoking in the drive thru anyway. Seems pretty damn simple to me, but because there is literally NO WAY to phrase the request “Hey, please don’t smoke here” that smokers will not take straight up the nose, she becomes the jerk and he becomes the victim.
For the record, I’ve never said that *the cashier *was wrong. She wasn’t. My rant is directed at people like Lightning and Captain Carrot who insist that it’s rude to smoke in your own car because they might be behind you in traffic and smell it. You know, **crazy **people.
A private car is obviously not, nor have I assumed it is. Are you arguing that both the cigarette and the smoke remain entirely in the car through out the interactions between the driver and the cashier? Because then I would ask how you imagine he paid for and obtained his food through the rolled up window.
If he was sitting in his closed car in a drive-thru, I suppose you could argue that he was not smoking in a public place, just as you could make the same argument if a person were smoking in their own personal plastic bubble while standing in a restaurant. But since the “space” we are talking about is neither the sealed car (the driver’s) nor the sealed restaurant (the cashier’s) but rather the air space in the drive-thru that both must use and breathe, the operative inquiry is whether the drive thru is a public space, not whether the car or even the restaurant is.