I vote that she just thought you were easily fooled. Most smokers know they smell and do smell it on themselves and each other. Hence the amount of smokers that do not allow smoking in their own homes. I am a social smoker and when I leave say a casino after I have been smoking, my hands and clothing stink and I don’t think heavy smokers ever get used to that.
And as an ex-smoker let me tell you that, in my experience, you’re wrong.
Really. I had no idea just how easy it is to tell smokers because I smelt it all the time. And I thought that people couldn’t really tell or smell it on me, because I couldn’t. I was wrong.
A while after I quit I could suddenly smell smokers at twenty paces and it suddenly dawned on me, that’s what everyone else could smell. I’m really quite staggered how oblivious I was to it.
I can smell when someone has walked through smoke. People who actually smoke themselves are like a glowing, stinking neon sign to me.
What makes me laugh are the folks who are completely appearance obsessed, who would die before going out without having showered and preened for a couple of hours, who use anti-perspirant and mouthwash and perfume so they stink pretty, and then smoke. All you smell like now is smoke. Smoking trumps everything else you might do for personal hygiene.
Oh yeah, the OP - I like the idea of the smoke detector in the foyer. I’d put it up now, before the new people move in, so there is no doubt about whether smoking is allowed in the foyer or not.
Well, the smoker’s moved out and either today or tomorrow the new neighbors move in. According to the building owner (reliable dude), they’re cute female freshman at the university up the hill.
Next update will be to let you know if the building owner’s descriptions of them are correct.
Sweet! A couple of smokin’ chicks moving in! 
Hey, the apartment’s not the best in the city; however, there is a lot to be said for living on a block mostly populated by college co-eds!
“Excuse me, do you two girls have a loud stereo?”
If the new coeds like to smoke after three-somes, will that be a problem?
Well, I met the new neighbors this morning. One’s tall and cute, the other’s not so tall and is quite cute. I didn’t smell any tobacco stench so that’s yet another point in their favor. I’m hoping that my first guess that they don’t smoke is correct.
When my father smoked, I would go to visit him, and come home reeking, and have to wash all the clothes I was wearing and then throw myself into the shower.
Now, he’s in a nursing home 
, and they don’t allow it.
It is that noticeable.
My brother quit smoking a couple months ago. It was quite difficult for him because he runs karaoke shows at bars where tons of people smoke. He borrowed my car for about two months, and when it came back it reeked.
I asked him if he took up smoking again and he said no. He would have told me if he did, and would probably have been smoking while doing so. He said that he didn’t even let other people smoke in my car because it would a) agitate him being an ex smoker, and b) would make me pretty pissed off being a non-smoker.
It turns out it was his gear (mostly the fabric covered speakers and rack) that was stinking up my car. Two weeks after the gear was taken out my car still stinks to high heaven. The smoke transfered from the smokers exhalation, to the speakers, to my car, to my nose. I hate it.
My boss has a talent for picking office locations. The first one (at least when I joined the company) was in the same building as two model agencies (I think it was scr4 who came by and had to ride in a tiny elevator with a bevy of models taller than him). The current one is near two universities, one of which is a women’s university. Top that!
Don’t give up hope. “If she smokes, she pokes” is of course a well-established law, but its inverse is less certain.