I recall a top-notch instance of passive aggression, just after our city passed a non-smoking ordinance affecting restaurants and bars.
We were entering a restaurant, and someone on his way out decided to stop, light up and expel clouds of smoke in the cramped vestibule (this poor aggrieved smoker couldn’t wait until he hit the sidewalk and so was sending a message to everyone around him that yes, he was a shithead and that laws shouldn’t apply to his entitled self).
Lest we forget, such attitudes were a significant impetus towards the passage of anti-smoking laws. It seems that they still exist.
Of course, there’s a major difference between secondhand smoke (with its proven negative health impacts on millions of people) and peanut molecules with potential to affect vanishingly few individuals.
I recently signed up to this “vegetarian challenge” thing (vegan actually, it turned out), in hopes that they might be able to point me to some vegetable-based food I could get easily and hadn’t thought of. When I signed up, one of the questions in the form was whether I wanted to avoid wheat and/or soy. I said I wanted to avoid soy.
Every single letter they sent me included so many mentions to soy-based meals, if it had been on paper instead of electrons it might have triggered my asthma :smack: Definitely not a good way to convert me away from chorizo!
Are you thinking she made the sandwich on the spot? I’m assuming either she’d made it at home and transported it bagged or wrapped, or the kid had actually already been eating by the time they got to Target.
I missed this before, but how in the world is a PB&J not convenient or portable? You make the sandwich, probably cut it in half, put it in a sandwich bag, and put that in a purse or ‘kid bag’. It’s right there when you want to eat it, if you make it sensibly it’s not messy, and it doesn’t need to be kept chilled the way something with meat would.
Some people, yeah. For some people over the past 10 years or so, a lit cigarette acts as a neon sign that says “free license to let out my inner asshole”.
If I may play devil’s advocate here, it wasn’t necessarily passive aggression or meant as such. I’ve regularly had to remind myself that I can and am able to wait until I’m on the sidewalk to light up as opposed to the escalator leading out of the subway that acts as a giant chimney ever since a lady muttered to herself about me on the way up.
It’s just that sometimes you’ve been having the craving and pushed it back for a while because either it wasn’t allowed or not OK or you simply were in great company and didn’t want to leave, and then you FINALLY have the opportunity to and the pack is in your hands before you’ve even conciously decided to smoke. Then what happens is you light up and puff in a big ol’ drag and let it all out with a satisifed, relieved “aaaaaah”. And it’s then and only then that you realize where you are and notice the people around you.
For the record my allergic friend won’t meet you halfway, because he won’t confront you at all - he’s hustling away from you as fast as he can because he wants to goddamn breathe. Yes, he hates you, but you’ll never know it.
For myself, I also hasten past while holding my breath, because I don’t want to taste your lung vomit. I certainly don’t confront any smokers - it ain’t like their nastiness is news to them. If they’re being assholes they know it already, and my saying something will just invite defensive abuse.
