It's 12:33 AM, I'm trying to sleep, and there's toxic fumes wafting into my room...

The BBQ Pit
1

Forgive any typos, please. I’m writing this in a fit of rage…
Who the hell is smoking on my floor at midnight, the first night before classes start? The fumes are wafting into my room, and into my bed where I can smell their rotten stench. This is doubly bad. First off, it keeps me awake, which is bad for two individual reasons. One, it keeps me from starting the school year off to the best start that it possibly can. I’m paying damn good money for this education. I don’t need you to throw my hard-earned money away. Secondly, not only is tomorrow the first day of classes, but I also have an audition for choir tomorrow at 7:05. This will determine what classes I take. THIS DETERMINES WHETHER OR NOT I TAKE THE CLASS THAT I LOVE, OR SOME BACKWATER “HELP YOU WRITE GOODER” CLASS! This means that I have to get up at about 5:30 to get my voice properly warmed up. Secondly, it’s toxic fumes that are keeping me awake, and my audition is with MY FREAKING VOICE! All kinds of smoke, famously, make people sound like engines that need oil, not a smooth piece of glass that mine needs to sound like on the morrow. Stupid dick. So here I am. Instead of sleeping like a log, which I need to be doing, I’m being kept awake by some inconsiderate arse that is breathing toxic fumes into my room. Dude, you know why grafitti is illegal? Because it’s an eyesore, and people don’t want to look at it. People don’t want their buildings to look like crap, when they make their money in them. You, smoker, are ten times worse. You are like a “walking grafitti maker.” You poison the air everywhere you walk. You make the beautiful air smell like crap. You screw up not just buildings, which can be repainted, but PEOPLE’S BODIES! You know why smoking is such a controlled industry? BECAUSE IT’S A PUBLIC HEALTH RISK! It has absolutely no benefits, save making millions for men and women with the surname of “Morris.” The only reason smoking isn’t banned in this country is that it would be an even greater health risk. Remember Prohibition? There are some things that aren’t illegal because if they were so, they would be doing even MORE damage. Smoking is one of those things. Can you think of how harmul the black market of cigarretes would be? The mob would kill for an opportunity like that. Now, these people that you go around and legally poison, they might not have health insurance. Guess what? YOU JUST HELPED KILL SOMEONE! Oh, you say, it’s legal, right? It’s a free country, right? It’s pricks like you that make reasonable people like me make laws to restrict my freedoms. You give me no choice. I guess that it just doesn’t register in your mind that PEOPLE LIVE HERE! You cannot go around poisoning water supplies with tiny drops of cyanide, can you? NO! Than why can you go around polluting air supplies with fumes of formaldahyde, and dozens of other toxins? I’m TRYING TO SLEEP HERE! Now, I sound like a freaking frog because of your “choice” of a slow suicide. No, it’s not like eating a candy bar. Whereas people actually enjoy the taste of chocolate, nobody EVER actually enjoys the stench that a smoker makes when he/she walks into a room.

To sum up, your smoking puts you own health at risk, puts millions of others’ healths at risk, supports an industry that makes a killing off of killing, puts my health at risk, keeps me awake, makes my voice sound like crap, makes me pay the insurance money to support your addiction, and makes my entire dorm room, MY HOME, the place I go for some solitude, the one place in the city that I can call “mine,” a place of stenches that, to me, are a thousand times worse than the smells of skunks, urine, vomit, rotten eggs, or even black mold. For these reasons, You are now considered by me, a certifiable asshole, and I hate you. Thanks alot.
Bitch.
:mad: :mad: :mad:

Disrespectfully yours,
Soup

2

Is it a non-smoking dorm?

3

Miller, for some reason or another, that post just made me bust out laughing. Thank you for that much needed laugh.

As for you, Soup, I go through this problem everyday with my mother. You have my sympathy. And my full support if you decide to go kick some ass.

4

—Did you get up and ask the person to kindly put it out?

—How did the audition go?

5

This is before the audition.

My room is non-smoking. I don’t think my hallway is, but it might be. Who knows? I have no idea just who was smoking, so I couldn’t really ask them to put it out. But isn’t the reason for a non-smoking room, that you get no smoke in it? Otherwise, what’s the point?

Thanks for the kind words, JimSox5.

I’m off! Wish me luck!

6

Sorry, my bad. I was gonna go dump all of this here cadmium dust I had lying around into the local water supply, but I was too stressed out, and just had to have a pre-first-day-of -school smoke in my room instead…

Also, if you couldn’t get comfy last night, it might have been that pea someone stuck under your matress. :slight_smile:

Sorry! I’m kidding, and I hope it went well this a.m.

7

What about a towel shoved under the door? Would that block it?

8

Can you positively pressurise your room and thereby keep the smoke out?

9

maybe a HEPA filter thingie, I picked one up at wally world for 35 bucks, to get one rated for the square footage of a dorm room should not be to great a financial burden for a college student.

Oh and the world smelling like shit…
Not the smokers, but I promise to lay off the meatball sandwhiches. Trust me, never has my gas smelled fouler.
Of course, the damn Candadians make them. So, BLAME CANADA!
Celine Dion, Brian Adams, Tasty toxic meatball sandwhiches.

10

I think I will get a HEPA filter.

Now that I read what I wrote last night, I concede was a bit over the top. I honestly don’t believe half of what I wrote last night.

No, smokers are not slow murderers, at least not to me. It’s entirely likely that my anxiety was not over the smoke, which I can usually stand, but over the audition and my first day of classes at college ever.

Sorry about that.

Oh, my audition went well. Actually, it was at 10:05, not 7:05 like I thought. My, do I feel like an idiot. At least I wasn’t late, right?

11

Soup, I swear, I want to print your note & slip it under my Asshole Neighbors’ door. I feel for you!

Regarding the previous suggestions:

  • Towel under the door, does work pretty well.
  • Positive-pressure - a good idea which I’ve gotten down to a fine science, & may be cheaper than a HEPA filter: Go buy a “box” fan, maybe 10-12 bucks, and put it in your window - turn it so it’s blowing air into your room, not out. Close your window to the edge of the fan, and your blinds if possible, to close off the opening around the fan as much as you can.
  • HINT: If the fan won’t stay in the window by itself, find a wire coat-hanger or two. Bend/shape them into ‘hooks’ to support the fan (i.e. hooked onto front of fan, and edge of window, or something like that).
  • At the risk of overstating the obvious, just a reminder - DON’T do both of the above, as they are self-defeating.
  • Getting confrontational: Unless your hall is completely saturated in smoke, you may be able to ‘sniff out’ the culprit. Go bang on their door. Make a commotion. Tell them to cut it out or you’ll call the fire department or something. F*ck it, they’re disturbing your peace, might as well send some of that back at 'em.
  • Less nasty, but probably less effective: IF you can find a towel that you can part with, try putting it under THEIR door. Put a big note/sign on their door explaining why you did that, for when they come out of their room next.

MY smoking rant: I was away all weekend. It was 90 degrees in my place when I got home - and that was with most of my windows open… First thing I did was to put up my THREE box fans. Got my ‘wind tunnel’ going, the place was starting to cool down, and… then I got gassed-out by the cloud of cigarette smoke wafting up from my Asshole Neighbors below. ARRGHHHHH!!!

So, a hearty thanks and Fuck You to my Asshole Neighbors, for putting me UNDER SIEGE in my own goddamned house. For leaving me just two choices - I can shut my windows & get broiled, or, put up my fans & get gassed out. ASSholes!
[/partial hijack]

good luck!

12

pZott: I absolutely do NOT recommend that Soup “make a commotion” on the first day of classes, unless s/he also wants to make an enemy. The smoker, whoever s/he is, is new too, and the dorm is hir home too. Soup will get much better results if s/he is diplomatic. The first objection should not be a rant. A person should be given a chance to cooperate before they get threatened.

13

Rilchiam is quite correct - I was so wrapped up in my own rant, I had already forgotten the details of Soup’s situation. I stand corrected.
:smack:
Not a good idea to make a big fuss on the 1st day. You could easily end up w/ the entire hall against you, not just the Gross Air Polluter in question.

(and now you know at least one reason why I choose mainly to lurk…)