So, we who are smokers where I work have sort of an informal “smoking porch”. It’s well away from most pedestrians, it’s covered, and it’s an infrequently used path for people who work in the building.
Up until last week, it was also really freaking gross. People would just chuck their butts on the ground outside the door. There were thousands of them out there.
Last week, I got tired of looking at it. I swept up all the butts, neatened the place up, picked up the rain-soaked and semi-decayed filter remnants. The whole bit. I put up a politely-worded sign on the brick wall - “Please help keep this area clean. Throw your butts away below. Thank you!”
Directly below the sign, I put a small yellow trash can.
This morning, I went out for a smoke, and on the ground, directly beside the unused trash can, there was a pile of about twenty cigarette butts.
Even if smoking was not so expensive, and it didn’t start fires, and second hand smoke wasn’t so dangerous, I’d still hate smokers for the trash they leave on the streets. Butts, empty matchbooks, and cigarette packages belong in the garbage, not on the sidewalks.
Smoker here, I agree. Smokers who can’t read, or can’t be bothered to adjust their aim to land a cigarette in an correct and obvious recepticle and especially the ones that can’t be bothered to pick up when they miss and leave right there NEXT TO THE DAMN CAN…GRRRAAAUUUGGGHHH!!! nothing but a bunch of wet sticky smelly butt burps in the diaper of life is what they are.
As you know, this past winter was particularly nasty. We had one blizzard after another for about a month and a half. All of the snow in the area behind work got plowed into one big pile. As it started to melt in the warmer weather, it revealed thousands of butts. Seriously, thousands. It was severely disgusting.
Based on the large number of butts, I’m guessing some passive-aggressive smoker assumed it was an anti-smoking Nazi that put up the sign and thought they were making some sort of weird point.
Alternatively, some anti-smoking Nazi thought they were making some sort of point by picking up butts from elsewhere and piling them next to your trash can.
I live in a semi-arid area, and my lawn gets seriously dry by the end of summer each year. I don’t endorse throwing butts on the road since it’s still littering, but I’d prefer that to throwing a still smoldering butt on my TINDER DRY LAWN! Seriously, local smokers, open your eyes and look around - don’t burn my house down because you threw to the right instead of the left.
I wonder what percentage of smokers discard their smoking paraphernalia and butts inappropriately? Given that our parking lot at work has hundreds of butts visible on the ground within a mere cursory glance despite cleaning crews picking them up regularly, I’d posit that it must be over 10% and perhaps up to 50%.
Your business should have a policy about this. Where I work, you can only smoke on one side of the building, and pretty much everyone uses the little cigarette receptacle they provided to put them out.
I think 50% is way too low. In my experience, it’s about 95%+ of smokers that will toss a butt anywhere outside. I have met a couple dedicated eco-hippies who carefully disposed of their hand-rolled butts, but I’m sure they’re way less common than one in 20.
Fill the can with sand so it’s an ashtray instead of a trash can. If they have to stomp them out on the ground before tossing them in the can they’re only going to do the first part.
At work, I’ve been trying for years to get one of my employees to stop flicking her butts all over the place. I finally had it under control and then she dumped her ashtray in the parking lot, followed by an “it wasn’t me” to which I replied “So someone else dumped 30 Newport butts right next to your driver side car door in the last 5 minutes?”
Anyways, in winter her excuse was always “I flicked them in the snowbank, it’s not like anyone can see them.”
I’m constantly hearing her say “Well, those could be from anyone” “No, they really couldn’t, there’s not a lot of people who smoke Newport Light 100’s in this neighborhood that stand by the back door and only smoke them half way down”
For a while I started taking the butts and putting them under her windshield wipers. That sort of slowed it down.
My biggest problem was when she was going out of her way to hide the butts from me. She would, literally, go 20 feet past the back door to flick the butt behind a soda machine (where I would see it anyways), when if she would, literally, have walked 20 feet in the other direction she could have flicked in the dumpster like the rest of us.
I wish I could say the title of this thread to every single smoker in my city. When I lived downtown my beagle (rest her soul) and I walked every day. I had a coat rack in my kitchen and one winter day I was all, What’s that gross smell? Turned out it was her doggy coat hanging on the coat rack - it smelled like wet ashtray from all the gross soggy cigarette butts on the downtown sidewalks. Seriously, how freakin’ hard is it to hold a tiny little cigarette butt in your hand until you reach a garbage can, of which there are like 3 or 4 on each block?!
Ironically, I’ve meet a fair number of smoking folks that you’d consider quite outdoorsy, conservation minded blah blah blah that about stroke out at seeing the random potato chip bag or discarded drink can/bottle littering up the great outdoors. But amazingly these folks also didnt give a second thought to flinging cirgarette butts here, there, and everywhere. I always wonder if their yards are awash in butts?
It may depend on your location a bit. In Greener-than-Thou Vancouver, it’s pretty common for people (even smokers) to look down on litter.
When I was smoking, I carried an airtight container to keep butts in until they could be disposed of. (I was never a heavy smoker, so a film canister was sufficient to get me between bins.) My worst sin was sometimes putting butts down storm drains. This was about in line with most smokers I knew.
The thing is, a very small number of people who don’t give a rat’s ass can make a dramatic mess.
I do IT for a property management company, rent in one of our buildings, and get a break on the rent by doing light custodial duties. The building is 18 units and there are a couple of places where smokers congregate by the doors fairly frequently. (I can’t guess how many individuals are represented, but enough to generate occasional complaint letters for the noise and odour.)
There is one person who leaves butts on the ground. (They smoke an off brand, “Mild Seven.”) This person is not actually a tenant, but (99.999% certain) the father of one of the tenants. Butts appear on the ground when he visits - and if he stays for a long visit an occasional annoyance balloons into an incredible nuisance. I can go weeks without seeing more than one but on the ground outside, but this past long week-end I guess he stayed over for some family time. At the end of a 48hr period, I swept up 20 butts (and the foil liners from a new pack) from a single spot in the underground parking, and ten more (plus an empty package) from beside the side door.
Just one prick, and as much mess in a couple days I might expect to accumulate if it were left for more than a year. :mad:
Strangle everyone. My assumption used to be litterbugs litter out of laziness, but I’ve seen enough trash right by trash receptacles to conclude that some people are just douchey.
Passive-aggressive anti-smoking nazis don’t clean up. They’d just put up an annoying sign that said something like “Please clean up your mess. You do not have ‘maids’ here.” And yes, they would put quotes around “maids” because people who write BS notes like that always use at least one set of superfluous quotation marks.
OK, so I know who’s doing it now, and I confronted her about it yesterday. I asked her if she could please put her butts in the trash. She looked contrite, and confessed that she had “missed a few.” She did not, however, clean them up.
Siiiiigh…so I cleaned them up. All spic and span. Tidy. Problem taken care of, right?
This morning, I go out and see at least 10 butts on the ground next to the trash can.
:mad:
I’m not sure what to do at this point. I hate bullshit manufactured drama, but I fear it has already become some sort of weird passive-aggressive rebellion in her mind. Do I go confront her again?
I was going to suggest this, or even better, an ashtray AND a trash can to empty it into. There’s actually a pretty good reason that smokers don’t generally throw their butts into trash cans. Littering is bad, but starting fires is worse.
Next time you see her, don’t mention her filthy habits directly. Tell her you’ve been hearing that management is getting tired of their property looking like a garbage pit and they’re thinking of banning smoking on the premises entirely. The more vague you can be about this, the better. Don’t bring up her behavior. If she brings it up, don’t reply to it, just say vaguely that everyone is on their toes about this. Then finish up and leave quickly before she has a chance to grill you.
