Are you really attempting to equate dying from an asthma attack to falling off a building, Liberal? Or just dying from an asthma attack brought on by arguably avoidable environmental pollutants such as cigarette smoke?
I’m equating walking into an environment that you know will kill you with walking into an environment that you know will kill you.
Hear Hear! Excellent Liberal, and though Monkey With a Gun’s post was a little bit extreme I can understand totally where he/she’s coming from.
If you really want smoke-free restaurants campaign for them. More and more people are coming round to the idea now and there certainly seems to be a large lobby group in most places. But don’t whine and bitch about somewhere you chose to go. If it’s really that much of a danger/ annoyance to you then just don’t go there!
People don’t understand the difference between “non-smoking” which all these restaurants comply with, and “smoke-free” which few can comply with unless the facilities are completely separate.
I’m a smoker, and while I feel sorry for people who can’t handle smoke, they need to understand that they are going to get some of it if there is any smoking allowed in the building. That’s just the way it is.
I’d like to see restaurants open as private clubs so people could smoke (or not) to their heart’s content without bothering anyone else.
Hijack!
I note use of the word “dingiest” in the OP. From context, I understand that the hostess was ding-y, like Chrissie on Three’s Company. On the other hand, if I were to encounter that series of letters standing alone, I would probably read it as din-jee-est, as if something was grimy or dingy. Yet I can’t think of any other way to spell these words more clearly… Is this just a grim reality I must face? :eek:
Okay, well, it was interesting to me.
Me too!
And I am very glad to live in a city where I can have my dinner, my beer, and light up a cigarette when I’m finished eating.
Course I never did think it was the government’s job to tell a restaurant or bar owner whether or not they could allow smoking inside their establishment.
I am stunned by the dumbassedness of this comment.
An asthmatic walking into a restraunt is equal to someone walking on a ledge? Idiotic.
Folks, I realize this is the pit, but really, lets calm down. I started the post with a disclaimer about hey, smoke if you want to. My problem was with the hostess who sat us right next to the smoking section. I don’t have any jedi mind powers or anything to keep the smoke away when she tried to put us there. There wasn’t some kind of star trek force field keeping the smoke away. I also said that at a later date, when I spoke to the manager I was told that policy is to place people as far away from the smoking section as possible when they request it, and there was plenty of room away from it. To me, the situation goes back and forth between humourous and grating. The point was, it shouldn’t be that hard to get a table in a no smoking section and normally it isn’t.
So to recap:
[ul]
[li]smoke 'em if you’ve got 'em[/li][li]The hostess didn’t follow the restaurant’s policy in seating us[/li][li]I never said anything about government intervention or smoke free restaurants or anything[/li][/ul]
On a bit of a hijack, I really didn’t expect so many replies, and such a wide variety of responses from the board members (yes even here). 
Its kind of odd, because I’ve been lurking for so long and then slooooowly starting to post, so I suppose I have a better feel for people here than they have of me, since no one really knows me, as of yet. I had a bit of a gripe, wrote about it, and until some insanity started, felt better. So, hows about we all take a nice deep breath (be it of “fresh” air or a drag of a cigarrette) and move on.
Calm down? Guess you’ve been lurking in the tame topics. This is mellow for the Pit.
And she doesn’t have any special powers of perception to read your mind that you have such a reaction to smoke. It really is just simple enough to say that the hostess bears some responsibility to answer to her customer’s request and as the person with the medical condition, you bear responsibility to be a little more clear to people what you are requesting.
Normally, when I go out and am asked which section, I specifically ask to be seated in non smoking, as far away from smoking as possible. For whatever reason this time, maybe the excitement of the night out, maybe because this has never been a problem before at this restaurant, the cavet wasn’t added. She did the exact opposite of company policy, which is seat the people who don’t want to be in the smoking section far from it, not right next to it, and then move the patrons laterally when they ask to be farther from it, while still keeping them right next to it. That’s pretty much a faux pas on her part, not mine.
I’ve seen some of the insane meltdown threads, and oi the mishegas can get rather … scary.
Bravo, Quadgop. Monkey with a Gun has no place telling people off about their allergies, especially because he most likely doesn’t have any allergies himself. If he did, he wouldn’t be such a coldhearted asshole about it. I’ve had severe year-round allergies since I was a year old, and it has made some aspects of my life hell. I can’t enjoy a nice campfire, or walk through a field of wildflowers without suffering for days afterwards. For non-allergy sufferers, imagine this: Try to remember the last bad cold you had, and how sick you felt. Now imagine having this cold every day, 24 hours a day, for your entire life.. That’s what allergies are like for many people. Antihistamines help me a little, but I still have a lot of problems. I’ve also been getting shots for 15 years, and only in the past year has there been any improvement. My mom shares many of my allergies, including a severe peanut allergy. Even smelling peanuts triggers an athsmatic reaction in her. Monkey with a Gun, allergies are no fucking joke. If you think we’re just a bunch of whiners who sneeze and sniffle a little, start doing some research. People can and do die from their allergies. Don’t presume to know what you’ve never experienced. Oh, by the way, my last allergy test showed an allergic reaction to tobacco.
Thursday Next, I totally understand where you’re coming from and I feel for you, but I do agree with other posters that you ought to have stated your situation to the waitress from the get-go.
It seems very important to you to be the correct one in this situation. Although I agree with you that she should follow company guidelines as the employee, as a person with a serious medical issue it is always (no matter where you are) your responsibility to be sure you communicate your needs to people. In this situation, you did not. Giving away your responsibility to someone else (as you seem to want to insist on doing in this situation) seems hardly worth it to be able to say “it wasn’t MY fault, it was hers.”
Oh well, I guess it would have been worth it while you were gasping for air and reaching for your epi-pen to be able to think “It was the hostess’ fault, not mine.” When it comes to your health, usually one would rather be safe than the person who was right.
So, uh, do you usually employ simple adverbs like “away” in a manner that is totally contrary to their normal usage, and even inconsistent from sentence to sentence, or are you just revising your story to something that people are more likely to sympathize with you about? :dubious:
Speaking of idiotic dumbassedness, have someone read to you what a straw man is. Walking into a restaurant is no big deal for an asthmatic, and I never said it was, Dipshit. The big deal is walking into a restaurant WITH AN OPEN SMOKING SECTION and taking a seat in it somewhere.
Indeed. To put it bluntly, if you are entering a restaurant where smoking is allowed, you will be exposed to at least some smoke particles. If contact with these particles leads to a high chance of you dying, then if you choose to enter that restaurant knowing that smoking is taking place you have nobody to blame but yourself if you subsequently die.
Oh, really? So let’s say the town said athsmatic person is in allows an open smoking section in all it’s restaurants. If this person is supposedly looking out for their own good, this means they would never get to go to a restaurant. What about other situations where they encounter cigarette smoke and it’s unavoidable? Say, walking down the street, passing a smoker, and inhaling some “smoke particles”? If they have an athsma attack on the street and die, I guess then they had nobody to blame but themselves for leaving the house, huh?
What you’re saying is equivalent to saying that if someone with very fair skin goes out in the sun and winds up with skin cancer, it’s their own fault since they were at high risk. It’s bullshit.
Well, obviously if they are in a situation where the cigarette smoke is unavoidable, or in a place where they could not be reasonably expected to encounter cigarette smoke (a hospital room, for example), then if they die it is through no fault of their own. If your hypothetical person, however, saw a person smoking on the street and intentionally stood next to them when they could easily avoid the smoke, then subsequent death is their fault. And if they know that entering a restaurant with an open-smoking section will likely lead to a severe asthmatic attack, then they should not be surprised when they have one.
Er, yes. If they know and understand the risks of sun exposure, weigh those risks, and choose to go out in the sun anyways, then yes, it is their fault. This doesn’t mean they deserve cancer, simply that it is a direct and forseeable result of their freely chosen actions. Incidentally, this example applies rather directly to me. I have ridiculously fair skin, and having received several extremely severe sunburns through my own negligence (the worst being the result of swimming for 8 hours in the Gulf of Mexico with a single application of sunscreen in the morning), I shall be very surprised if I do not at some point develop skin cancer. And when I do develop it, it will be my fault.
The town where I live allows open smoking in all its restaurants. (It also requires a non-smoking section, which I find somewhat silly, as I can smell smoke from a long way off and just a little is all it takes to ruin the taste of the food.) Some of the restaurants have chosen to be smoke free. Those are the ones I patronize.
Uh, were you paying attention to the pretty little picture Thursday next painted for us? The smoking section ran horizontally from one end of the resturant to the other. Therefore, in order to be moved farther away from the smoking section, the hostess would need to move Thursday next and friend vertically. Otherwise, she wouldn’t in fact be moving them away from the smoking section at all, she’d just be moving them to a table further away from the previous table but still the exact distance from the smoking section.
If I could draw you a diagram in this context, believe me, I would.