The "Large" lady in the pub

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So last Saturday we’re in the pub watching the World Cup and the place is packed solid.

Lot’s of people are smoking 'cos it’s still allowed in the UK and I’m one of the smokers…I know I’m a filthy disgusting person :rolleyes:

Amyways this woman a BIG woman weighing at least 18 stones is giving me the evil eye and flapping her arms around like a demented idiot every time I light a cigarette. I ask her what the problem is.

“Your smoke is going to kill me”

I am gobsmacked and before I can stop myself I blurt out “Lady your obesity will kill you long before my smoke does”

The people around erupted in shrieks of laughter and the lady went bright red.

Honestly I felt really awful, I did.
I shouldn’t have said that and if she had belted me one I would have deserved it.
But she didn’t, she just hauled herself out of the pub before I had time to say I was sorry for my remark.

I still feel bad about it.

2

An obese woman, in a pub, presumably drinking, gets mad at you for smoking.

I think I’m on your side. Even with your statement.

She’s in a place where it’s legal, and I presume common to smoke. She’s (from your description) dangerously overweight. She’s in a pub, a place where people get drunk, sometimes people are injured or killed there, or on their way home.

Second hand smoke is no joke. It’s bad. This lady’s potential for heart disease, diabetes, and stroke should be her prime concerns. She has health problems. Possibly glandular, for PC’s sake. Stay the hell out of pubs, bars, taverns, alehouses, wineries, biergartens, speakeasys, and gin joints.

She can’t control your smoking legally (at least where you are). She can control the other factors in her life, yet she chooses not to.*

She needs to live in an environment that best suits her personal needs. She should not try to make other environments suit her needs, other people have rights too.

*maybe she’s sick, maybe she has a glandular problem, maybe she’s big-boned, yadda, yadda, yadda. Your needs should dictate which environment that you choose to be in. The environment you choose to be in, should not dictate your needs to the other patrons.

You don’t like what’s on TV? Change it. You don’t like what’s on the radio? Change it. You don’t like the bar’s smoking policy? Go somewhere else.

3

I was pretty extremely overweight at one point in my life. I’ve lost over 100 pounds and kept it off for 2 years, so I think I can say it’s behind me.

You know something really amazing - nobody ever told me I was fat. Sometimes I would ask friends “I know I’m overweight, but am I unhealthily overweight? Do I look it?” and friends would tell me “Naw, it looks good on you.” I don’t think it was anyone’s responsiblitiy but my own to monitor my weight, but a good dose of straight talk from a friend or a stranger might have been a good reality check. Call it ‘tough love’.

Still, you’re a prick for saying it. I hope it haunts you for years!

4

So, if a stranger says it, he should go to hell for being rude. If a friend says it more politely, it’s constructive criticism?

He was obeying the law of the land, she thinks that the world revolves around her (which could possibly be the case here). His point, while hurtful, is still valid. She is in no position to lecture others in regards to health matters.

PC bullsht always results in a decreased level of objective analysis. How is that good? People’s feelings? If that’s the case, she shouldn’t have been such a btch.

She’s free to do what she wants, so is he. He needs to do his thing where it’s welcomed, she needs to do the same.

5

I admit I was a prick for saying such a hurtful thing, it was totally uncalled for and believe it or not it was out of character. I am a mild sort of person and wouldn’t go out of my way to deliberately upset anyone. My only excuse for saying what I said was the fact that I was so surprised at the cheek of the lady to be critical of my smoking in a place where it was permitted.

It will not however haunt me for years, I’ll get over it.

6

As it should be.

You meant no harm, her point was weak at best. Considering her condition that is.

7

I think I would have to agree with dnooman on this one. It may not have been the highest road to take, but you were not entirely unjustified in taking it. It’s a pretty textbook glass house argument. Whether through medical condition or overeating or whatever, her weight issues require that certain discretion is excersized when considering where to go, what to do there, and how long to do it for. If she is going to further jeopardize her health by knowingly going into a place that is an obvious health risk, or staying there as long as she did even if she wasn’t aware that it was at the outset, then she has no standing in an argument about health. The unmitigated cheek of berating you for smoking in an establishment that allows it is by itself reason enough to lob a little snark back.

8

I think the far classier response would have been for you to say “Sorry, but I’m allowed to smoke in here” and then kept on smoking. Just because she’s fat doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a point about the impact of second-hand smoke on her health (it was stupid for her to complain about it, though). She could have just as easily been thin and in radiant health. Then what would you have said? And also, she didn’t take things to a personal level like you did. So you were definitely more in the wrong.

But I think you realize that.

9

I think we’ve all said reactionary things and I don’t think you’re a prick at all. The large lady can hang out in non smoking establishments if the smoke bothers her that much.

People seem to forget that this is still a legal substance.

10

For now. Give the anti-smoking lobby its way and we’d have pushers on the street furtively whispering, “Psst … wanna Camel?”

11

No, but the context negates any point she might have had, and made her remark ridiculously rude.

She’s responsible for her own health and welfare. If she wants to avoid second-hand smoke, she should avoid smoking venues, or take the time to lobby for change. Expecting a pub full of patrons to modify their behavior to suit her whimsy is ludicrous.

chowder’s observation was extremely impolite, but you can’t expect to behave like an ass to beered-up people in a pub and get an Emily-post approved reaction.

Besides, the remark was also germane to her complaint – it’s not like he said, “Piss up a rope, you old fat whore.”

Sometimes a little public humilation is perfectly cricket.

12

I think you did OK. I mean, it would have been politer to say “I’m allowed to smoke in here” but she knew that, and how rude to keep saying things. If she had such a problem she could go home.

13

I don’t give a shit if she’s size 2, to complain about smoking in a bar is as bad as complaining about drinking in a bar. It’s what goes on in there, lady.

Says Duke, who has hung out in his fair share of smoky bars but doesn’t smoke. I also hate the way my clothes smell after being in a bar, but it’s not the smoker’s problem. I know, as soon as I open the door, what my clothes will smell like later.

14

I believe you on all counts. Look at it this way: you’d have been allowed to keep right on smoking even if you had not conjured up such a witty and hurtful response. We live in a contentious age, made more so, I think, by the new popularity of instant anonymous and pseudonymous internet communication: the results are mixed. In this case, you won an argument and routed an antagonist and perhaps, at best, impressed some strangers with your wit. But it profited you nothing, and cost a fat woman, one whose flaws are more evident but not necessarily worse than your own, more than she could afford to bear with dignity. And that (dignity, I mean) is the last possession any of us expect to lose – people can run out of food and water and shelter and even their last few seconds of time, and still manage to die with it.

Don’t get me wrong: she was inappropriately hostile, and an ego hardy enough to upbraid a stranger for doing something that is explicitly permitted might be expected to weather a little sandpapering. You’re not, on the evidence, a bad man, and she might well have deserved much more chastisement than you offered. But the hostility evident on both your parts makes me wish for a multi-decade regression in the manners of conflict: repressing ill feelings may yet turn out to have been much less harmful than venting them. At least, it kept them from propagating quite so fast.

15

For us stupid 'Muricans, about how much is 18 stones?

And I’m with the “don’t beat yourself up too much about it” crowd. This lady was asking for it.

16

Yeah, but my point is that has nothing to do with her size. She could have just as easily been a thin person making the same stupid complaint.

I disagree. That was why his remark, IMO, was more wrong than hers. Her size doesn’t negate the fact that second-hand smoke is harmful. It’s pointless and rude to bitch about it in a bar, of course. But chowder’s behavior is not excused just because she is fat.

According to your logic, a person engaged in any risky behavior has no right to complain when someone else is doing something that has negative consequences on their health. Guess that means that smokers can’t complain when sick people refuse to cover their mouths when sneezing around them, huh? Afterall, what’s a few viruses compared to all the tar and soot that smokers intentionally invite into their bodies. They should shaddup already.

17

[Eddie Izzard]
No smoking in bars, and soon–no drinking and no talking.
[/Eddie]

Was what you said nice? Hell, no. Should you let it haunt you? Absolutely not. I have the same problem where sometimes, what I’m thinking flies out of my mouth before I can stop myself. Most of the time, what I’m thinking is not very nice. I see you as a kindred spirit.

People who complain about smoke in a place where smoking is legal (such as the woman who once asked me to put my cigarette out when there was an entire non-smoking section available in the restaurant) piss me the hell off. I don’t like it when people fart in elevators, but there’s no law that says they can’t.

18

I am going to weigh in on this - pun intended -
Most of you have seen my pic*, so you know I speak from experience. Yes, the remark was a little harsh, but it was said in the same spirit as the remark the woman made about the smoke. Had it been me, (well, had it been me I wouldn’t have commented about the smoke - I probably wouldn’t have been there in the first place - or I would have been near the door so I could get smokefree air now and then) I may have retorted “yes, but it won’t kill you!” and then bitched to my friends about how rude you were. But really, chowder, given the circumstances, your reaction was within reason.

  • if not, it’s in the “official doper picture thread”
19

252lb. One stone = 14lb. 8 stone = one hundredweight (cwt), not used for human measure but for potatoes, coal, etc. 20cwt (2240lb) = 1 imperial ton.

20

And that topper deserves applause, especially if followed by: “…unless I keel over from your ‘rights’ drifting all over Creation and into my lungs!”