Any chance your colleagues all smoke American Spirits or another natural brand? I find much of the nastiness of cigarette smoke comes from the additives rather than the tobacco itself. Pipes and hand-rolled cigs are far less offensive to me.
I have one friend who smokes. Last weekend I drove him and two other friends a few hours to the desert for a party. He didn’t even ask to smoke in my car–he’s not a jerk-- but he did smoke every time we stopped, and just the third-hand smoke clinging to his clothes left a noticeable odor in my car. I put a charcoal packet in there and left the windows down for several days, and it finally seems to be gone, but man. I can assure you cigarettes still stink.
My son’s best friend’s parents both smoked steady and in their house. I remember when the kids were in my son’s room playing with the door shut. I opened the door to check on them and was almost bowled over by the stench in the room. It was a bad stale smoke odor that had soaked into every pore and clothing fiber of the poor kid. Another time I was riding with the family to a hockey tournament when the boys were a little older. The parents “politely” cracked their windows and held the cigarettes outside for the whole 2+ hour ride in the middle of the winter. Their kids were complaining to the parents steadily about their smoking and telling them they should quit. Fast-forward to the teen years and sure enough, my son’s friend took up the stinky habit.
I worked in the offices of a large manufacturing plant in the 80s. Smoking was allowed everywhere at that time. My dad picked me up from work one day and when I got in the car he said, “JC (his favorite swear word phrase - but not abbreviated!) you smell like you’ve been sitting in an ash bin all day!” UGH
When smoking was allowed in restaurants, I always left my jacket/coat in the car so it wouldn’t get stinky.
I worked in an office in NC in the mid-1980s. There was a manufacturing area attached - and many of the workers there were smokers.
They could not smoke on the floor, but the nearest restroom was in the office area. Despite large signs sayin NO SMOKING, the room was vile. And it was the only bathroom available to us.
My husband did not complain that I smelled bad at the end of the workday, but it was pretty awful - and the company did nothing about enforcing its own rules.
Years ago when you could still smoke in bars, a friend who owned a bar was told that his place was going to be “NO SMOKING” by force of law. My friend was pissed off over this and enlisted my aid fighting the law.
For a few months his bar was NO SMOKING, but eventually our fight won and the law was rescinded. The day the law was wiped from the books, he made his bar NO SMOKING and it has remained that way to this day.
I am forever grateful that bars and restaurants have mostly gone to no smoking. WA state banned it statewide so you are safe everywhere you go. ID has not banned it, but most places have their own no smoking policies. I can’t actually remember the last time I went into a place that allowed it. Of course, we aren’t really bar people so I’m guessing you can still find places to drink and smoke if you really want to.
In the early 80s, before California’s general ban on indoor smoking, I had a girlfriend who was 5-foot, 1-inch tall which meant when we embraced, the top of her head came up to my nose. When we got together in the evening I could tell whenever she’d stopped to hoist a couple with her work-buddies because of the smoke-odor in her hair.
When I was an intern (early 2000s),smoking was still allowed in hospitals. We used to have a smoking room next to the arterial surgery ward, because that was where the smokers were. When ever I had to pick up a patient from there for something, I had to change my uniform because of the stench. The (white) walls were dark yellow from nicotine… Horrible.
I remember family gatherings with a foot of smoke hovering along the ceiling. Than my mother would light a candle or two…
To help with the smoke!!
My mother spent a lot of time at the kitchen table, reading, drinking coffee and smoking. I had to clean the ceiling fan over the kitchen table a couple of times a year because the white blades would turn yellow. The paper towels I used would turn brown.
I worked at a full-service car wash in 1985, when I was 18. Cleaning the inside of a smoker’s car was horrible. The windows had a thick, yellow coating on them, and I’d have to scrub them clean.
I’ve heard horror stories from computer repair people about having to work on PCs from homes with smokers. Bleh.
Never had to deal with this myself - we don’t smoke, and my mother did not ever report any complaints about her computer.
Sort of off topic, but related to nasty deposits on surfaces: Many years ago, I worked in an office in a sub-basement of a Federal building. The air quality wasn’t great (not helped by the fact that they were renovating a couple of other sections of the floor. And every week, I’d go in to work on Monday feeling fine, but by the end of the week my asthma was flaring badly.
I bought a big HEPA filter and set it on a table in my cubicle. After a couple of months, the padded cloth divider that it sat next to was a completely different color where the clean air blew. Due to the shape of the filter (it was a cylinder), there was a parabola of much lighter hue, starting right at the bottom of the filter where the air blew out, and gradually widening toward the floor. Everyone was rather horrified at this vivid, uncontrovertible evidence of just how BAD the air was. I remember once touching the wall in the dirty area and my fingertips came away visibly soiled.
IIRC, things got better after a few months when the construction stopped. Of course to get to it, we still had to walk past the doorway on the other side of the hall, with a sign saying “Floor contaminated with PCBs, wear shoe coverings”.
