what if I posted "No Smoking" signs outside a cafe I don't own?

The fake cough is usually very obvious. Such as someone that pointedly looks at your cigarette and THEN coughs. Or as I mentioned, the people that do it when they see an unlit cigarette and do the cough bit.

And some guys wince or their eyes water when they see someone else get kicked in the 'nads. Are they faking it too? :dubious:

They have not experienced any harm. Just like a person seeing my unlit cigarette has not experienced any harm.

It also isn’t a very good analogy, since often what happens is they see the cigarette from a distance and then wait until they are near you to give the fake cough, usually in conjunction with a dirty look. If it was simply an involuntary response wouldn’t it happen immediately?

Not half as rough as it is for the people that have the temerity to start douching it up the instant I find a smoking-permitted place and try to smoke in it.

Allternatively you could just fuck off somewhere else and whine there.

What if the smoke from the smoking area is drifting into the non-smoking area? Smoke doesn’t tend to remain stationary. How about if I have to walk through your cloud of smoke to get inside.

What if I’m obnoxiously loud in a small restaurant? Is it OK to ask me to dial it down a bit? I’m not breaking any laws. (And should my response be “fuck off somewhere else and whine there”?)

Why is that important? That makes it OK for smokers to add to the smelly and annoying things in life? “He’s being a bigger asshole, so it’s OK if I engage in assholish behavior!” Yeah, that’s an important point. :rolleyes:

Smokers get enraged by a (perceived) fake cough. Meanwhile, non-smokers had to put up with (easily prevented) polluted air for decades. Air that’s dangerous to asthmatics. Pardon me if I can’t muster up much sympathy for you poor persecuted smokers.

Right. You have to walk through a cloud of smoke to get somewhere. You absolutely must walk within 5-10 feet of a smoking area to get somewhere. Plus, being outside, the smoke dissipates quickly, so the only way you’ll inhale anything of any consequence is if some smoker shotguns you. But hey, if you admit to that you wouldn’t have anything to complain about, so you’re free to ignore reality as you see fit.

As a matter of fact, you may be breaking the law. You may respond in that fashion if you choose to, but I suspect that the owner/manager will have told you to shut up long before it gets to that point.

At least you didn’t say “what about the children!” As for asthmatics, the tiny bit of smoke that they might perchance inhale if they make it a point to push up on a smoking section pales in comparison to other pollutants. Smoking simply isn’t a big deal anymore, except you people like you with your passive-aggressive nonsense. And I don’t want your sympathy. I want you to stay the hell away from me and mind your own business.

Then go whine and cry to whoever writes the code tho move the smoking area farther away from your eggshell ass- they’ll probably do it. That’s why its always “no one shall smoke within x feet of y,” so you and ZOMG THE CHILLUNS!!!twenty-five!!! can safely get to Little Baby Pink-Lungs Day Care without having to smell funny air for even one precious second.
And yes, we are permitted to smoke in the smoking area. Accommodations have been made for you- restrictions have been placed on us. We’re living with them, so must you.
Cigarette smoke isn’t asbestos, for pete’s sake. Your body works to remove it and does so pretty quickly. However many ppm you’re absorbing is worked off by the time you’re done frothing.
You know what? I don’t even SMOKE anymore and haven’t for years. But this sense of entitlement really pisses me off.

So is the smoke drifting far and wide (annoying and endangering the health of everyone in a thirty foot radius), or is it condensing into a noxious cloud right by the door (clearly betryaing its nefarious designs on you, personally)? I’m going to need you to pick one.

I’m betting my smoke could never drift out of range of your righteous indignation. :rolleyes:

If someone likens your loudness to abuse or torture, then yes, that would be an appropriate response.

That’s an important point. People who smoke a pack a day for decades and then quit have pinker, healthier lungs within a day. What kind of turnaround do you non-smokers think your lungs have?

So far as the cancer/emphysema/etc. issue is concerned, I think it’s really principally about people who are employed in a place where tobacco smoke is present routinely.

What smokers seem to be missing is that this is not about righteousness or crap like that. Smoke is nasty. Period. Replace each reference to smoking in public to “taking a shit in public.” It’s not that my having to sit there smelling you taking a shit is going to kill me. It’s that it is noxious.

Would you go around taking a shit in front of people and then call them self-righteous whiners when they object to it?

So is Axe. Do you advocate harassing *everyone * whose scent or behavior you find distasteful?

Sure do. Like through a door a building.

Why do you decide what is of consequence? One smoker standing off by himself? Yeah, not a big deal. A group of smokers standing just upwind of a restaurant patio? A bit different. A group of smokers standing around the doorway on a windless day? Sounds pretty consequential to me.

I may be breaking the law. Or I may not be. The owner/manage may have told me to shut up or he may not have. Regardless, you dodged the question.

It didn’t used to. The point was, that given the chance, smokers, in general, are so selfish that they wouldn’t give a damn if they were doing actual damage to asthmatics. But god forbid someone coughs.

Hilarious. Wanting to breathe air that doesn’t smell nasty and isn’t unnecessarily filled with pollutants is “entitlement”. Wanting to stink up the air wherever you want isn’t. Do you guys even hear yourselves?

Why? Weather conditions are pretty variable. And when the wind does blow, it frequently blows in one consistent direction so there’s a constant stream of smoke blowing into non-smoking areas. Building design is variable. Canopies can collect a cloud of smoke. Buildings can block wind. Sometimes it’s only one person. Sometimes it a large group.

If you really haven’t noticed how the smoke from your cigarette reacts in different conditions, well, that just goes to illustrate just how self-centered smokers can be.

You are strawmanning. The post to which I was responding stated that because an area was smoking permitted, it was invariably appropriate to refuse not to smoke there when asked. This is obvious nonsense. It proceeds by the “logic” that lack of illegality necessarily equates to appropriateness. There are any number or things that are not illegal but are inconsiderate and annoying and which any considerate person would reasonably try to refrain from if possible when asked. You give at least two good examples. It may well be inappropriate to play loud music, or allow children to be rowdy, in circumstances where it is not illegal to play loud music or allow children to be rowdy. The mere fact of legality is not sufficient to conclude that it would be inappropriate to request someone to stop playing loud music, or to keep their children quiet. Nor that it would be appropriate always to deny such a request.

Your talk of “harassment” is a strawman as I never said it was appropriate to harass anyone. But let’s face it, without strawmanning, you’ve got nuthin’.

Can I add (as a note to the terminally thick) that the point that I am making does not amount to an assertion that smokers should always stop smoking when asked, in every place. No doubt despite me saying this someone, perhaps several of you, will confirm your status as “terminally thick” by trying to assert that this is what I am saying, so they have something to attack. But don’t say you are not being given fair warning.

My assertion can be found in the post prior to the post in which Airman strawmanned me. Strangely enough. If you read it, you will find out what I said. If you don’t strawman me, as many are positively desperate to do, you may find that what I said comprises pointing out a fairly obvious logical flaw in a prior post.

You were responding to my post, and no, that’s not what it said, as I pointed out to you immediately.

We don’t decide what is consequential- the legislature does. The legislature has told us where we can and cannot smoke based on findings it has made of health an aesthetic risks. All we’re doing is what we’re told.

Like I said before, you don’t like it- take it up with the legislature.

Are you even LISTENING to yourself?

Every smoker here has accepted the fact that we ought NOT smoke “wherever we want.”

We are maintaining our right to smoke where we’re PERMITTED.

And plenty of people don’t shower, wear Axe, wear Red Door by Elizabeth Arden, or have nasty breath. Do you want to get rid of them too?

Part of living in society is that we accept the traits of others that we do not particularly like in return for their doing the same for us.

And if you walked into and out of work 4 times a day, through a cloud of cigarette smoke each time, NOTHING permanent would happen to you. Nothing that happened to you would even last two minutes.

So I take it you close all your windows when you cook, so as to not offend the neighbors? And I also trust that you don’t drive a car around, right?

Oh, so there’s no difference at all between wearing a perfume that not everybody might like and actually taking a shit in public.

Actually, I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but most people don’t base their public behavior merely on what’s legal. There are other sources of standards for judging public behavior, whether it’s talking loudly, or discussing upsetting subjects in a restaurant, etc.

Depends on the perfume.

That’s not a fair analogy – perfume doesn’t leave behind any residue. I’d argue the smell is the least of my problems if I see someone taking a dump in public.

Sure, but I don’t walk around to different restaurants, looking for someone who’s discussing their syphilis, so I can tell them it offends me and they should cut it out.
Besides which, those standards, while certainly existent, are a bell-curve, with those who do or don’t care to an extreme degree on the outside and most of rational humanity somewhere in the bell.
The fake-coughers and the shrill asthmatics and the people who fan themselves flamboyantly as they walk through the main entrance are the outliers, not the bell, and accommodations for them are not made special.