Deny All You Want

What you have isn't a mere sinus infection, a persistent chest cold, bronchitis, post nasal drip or allergies. What you've got is a good case of stupidity and denial going on because you're a smoker. Yah you stinky, hacking piece of trash, you're an idiot if you think those cancer sticks aren't killing you one by one while you greedily suck in your addiction every hour of the day.

OK, so maybe you were diagnosed with any one of those afflictions but that's only because you smoke. All those lovely poisons you're sucking back only serve to enhance and speed up the condition we'll all eventually face called death, however yours is a daily malaise you "just can't seem to understand or shake" which will most likely take you away in a horrible and painful fashion in the end.

Oh wow, am I being a little harsh? I sit across the hallway from a lifetime smoker who is constantly "sick" and spends her day trying to tuck her wet, sloppy, slimy lungs back into her chest after every coughing spasm which racks her body breathless and leaves the rest of us, her audience retching at the sounds we must endure. She's on the phone with clients who must listen to her physically choking on her own phlegm, her hands when she remembers to cover her mouth, are just a breeding ground for all things gross, wet and germy. Then she comes into my office needing information, touching my pens, my monitor, breathing all over me and slurping her insides back in again as yet another fit of coughing overcomes her smoke-filled body.

I know of another smoker who proudly showed me his how-to book on how to stop smoking the day he bought it but the bookmark never made it past the introduction. He reeks of burning garbage after every trip outside which is about once an hour and snapped at me about nagging him when I asked once how his resolution to quit was going.

Hey all you smokers who think it's your own thing so the rest of us needs to butt out, here's the thing: if you didn't litter your butts everywhere, stink up the air for the rest of us, tax our health system because your habit just happens to make you incredibly sick, resulting in a bereaved family left without a mother or father then by all means, smoke yourselves crazy. That bad boy/girl image you thought you'd cultivate? Only in the movies. The raspy, sultry voice you thought you'd use to pick up? Sexy burned up and turned into nasty an entire tobacco plantation ago. If you don't subject me to your disgusting illnesses and sounds then I really don't care how you live your life. But since we've got to sit in our offices and listen to that shit 5 days a week, 8 hours a day I think that it is our business. We didn't ask to be your audience or receptacles of germ spreading, some of us just want to do our work in relative peace and quiet.