I'll miss the smokers

The State of Virginia recently enacted a restaurant smoking ban. This is of more than passing interest to me because of my weekend work at That Casual Dining Chain You've Probably Eaten At Before. A few observations:

Articles on the smoking ban legislation at the Times-Dispatch website drew more comments than usual, but quantity does not equal quality. Boil them down and they amounted to either, "You're a Communist!" or, "You stink! (Literally)"

Now the Communist argument is just silly. There is no doubt that second-hand smoke is a health hazard. Requiring restaurant owners to protect citizens from this hazard is no more unjust than requiring those construction companies to dump their debris down a chute instead of just heaving it off the side of the building and leaving it up to the pedestrians to fend for themselves. Besides, everyone in Russia smokes.

But being a waiter has endeared me to our nicotine-addicted brethren. Smokers are so much easier to serve. Because they have something to do with their hands, as well as a means to satisfy their oral cravings apart from the food and drink they're waiting on me to bring them, they're a lot lower maintenance than non-smoking customers. They're more patient, more relaxed, and not surprisingly, they tip better.

It will be better for waiters in so many ways when the ban takes effect December 1. Better for our cardiovascular health. Better for our pulmonary health. And better for our wallets, notwithstanding the observation in the previous paragraph. Most people don't smoke, and most non-smokers hate cigarette smoke. So if you're a waiter in a smoking section, you're often twiddling your thumbs while your co-workers are waiting on a full section of tables. But the improvement in physical health comes at the price of one's mental health: waiting on hungry, irritable people who'd be a lot more patient if only they had a shot of nicotine in them to calm their nerves.

My son asked me the other day if smoking was a sin. Certainly there's a strong current in Christian ethics, notably in the monastic tradition, that sees any non-utilitarian enjoyment of the created order as a sin (non-procreative sex; more food than is necessary for life). In that stream smoking is a sin.

But there's a lot of people who live in big houses, drive gas-guzzling SUVs, eat too much, and sleep around who seem to view smoking as morally and physically dirtier than prostitution. I was the Host the evening that the smoking ban was enacted, and when I dutifully asked, "Smoking or non-smoking?" the non-smoking guests often reacted with the grace of--I don't know--let's say a French labor leader who'd once again brought the government to its knees with a general strike. Fists raised in the air, a crazed look in the eyes, and the words, "You won't have to ask that question anymore, will ya!"

Smokers are people too.

Comments

[Elliot]

Virginia's the tobacco state or something, right? So that would explain why y'all are only doing this now? We haven't permitted smoking in *any* public place in Manitoba for...three or four years at least. At they were phasing it out place by place for a few years before that.

I mean, you can still smoke outdoors. But it's got to be a certain distance from the doors, too.