Posted on 05/30/2002 7:07:00 AM PDT by Just another Joe
|
By Heidi Rauch-Webb /Oswego Daily News
|
|
The Oswego County Energy Recovery Facility has gone the way of airlines, hospitals and most shopping malls in the country: no smoking in their facility. Deputy Superintendent Frank Visser said that though only about 10 out of 30 employees at the ERF are smokers, the issue was a serious one. "Our lunch room was also our smoking room and it's very small," he explained. "People who don't smoke couldn't get away from the smoke." Visser said that there had been some complaints to the health department and a few weeks ago Michael Rosen, Deputy Health Commissioner, and an assistant visited the facility and came to the conclusion that controlling the smokers was not feasible so they designated the building as non-smoking. "The new policy is that people who want to smoke must do so 20 feet from the building," Visser said. There were some disgruntled employees but Visser told the assembled County Department of Public Works committee last week that some of the smokers have no one to blame but themselves. "Some smokers were smoking in non-designated areas," he said. "I told them that it takes only one person to ruin it for the rest of the employees." Visser said the decision is final after the recommendation went to the county Legislature's Health committee. "It's a done deal," he told DPW committee members as they offered suggestions on how to correct the problem. "As a smoker, you have no rights. If I smoked, I guess I'd just quit." |
Before I started working, he told me that he "was allergic to perfume. And for me to refrain from wearing it at work."
Go figure.
Due to excessive taxation without adequate representation: Smokers should have a nation-wide three day walkout!
Smokers can not understand why someone would be so full of hate. I'm sure that you, like all human beings, must satisfy some uncontrollable urges too, or we'd be knee deep in some very nasty stuff.
I don't hate you for it. I do pity you for your irrational hatreds though.
LOL, SheLion we've finally agreed on something!
However, those uncontrollable urges are satisfied in private and don't dump their residues onto other people. A small, trifling difference--but a real one.
Heh! I can't STAND him, and he is over 3,000 miles from me. I think he and King are related.
Pray they never do start taxing idiocy, you'll be walking around wearing a barrel.
I just hate their smoke and feel it should be allowable to shoot them on sight.
Your posts resemble open running sores. I can visualize your face contorted with hate for all those people who do things of which you disapprove.
If I didn't dislike you so much, I'd pity you.
Yes, but slowly but surely my wife is eliminating them one by one during the past 16 years. Just a few months ago I started wiping the excess water from the sink after shaving. I know she has a list but thankfully she complains about only one thing ata time. I figure by the time we been married 50 years I will be perfect.
Setting "fair smoking policys" are fine. But when there is a policy BANNING smoking, that is not fine.
I don't see where the smoking was banned here. I see a town official who tried to make one small space work for both smokers and nonsmokers and I see the smokers abused the compromise.
Having a smoking section and non-smoking sections are the way to go. And if a business bans smoking inside the building, that's the way it is today. Let them run outside the door to grab a cigarette. But when one policy is put into place against smoking, then others follow.
I don't see where this town did anything differently than you suggest
There is NO justification in making a person go 50 feet from the building to have a cigarette. Unless it's to save face for the boss about what he has done to his workers who choose to smoke.
Well yes there is. If the doors and windows of this place are normally open it doesn't do any good to eliminate smoke by making someone stand outside the window or door. In addition smoking outside the building affects those public visitors who also dislike the smoke.
For what its worth: Not wanting to breath smoke is rational behavior. Wanting and needing to breath c smoke is irrational behvaior.
I don't go to bars often but I don't mind telling anyone stranger or not that I hate the smoke from their cigarette. Most don't even realize or believe that others can smell it. Smokers have no clue how bad they smell and how bad they make everything around them smell.
This thread reminds me of a hot summer stunt I pulled as a kid living in a small town. I'd go outside late at night and make a not very loud animal like noise. The nearest dog would bark starting a chain reaction of barking. In a few seconds, it seems like every dog in town was barking, then people would start yelling "SHUT UP" at their dogs then at one another. Quite a commotion over nothing but dogs doing what they do and people doing what they do.
I knew a smoker who worked 17 years for a company that didn't allow smoking in the buildings long before that was common. Nobody had any problem. He went outside to light up. So did all the other smokers. A little consideration does go a long way....
At least my face isn't half as contorted as most smoker's lungs.
If I didn't dislike you so much, I'd pity you.
Instead of pity I'd rather you don't smoke in public.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.