I was just wondering when it became ok to be so rude to random strangers.
I’ve seen a couple of incidents recently. In the first a woman was walking past a group of office workers who were smoking and she made such an obvious fuss - glaring at them, coughing loudly and waving her hands. She walked into them though, you could see that they were smoking, so she could have just avoided them.
I was walking up to a tram stop and a woman was smoking. Another woman stopped to use her phone and was giving the smoker dirty looks, very obviously. Again, the smoker was there first so the phone user could have stopped 10 metres up the road if it bothered her that much.
I was sitting outside a coffee shop, there were ashtrays on some of the tables (so it was clear that smokers may smoke there). Two men were sitting, smoking while they drank their coffee and a woman sat down on the table next to them and started complaining loudly to her friend about how disgusting smokers are - she could have sat at a different table to avoid them.
All of these incidents have been in the past couple of months. The smokers have just ignored the aggression in all incidents, maybe they are used to it.
I smoked for a couple of years, around the time I was at Uni but quit many years ago, mainly because it was so expensive. I have a live and let live approach though, so don’t have an issue with other people smoking (as long as they aren’t standing next to me blowing smoke in my face!).