Private Benjamin....smoking

[MidnightCitrus]

I'm just watching Private Benjamin, and i cannot believe all the smoking!! everywhere, the bars, the airports....

did they ever make a sequel?

I'm 52 and my first job at 16 as an office junior at a Corrugated Cardboard factory everyone smoked in the office and my last job of the day was to go round the office with a tray and collect up all The ashtrays of the desks empty them in a metal dustbin in the yard and then wash them ready for the next day. I dealt with the smell by smoking while I did it
People smoked everywhere when I was a kid in the 70's the headmaster used to smoke a pipe and the staff room was always a fug of smoke if you had to take a message to a teacher. The teachers also smoked while doing playground duty. It was normal
Until the Kings Cross Fire in the 80's? Smoking on the underground was also normal

I went to Indonesia 18 years ago and there was a smoking section at the back of the plane!

Have you watched True Detective? It made me want to start smoking again and I quit almost 10 years ago.

There was a smoking room I saw once at an airport (I think Dubai?) that was a glass box in the middle of the terminal. There didn't appear to be any air filtration system so it was entirely filled with swirling grey smoke, occasionally revealing a head, or the bright shirt of one of the poor smokers encased within. Looking in through the glass walls was like a mystical dream sequence from an 80s film.

You could smoke anywhere in the 70s. In fact, young people who didn't smoke were regarded as a bit unusual. I started work in 1972. I used to smoke in the tube and train on the way to work, smoke at my desk, smoke in the canteen and smoke in company vehicles. This was all totally usual. When I went to hospital I smoked in the smoking/tv room. I've smoked my way through many a flight as well. In restaurants you would sit down and light up. Cinemas and theatres had a blue haze hanging over them.
Different times indeed.

Private Benjamin doesn't surprise me as much, but I saw Bridget Jones on the TV recently, and I was taken aback by how much indoor smoking there was in that.

It seems so odd now that people used to smoke everywhere! Whenever I find another classic movie from my childhood (80s and 90s) for the dc to watch we are amazed at all the smoking.
I also have tons of old photos of my mum and friends parents. They have cigarettes in their hands in almost all of them. In the park. The local dance school. Mad!.

I'm 50 so I have loads of memories of smoking being everywhere.

I remember when BA had a smoking section in the back of the plane in the 80's.
And traveling to France and there was always a cloud of smoke at the Air France ticket counter and the one for Alitalia.

I grew up in the US and my high school used to have a smoking section at the outside gardens. You would see both students and teachers hanging out there. One of my teachers always had two unlit cigarettes behind his ear ready for break time.

Cars used to have small ashtrays.

I remember that at my first proper job in 1989, you could still smoke at your desk but it changed in 1990 and you had to smoke at a designated smoking room. The owner of the company I worked for was always in there and she had the best stories and gave out great advice. I sat in there just for her words of wisdom (I barely smoked) and got a pretty good promotion out of it. There's an episode of Friends where Rachel pretends to be a smoker in order to get in on bonding with her boss. I'm proof that did happen.

Saying that, I was watching John Travolta in "Urban Cowboy" recently because I live in the city where it takes place. I was amused to see how much the city has grown since 1980 but it was when he was throwing back a beer while driving that had my kids freaking out! Open alcohol containers were banned several years ago

It's in the 1:40 bit.

Smoking used to be very usual back in the day, everywhere... I remember my grandad being in hospital in the early 1980's and he smoked on the ward...my mum smoked in bed when she had myself and my siblings in hospital in late 60's and early 70's. Unbelievable now!

I’ve been watching classic eastenders in the drama channel. As well as all the smoking in pubs and shops and the laundrette etc., Pat and Frank Butcher were running the B&B and Pat was smoking while cooking and serving breakfast. Serving breakfast with cigarette hanging out of her mouth

@mrswhiplington

I remember when they allowed smoking on buses. If you had to sit upstairs you would get off and your clothes stunk of smoke. I've never smoked but I remember as a child, my dad used to send me to the shop to get his cigarettes for him. It was totally acceptable then. He used to let me unwrap the cellophane off them and take the little bit of gold paper out of the top of the box. I was a strange child.

Oh my god, me too! That top bit of cellophane was ace. I’m sure I made it into a little bed for ... fuck knows what actually.

DH was a police officer back in the day - late 70s, early 80s.

Everyone smoked in the station, in interview rooms, etc.

You weren’t really supposed to smoke on the beat or in the police cars, but everybody did, apparently.

When I first went out to work (in a corporate office in London) a lot of the male managers used to smoke cigars in the office. You can imagine how the smoke lingered in my hair and clothes! I also shared an office with 3 other women who all smoked. This was not uncommon.

I can remember smoking being allowed upstairs on buses, in cinemas and theatres, on trains and on train and tube platforms. As well as in cafes, bars, clubs, pubs and planes. It was the norm at the time.

Its so weird when you look at the kids films from the 80s,the amount of people who smoked.

And the old Eastenders and Corrie,everyone smoked eveywhere.And you actually forget Eileen smoked.

My french teacher used to smoke in class. She had a cigarette holder too.
Old head at primary school had a pipe.
Smoked upstairs on buses. Non smoking in restaurants was just one side of the room smoked and the other didn’t.

When I had my first dc my nan was reminiscing that when she had her first dc (my dad) she'd settle down to feed him and light a cigarette to smoke whilst he was feeding.

Everyone smoked at my first office job (except me) it was a running joke that the supervisor would drop her fag ash either on my head or in my in tray 😁

My late mum used to say quite openly that the only craving she ever had in four pregnancies was the one she had with me - it was menthol cigarettes.

I'm old enough to have gone to secondary school when there was a student smoking section.

I'm in my 50s
I remember at school home time the ice cream van parked near the gate used to sell single cigarettes to the school children so they could smoke on the way home.

And in the bars and pubs you could buy fags or even the machines that sold single fags.

When I went to 6th form college in the 80s we had a smoking room.

Also remember smoking on planes, buses, trains.

I miss smoking but not the smell on my clothes and hair

We were allowed to smoke in the 6th form common room at my school. (One of the main reasons I never went in there - didn't want to feel like I'd been kippered).

One of my lecturers at university used to chain smoke while lecturing - he'd open the windows either side of the lecture theatre, and march continually from one to the other and back, flicking ash out the window as he got there. I had several tutors who chain smoked during tutorials, and in my first job, people smoked in the open-plan office.

I miss smoking, too. I loved smoking. I found it so enjoyable and relaxing.

I remember visiting a boyfriend in hospital in the late 90s and going down to the smoking room with him so he could have a fag. The same hospital now does not allow smoking anywhere on the grounds technically, although you see people wheeling their drips out to smoke in the car park, and have to walk through it to get to the front door.

I remember smoking in hospital as a late teen. I'm 42 so not all that long ago.