Stinky Smoking Colleague

[SniffsAndSneezes]

I work in an office and share a desk with a colleague who smokes. About 3 times an hour he'll go outside for 5 minutes, have a cigarette and when he comes in he absolutely stinks to high heaven, to the point where I'm almost gagging. I'm just so aware of breathing it in, and of that smell going on my clothes and in my hair. And when I go out for lunch he'll be there, 2 feet from the building entrance puffing away, forcing everyone coming in or going out to walk through a cloud of smoke. It makes me so angry!

WIBU to speak to him about it? I unfortunately can't switch desks and sit somewhere else.

How did I cope? I spent the 70's in a fug of smoke. I was teased and bullied at school because my clothes stank. I have asthma and lost both parents to smoking related illnesses in their early 60's.

Thank goodness for the smoking ban.

Also raised in the 70/80s at family occasions i had to leave the house and stand outside just so my eyes would stop running and i could see again.
At uni after a nights work in a pub i had to go home and shower and wash every item of clothing or else my non-smoking house stank.

Anyone else remember long car journeys with both parents smoking? The front windows would be rolled down about an inch to "let the smoke out" while dsis and I sat in the back trying not to be sick.

I was fortunate that my parents don't smoke. My grandfather and his siblings did though so I spent the 70s and 80s watching as his brothers and sisters passed away from lung cancer until finally he did in 1987.

At uni in the early 1990s, before the smoking ban, I used to make sure on a night out I wore clothes that were halfway to being dirty already. Then they could go straight in the laundry when I got back. I never wore anything that needed dry cleaning on a night out as dry cleaning is expensive and I knew they'd need cleaning at the end of the night.

It's not just that smoking is rank and kills the smoker - the rankness and in many cases the illness is inflicted on anyone around the smoker. And if you're not ill yourself, you get to watch other people die slowly and painfully. If people are hysterical, well I'd say that is something to get hysterical about.

"Anyone else remember long car journeys with both parents smoking? The front windows would be rolled down about an inch to "let the smoke out" while dsis and I sat in the back trying not to be sick."

Are you my sister?

Actually, my parents didn't even open the windows, and there were no back windows for us to open.

I'm lucky that my parents don't smoke, but tbh if I'd had car journeys like that when I was a kid I think I'd have vomited early and often in the hope of making the point.

SirChenjin

Probably why I suffered so badly from car sickness.

It was even worse when we went out with their friends. Squashed between 4 of them.

Hideous.

Oh god yes - journeys spent dosed up to my eyeballs on travel sickness pills. Hideous.

weird, my parents didn't smoke in the car, very lucky for us