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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To refuse lift to smoker because she smells?

332 replies

florapearl · 23/10/2017 13:38

Obviously not as blunt as that but she lights up just before getting in the car and it stinks. So AIBU to tell her to get the bus if she can't wait?

OP posts:
MaidenMotherCrone · 23/10/2017 15:46

I smoke in my car and non smokers never ask for a lift. Works a treat😉

PandorasXbox · 23/10/2017 15:50

Rather vague there OP. Who is this woman? How often does she need a lift?

victoire1208 · 23/10/2017 15:50

Surely sniffing somebody's faggy coat and hair a few feet away is not as bad as walking along a congested line of traffic pumping out diesel fumes?If you can provide evidence I am wrong I will gladly remove that comment.

FinallyDecidedOnUserName · 23/10/2017 15:51

What’s more valuable to you? The person asking for a lift or your car? Simple.

WhatchaMaCalllit · 23/10/2017 15:54

Not unreasonable to refuse a lift at all to a smoker if you don't want to.
Is there a bit of a backstory to this? Why are you even in this position?

LyingWitchInTheWardrobe2726 · 23/10/2017 15:56

Oh, do you not drive as well as not smoke then, victoire? Or use public transport because buses belch out worse diesel fumes than regulated cars.

Why are you so determined to introduce a 'stink scale'? They ALL stink - car exhaust smell is fleeting, cigarette smoke is not. There's nowhere to go with that argument really. It's not subjective, cigarette smoke really lingers and clings to other people's clothes/hair in a way that car fumes just don't. For some people it will smell worse or not so bad. That's the only subjective point.

LurkingHusband · 23/10/2017 15:56

Nobody has mentioned the 'stickiness' of whatever is in the cigarette smoke and the effect on fabrics yet but I will. It feels tacky and that's possibly why the smell lingers

There are quite a few particulates in cigarette smoke. These fall out and get driven deep into fabrics. As anyone who has washed the net curtains in a smokers house would know.

nameusername · 23/10/2017 15:57

YANBU. Your car, your rules. You might want to phrase it properly or use some other excuse in case she brings up discrimination. If family, be as blunt as you want to be.

victoire1208 · 23/10/2017 15:57

I genuinely don't drive either!Grin

LyingWitchInTheWardrobe2726 · 23/10/2017 16:01

victoire, then those belching buses are ALL your fault! Grin

LyingWitchInTheWardrobe2726 · 23/10/2017 16:02

I didn't know that, LurkingHusband, it would make sense though. I can' remember washing and re-washing clothes several times when I used to smoke myself and it really didn't make a huge amount of difference.

ILostItInTheEarlyNineties · 23/10/2017 16:08

If it's a short journey, I'd put up with a slight smell from my companion.

Is it just because it's your car? Would you refuse to get in a taxi if the driver had been smoking? What if the doctor you had an appointment with smoked? Would you refuse to sit next to someone at the cinema if you could detect a whiff of cigarettes?
What if your child's teacher smoked on her lunch break?

It's a minefield.

RubMyRhubarb · 23/10/2017 16:08

I do love a good smoking thread, but usually can't quite believe what I'm reading. Do the smoking friends of non smoking MNetters not wash their clothes?

If she was smoking in your car, sure, the smell will linger a while, I don't deny that (smoker here) but you want to not give her, a friend, a lift because she will have had a fag before hand?

The people saying they don't allow smokers in their houses, cars or anywhere near them, even if they aren't actually smoking, in some cases including family members... words fail me.

I find it very hard to believe that peoples cars are being stunk out for months on end because they gave someone a lift shortly after they had a smoke. Will you smell it on them during the journey? Yes. Will that smell linger in your car and be "absorbed into the fabric" for the rest of time? No, sorry I just don't believe it.

I don't smoke in non smokers homes or cars even when they've said they don't mind, my mothers house for instance, she wouldn't care if I lit up inside but I still don't. I don't smoke around kids or anywhere else inappropriate, I don't leave fag butts lying around because even as a smoker I hate seeing the damn things dropped all over the place. So I think I'm a pretty "considerate" smoker. But being barred from entering a friends house/car/whatever because I'd been smoking before I got there? Never heard of such a thing.

victoire1208 · 23/10/2017 16:10

I hold my hands up there. Perhaps I'm just desensitised after spending years sitting next to my fellow great unwashed.

ReanimatedSGB · 23/10/2017 16:10

Some people are just whinyarses who want the whole world arranged to their specifications. Often they manage to get their fix of pearlclutching outrage by picking on one specific group to demonize, but they usually have enough spare time to pick holes in other people's behaviour for additional reasons...

NewLove · 23/10/2017 16:19

I find it very hard to believe that peoples cars are being stunk out for months on end because they gave someone a lift shortly after they had a smoke

They really do. I bought a bargain car and ended up having to sell it after 3 months as no amount of wet vaccing or air fresheners took away the smell of the stale smoke. It really is horrible - at least people's farts don't usually linger

User843022 · 23/10/2017 16:19

Smokers don't smell that bad if they aren't actually smoking though? My dm often has a quick one if we've been shopping before getting back in the car and I never notice. I don't smoke.

I'm not keen on people clustered round doorways having a fag, I just think they should get out of the way but I'd never not give a smoker a lift after they'd had one Confused

JacquesHammer · 23/10/2017 16:23

Some people are just whinyarses who want the whole world arranged to their specifications

Not at all. If someone wants to smoke themselves into oblivion they're welcome to.

But my house and my car? Do I want them to my specifications ergo smoke free - well yes, and that isn't unreasonable at all.

MaisyPops · 23/10/2017 16:24

I find it very hard to believe that peoples cars are being stunk out for months on end because they gave someone a lift shortly after they had a smoke
They do. And it's horrible and it lingers.

We went to view a house where thr man was an ex smoker (gave uo 5+ years ago) and the house STILL had an old smoke smell.
We didn't put an offer in.

RubMyRhubarb · 23/10/2017 16:25

NewLove yes but that car was probably smoked IN - that's far removed from someone having been in the car who had smoked before getting into it. Of course smoking IN the car will make it honk, and if it's a heavy smoker regularly smoking in it then that smell will linger and probably never be the same again but OP isn't talking about a car that's being smoked in, she's talking about someone having a fag before getting in.

User843022 · 23/10/2017 16:27

'But my house and my car? Do I want them to my specifications ergo smoke free - well yes, and that isn't unreasonable at all.'

Yes many people are the same, but restricting smokers after they've smoked is, as a pp said, being a whinyarse.

TheNaze73 · 23/10/2017 16:29

YANBU, it’s smells rank.

Shoxfordian · 23/10/2017 16:32

Yeah that's unreasonable and a bit mean

WeAllHaveWings · 23/10/2017 16:33

My dh has borrowed my car a couple of times (while I’m carsharing and getting a lift) and I can tell days after when getting in the car he has given a certain friend a lift.

On the other side, one of my car share pool is a smoker, but he doesn’t wear smoking clothes to work or smoke at work so you can only mildly smell it.

Tell her no smoking before lifts and no clothes she had smoked in otherwise you can’t give her a lift. If she agrees and still smells of smoke tell her straight away.

Smoke smells make me feel really nauseous/ill (I stopped smoking when pg years ago and sensitivity to the smell stayed) for hours after so I couldn’t and wouldn’t share a car.

Therealslimshady1 · 23/10/2017 16:35

Wow the world has changed so much re smokers!

Only 20 years ago, I had lots of friends,who thought it should be fine to smoke in my studio flat (ie my bedroom!). I remember furiously opening windows, trying to get the smell out. A decade of clubbing and pubbing in smoky places, my eyes hurting after a night out...

How the pendulum has swung!