What is it with people who think No Smoking signs are only suggestions, that can be ignored under exceptional circumstances, like when you’ve gone a whole hour without a fag and you’re really, really gasping for one?

I’m writing this on a rail replacement bus service between Nottingham and Manchester, and there’s one such person on the bus with me. We just pulled into Sheffield station, and she decided that an hour without nicotine was just too much for her body to withstand, and asked if anyone minded if she lit up. I said that yes, I did, seeing as this was a non-smoking bus, and there was a perfectly servicable outside she could go and smoke in without making the bus smell like an ashtray.

Well, that was a mistake. Apparently, requesting that someone not smoke in a non-smoking environment is a really, really selfish thing to do, especially when it means the smoker has to walk a whole five metres outside to go and light up. She opined that perhaps she should have just lit up anyway, to which I suggested that I’d have probably pointed out that it was a no smoking bus and asked her to go outside. This made me the most selfish man in the world, it seems, because such were the debilitating effects of her nicotine addiction that after simply one hour without a cigarette, she was actually unable to summon sufficient motive power to leave her seat and get off the bus for 5 minutes.

I’m pissed off now.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 20th, 2003 at 8:33 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.