Smoking at work, in restaurants and public places

Go away you groomer.

Yes, those were the days.

When I was a kid at the movie theatre, cigarette smoke, in all its swirling, blue tinged glory, would rise up to the height of the movie screen.

I remember not thinking a thing about it.

Wow.

Think about the bartenders who spent six or eight hours surrounded by smoke and many of them smoked as well! After a night out my clothes reeked the next morning. In NY smoking in most indoor places was allowed until 2002/3 All restaurants had smoking and non-smoking seating?

Your “bar clothes” always stank no matter how well you washed them, and had to be kept away from your other clothes or they would stink too

I remember my little town's grocery store had a sweet deli clerk who gave us all little hard candies while she sliced chip chop ham for my mom.

Slicer in one hand, cig in the other!

Former smoker and former restaurant / bar worker here.

I enjoyed smoking in bars and restaurants. Especially at sushi bars, where you could take a break between ordering sushi and have a cigarette / drink.

As time passed, even though I didn't quit smoking, I was sick of working in a smoking environment (restaurants / bars).

I remember all the tellers at the bank had cigarettes burning in ashtrays next to them and ashtrays for all the customers.

Smoking in restaurants, etc., had been banned in my Kansas hometown for many years by the time I moved to Detroit in my 20s. I had never paid much attention to who was or wasn't smoking before, but when I moved there, right away it seemed like a noticeably higher percentage of people in Michigan smoked in their cars.

I remember stepping into a pizzeria where there was a non-smoking and smoking section and being hit with that smell of smoke, stale smoke trapped in HVAC, and food-- it took me right back to being a grade schooler (before our local smoking ban went into effect) at a smelly truck stop restaurant. In fact, all of Michigan seemed stuck in the 1980s or 1990s to me.

I remember ashtrays at the end of the aisles in grocery stores, but I don't remember people smoking while shopping

Naht when I'm shinging onshtashe, shilly.

My mom said that supermarkets used to have ashtrays (those free-standing ones on pedestals) at the endcaps. You could smoke and grocery shop.

I’m not quite 35 and I do remember in early childhood on a couple of separate occasions of elderly people smoking inside the grocery store. This was Chicago in the mid 90s.

Movie theatre seats had ashtrays on the armrests like airplane seats.

R13 That was part of what our little group of friends were discussing.

Some of us could remember indoor smoking at work until sometime in the mid 1990s. I think that ended around that time.

I remember the standing ashtrays in the waiting room of my pediatrician and that unique smell of stale smoke and antiseptic. The bank had a similar smell.

Kids in high school used to smoke in the back of the bus, bathrooms at school and out on the smoking patio where teachers would join them sometimes.

People used to smoke in Grand Central and drop lit cigarettes on the floor and step on them. Smoking at work was permitted at your desk in the 90s. My company then changed that to only those with a private office and that lasted a month or so until they banned smoking in the office for everyone. That did not go over well with our international clients when they visited.

My parents didn't smoke, but a lot of my other relatives did. Mom used to swipe unused ashtrays off the tables at McDonalds for the use of our houseguests.

I'm old and I don't remember smoking in movie theaters. I do remember smoking on airplanes, though.

You know what's not glamorous? Having shit breath and the sound of someone speaking through a trach.

I'm old too and where I grew up (DC area), there was no smoking in movie theaters, either in DC or in the suburbs, or in live theater performances. Smoking was freely allowed almost every place else, except church, though.

I'm 55. I remember people smoking in supermarkets when I was a kid. My mom puffed away while pushing a shopping cart, one hand with a Virginia Slim wedged between two fingers as she pushed the cart.

My first job out of college I worked in a financial office as an assistant to an executive who also had a secretary. I was more of a gopher/data assistant but we did some work together where I'd verbally relay data that she would enter into a spread sheet (looking back this was so low-tech even for 1989). Anyway, we'd do this in a conference room away from the executive who was very anti smoking and had instituted a smoking ban the year before I started (which was very novel at the time), but it annoyed his secretary to no end. She'd puff away at her desk when he wasn't in the office and she'd fill the conference room with smoke when we worked together on data entry. She was a real battle axe type but I wondered how she got away with that. Within a year I had a better job somewhere else where smoking was truly banned and I never worked in a smoking environment since, but back then it was everywhere.

I find that hard to believe, r20. Why would movie palaces across the country allow smoking in their balconies *except* for DC?

Laws vary by state in the US, R22. Where are you from?

I also grew up in the DC's burbs and R20 is right

r20.r24 - What years are you talking about?

Not only do laws vary by state, but smoking laws were enacted at the local level, and smoking bans took years to roll out and enforce. So one municipality might have enacted a total ban while neighboring municipalities were still debating, legislating and enforcing new bans. Nothing R20 posted is "hard to believe" if you understand basic facts about US government.

Very few things are banned or enforced at a national level. Look at marijuana laws today, or the decade+ of gay marriage being rolled out state by state.

What smoking laws/bans were enacted in the mid to late '60s, r26?

R27, I have no idea what you're asking or why you're asking me.

My doctor smoked. In his office while checking out my lungs with his stethoscope. He'd say, breathe in, now out, cigarette hanging from his mouth.

[quote]Nothing [R20] posted is "hard to believe" if you understand basic facts about US government.

That's why I'm asking you, r28. You're telling me I find it hard to believe because I don't "understand basic facts about U.S. government". My understanding (and experience) is that smoking bans weren't happening in the mid to late '60s. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Now I just smoke in my car like 1 or 2 a day usually. I mean cigarettes not packs, I don’t know who has time or money or lack of olfactory glands for that.

Patients in hospitals were allowed to smoke.

R30, the original question was about smoking in movie theaters, not total bans. There were differences in laws from state to state at that time regarding smoking in specific buildings, businesses and establishments. In my home state of PA smoking in theaters was banned in the 60s but it wasn't banned in New York movie theaters (if I'm recalling correctly). I remember my parents discussing this when a friend of their's from NY lit up in a PA movie theater and nearly caused a riot.

You do seem a bit ignorant of how laws work in the US if you think all laws are the same for every situation in every state at the same time. Laws vary b6 state. This applies to alcohol and marijuana sales currently, for example. Alcohol laws have differed by state since before prohibition. This was also true of smoking back when smoking was more accepted.

Sorry, r33, but I'm not finding anything pre-2007. Please link to your '60s ban. In the '60s, that would have been newsworthy.

Jesus Christ, you're fucking stupid R34.

When I was growing up in the 1980s smoking was still everywhere, everybody smoked indoors. If you were a nonsmoker, it was considered a social faux pas to tell a guest in your home to go outside for a cigarette. You would be expected to let them smoke in your house, it was just good manners. My nonsmoking parents kept ashtrays under the kitchen sink that they would put out for guest.

It seems totally insane now, but that was just how it was back then.

A thread on Quora about amoking bans in movie theaters. Most people remember the laws varied by state by many states banned it in theaters by the 1970s.

New York Times article from 1976:

In the late '80s I used to go grocery shopping with my mom, and we'd walk through the store smoking cigarettes, and then stub them out under foot when we were done with them. Right in the aisles, dirty cigarette butts everywhere. Unthinkable nowadays.

My point being, r35, that there weren't *any* smoking bans/laws (at least that I remember) going on in the mid to late '60s. I'm quite aware laws differ state to state. Where did I say they didn't? Please prove your point by linking to a ban/law during that period.

R40, have you been diagnosed?

[quote]That's why I'm asking you, [R28]. You're telling me I find it hard to believe because I don't "understand basic facts about U.S. government". My understanding (and experience) is that smoking bans weren't happening in the mid to late '60s. Correct me if I'm wrong.

r37/r38 - Am I still fucking stupid?

Movie theaters were thought of as especially dangerous during fires, maybe. There's the First Amendment exception about yelling "Fire!" in a crowded movie theater. Who knows whether it's really harder to evacuate a movie theater vs. another type of public space. The Station (Rhode Island) nightclub fire is an example of people not being able to evacuate a venue during a fire.

I mean, I would have blown Don Draper with a lit cigarette in his hand.

But no, I wouldn't want a coworker puffing away in my face all day.

[quote]Who knows whether it's really harder to evacuate a movie theater vs. another type of public space

You can't see why it would be problematic, r43?

Yes, R42, you are absolutely "fucking stupid" for choosing this hill to die on. For starters, you continue to conflate a local law prohibiting smoking in theaters with the kinds of total bans that didn't take effect until the 90s at the earliest. This definitely makes you "fucking stupid" since this has been pointed out to you multiple times. The links at R37 and R38 readily disprove your claim that there were no laws regulating public smoking before the total bans started in the 90s. You're incredibly "fucking stupid" for failing to grasp that.

How exactly would one "link to" a specific state or local law from 50+ years ago? It's not like every city and state law from decades ago is listed online for easy reference. What kind of moron would ask that?

Oh, that's right.

Are you okay? I mean besides being fucking stupid?

My friend's father was a dentist who always had a ciggie hangin' out of his mouth WHILE working on patient's teeth -- 1960's-1970's.

You are in sore need of reading comprehension when I clearly posted "mid to late '60s". Point out where I posted "that there were no laws regulating public smoking before the total bans started in the 90s." I'll wait.

^ for r46

My grandmother sat at her kitchen table and chain-smoked unfiltered Chesterfield Kings ... and saved the coupons found in each pack/carton that could be redeemed for useful household items like cutlery and dinner plates. I don't think she actually ever got the swag, however - she just like collecting. Later in life family had to stop her from smoking in bed as she lived in an 1870s Victorian that could have gone up in flames.

I began flying internationally (mostly to Japan) for work beginning in the early 1990s and the flights at the time certainly still had a smoking section mostly filled with Japanese salarymen. Then it was just gone.

I remember visiting my father's office in the 80s and seeing people puffing away at their desks. People smoked like chimneys in offices back then. I don't know how the nonsmokers didn't have splitting headaches all day long.

In 1990 when I started my first corporate job out of college, my office was a sea of cubicles. From a distance you could see smoke rising from an occasional cubicle. Those people were PISSED when they started having to go outside a year or two later.

I posted this before: i was only a wee little gayling, but I LOVED the smoking sections (separated by a flimsy glass door) in the trains. It was cosy, chatty… I miss it a bit.

At my first "adult" job in the late 1980s I worked in a small office with our boss and another underling. A few months after I started, a third person was hired to work part time in the mornings. The new girl was allergic to cigarette smoke; both the other employee and I were smokers. She pleaded with us to understand that it was truly affecting her health, but it wasn't enough to change our habits.

Believe it or not, the new girl was considered the selfish one in the situation. No one at work expected us to stop smoking while she was there. Even when I asked my friends about it, they were unanimous in thinking "you were there smoking before she came in with her allergies." So while I did try to avoid smoking while she was there, there were many times where I sat three feet from her and puffed away knowing it was literally making her sick. And I was the good guy. Can you imagine?

Eventually she purchased a HEPA air purifier for her desk and sat in front of it all morning, while my coworker and I started using smokeless ashtrays (remember those?). That was considered over and above reasonable accommodations, and she was expected to be grateful we did that much.

I recall smoking in art house cinema balconies in 1977-1978, and smoking in some porn cinemas - where it seemed to have been tolerated rather than encouraged in any way.

Trains, buses, taxis, hotels, restaurants, bars, public buildings, banks, any "public-facing" business usually had standing ashtrays in the lobby area and a big glass ashtray on the desk of the president, manager, anyone you might discuss business with. Offices often had a semi-isolated space where the hardest core chain smokers worked, people who smoked so much that they bothered other smokers. In crowded bars, not only did you and your clothes soon stink of cigarettes, there was a fair chance if meeting the business end of a cigarette on one's arm or back.

It was only sometime in the late 1980sor early1990s as I recall that tradesmen started asking politely if there was a place they could smoke in or outside your house. Museums were no smoking, though sometimes the restaurants were as much smoking lounges as places to eat.

The luxury grocery stores had urn ashtrays, two at each end of each aisle. Less fancy groceries had cigarette butts littering the floor. Hardware stores and some non-clothing stores accommodated smokers.

As a kid in the 1970's, I remember getting into my mother's canary yellow Ford Pinto, then her lighting a cigarette and waiting for the car to warm up in the winter with all of the windows closed for a few minutes. That car was a death trap in more ways than one.

My mother was a nurse for many years before she retired and she said in the 1970s (when smoking was allowed in hospitals) that when a patient who was admitted to the hospital was taken to their room, the first thing they asked for was an ashtray. The patients would puff away in their hospital beds day and night, and there was a drawer full of matchbooks at the nurse's station on the floor, as the patients were constantly asking for matches. There was a cigarette vending machine on the ground floor of the hospital and the hospital gift shop also sold cigarettes - one of the duties of the candy stripers was to go room to room and ask the patients if they needed a pack of cigs, then make a trip down to the ground floor to buy several packs at a time and deliver a pack of cigs to each patient. God forbid if the wrong brand of cigarettes was delivered to the patient - they would get all pissed off!

It is just unimaginable today to think this actually happened in a hospital, of all places.!

My parents were both heavy smokers and I went to the movies with them all the time. We lived in several different DC area suburbs (both MD and VA), and we also went to movies downtown in DC. They smoked everywhere EXCEPT in ANY of those movies theaters. If smoking had been allowed there, they would have. But they didn't and they told me that was because it wasn't allowed for safety reasons. There were NO ashtray receptacles in the arms of any of those theater seats, either.

I seriously don't know why this is so hard to believe.

Right after I started college (1985), I got a weekend job as a newsroom clerk at our local newspaper. Several of the grizzled old bitches and bastards on the copy and national-news desks smoked like chimneys.

I had an interview with Associated Press in 1988 and the editor who interviewed me offered me a Marlboro. I declined and he asked if it was a problem to work in a smoking environment. I said not at all but I didn’t get the job. I still wonder if I lit up if I might have gotten it.

I remember seeing Inside Daisy Clover at one of the big Hollywood movie theaters on Hwood Blvd. Maybe the Pantages or Grauman's and you could smoke in the balcony. I was still a teenager, about 16 and I felt so grown up. Everybody smoked everywhere all the time. This is why we were all thin in those days. People were smoking instead of eating.

In the documentary about the recording of the cast album for the musical “Company”, shot in the early 70s, you can see someone smoking in the recording booth while they are recording the title song.

Professional singers giving it their all, and not one objects to breathing smoke while they are singing.

R6 did you run into William Frawley?

[Quote]I remember seeing Inside Daisy Clover at one of the big Hollywood movie theaters on Hwood Blvd. Maybe the Pantages or Grauman's and you could smoke in the balcony. I was still a teenager, about 16 and I felt so grown up. Everybody smoked everywhere all the time. This is why we were all thin in those days. People were smoking instead of eating.

On March 3, 1966, Frawley collapsed of a heart attack while walking down Hollywood Boulevard after seeing a movie, Inside Daisy Clover. He was dragged to the nearby Knickerbocker Hotel, where he had previously lived for many years, by his male nurse — a constant companion since his prostate cancer operation more than a year before. He was then rushed to the nearby Hollywood Receiving Hospital (now the Hollywood LAPD Precinct) on Wilcox Ave, where he was pronounced dead.

Loved smoking. Smoked everywhere..... lecture halls at college, banks, grocery stores, subway, planes, peoples houses, pretty much everywhere. I quit 8 years ago, but it's very nostalgic to me.

You can't buy tobacco in New Zealand if you're born on or after Jan. 1 2009.

R64 It must have been the Pantages which is one block from the Knickerbacker hotel, I just looked it up. I don't remember reading about that at all. Actually, I don't remember much about William Frawley except watching Lucy. 1966 is accurate because I was 16 that year and went to that show after my birthday dinner and a friend took me to dinner and the show.