It might be hard to see the flurry of snowflakes, but they are there. Our first winter snow. It’s Friday and time to go and luxuriate in a café.The one café I go to has a non-smoking section. Revolutionary. When the café first opened up, the non-smoking section was at the front of the café: drafty, small tables, uncomfortable upright chairs. I asked the manager why the sofa-section at the back of the café was just for smokers: didn’t they think non-smokers like to laze about?
They kindly made half the sofa-section non-smokers, but it doesn’t work: the smokers still sit in the non-smoking section every hour of the day.
So, I started a new sport. While ordering my coffee, I ask the café employees whether they could please ask the smokers to reseat themselves. And then I go and sit down and watch how ineffectively the employee carries out her job (e.g. informs the customers that this is a non-smoking section, but doesn’t ask them to leave) and how huffy and put-upon the smokers react to the news.
Oh, I know this is petty, but it is better to be petty with a sense of the absurd, than a militant self-righteous non-smoker.
(This post is part of my "Growing Up & Growing Old" project.)
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