I'm about to go off on one, so if there are any smokers reading this (you know who you are), then I apologize...and you should probably skip this post..

I think smoking is a very inconsiderate habit. Actually, more appropriately, most (not all) smokers are inconsiderate people. The incident that brought out this disdain today was when I was coming back from lunch. I saw two people, one in a hospital gown (after all, I do work at a hospital, you know... a HEALTH FACILITY), sitting directly in front of the front door of the hospital smoking cigarettes. A little boy about the age of 3 or 4 was sitting next to them playing with a toy. Directly behind them on the outside wall of the building was a no smoking sign. You know, one of those signs with the picture of the cigarette with a huge red cross through it and a circle. This, I assume, is just in case the person smoking can't read, but I'm not sure. So there they were smoking away totally oblivious to the fact that people had to walk through their cloud of smoke to enter or exit the building. Now, let's forget for a moment that one of them was A PATIENT IN THE HOSPITAL, and let's also forget that there was a small child not more than 2 feet away who was having to breath the stuff, but the fact that they were sitting there directly in front of, not one, but a whole row of signs with the cigarette and the red cross smoking away to their heart's content, speaks volumes of how LAZY and inconsiderate these people are. They have no problem making everyone around them breathe in the poisonous cloud they are exhaling. They have no problem giving the proverbial finger to the people who bothered to setup a DESIGNATED SMOKING AREA not more than 50 feet away where no one else would have to be subjected to the lung cancer causing aura that surrounded them. I don't understand why people are like this. I don't understand the mentality of people who willingly kill themselves and feel that they have a RIGHT to do this in the company of people who do not wish to die horrible deaths from lunch cancer, emphysema, heart disease and all of the other nasty things that are attributed to smoking. I don't understand why 'normal' people can't so much as throw a wad of gum on the ground but smokers can litter the ground with thousands of cigarette butts. Remember those huge fires last summer in California? They were started when some idiot threw a cigarette out of the car window. How many people died in those fires? This is exactly what I mean by INCONSIDERATE. There was recently a big deal made about the fact that some counties here where I live have passed ordinances prohibiting smoking in public places. Imagine being able to go to a club or a bar or a restaurant, coming home and actually being able to wear the same thing the next day without having to wash it because it REEKS of cigarette smoke. Besides that, why should the servers and employees (and OTHER CUSTOMERS) in bars and restaurants have to breath that crap just because you want to have a cigarette? Take your ass outside. Too cold? Well then do us all a favor and QUIT. You are driving the price of healthcare to astronomical levels and then when you finally do get cancer and die, your family will sue the people you bought your cancer from, tying up the court system and preventing people with REAL PROBLEMS from having their cases heard in a timely fashion. If you want to smoke, then do it in a place DESIGNATED for you to do so...preferably far away from people who do not smoke. I should not have to be subjected to it and neither should anyone else.
Regarding the people outside the hospital, I casually mentioned to the security guard at the front desk that he may need to go explain what the no smoking sign means to the people smoking in front of the building. Security guards love to do stuff like that anyway...kind of like giving parking tickets.

So, again, I apologize if you were offended by what I wrote above. I am a fairly easy going person, but when I have an opinion about something, I am usually pretty vocal. I think that may be a good thing and a bad thing...