How Attitudes Have Changed Toward Smoking Since I Had To Retire Because of Cigarette Smoke in 1998

I am trying a Mike Lawson "Joe DeMarco Thriller" and like it. I particularly like the portrayal of smokers.
182:

She left the restaurant, lit a Marlboro, then saw a sign that said she couldn't smoke near the door and the damn ash can was about fifty yards away, next to a bench covered with bird shit. What a bunch of crap.

I love you, Mike Lawson.

Below are excerpts from my losing battle to get a smoke-free workplace at the University of Delaware--these from MELVILLE BIOGRAPHY: AN INSIDE NARRATIVE (2013).

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2 April 1990—At 12 after enlisting CER confrontation with sun-burnt [chairman] in hall [His secretary’s office was directly below my cubicle and smoke went straight up and collected there]. Said: “R is an elderly woman with an addiction and I will not ask her to go outside to smoke.” I told him, loudly & distinctly, that his first duty was to provide a workplace that did not endanger my health & that my health took priority over her addictions. Called Robin Elliott [OSHA] and relayed this info before class. At 930 got Carol H who today early will talk to Vice President Maxine Colm, in charge of Personnel (Salaried staff) . . .

9 April 1990—Left letter to [chairman]. Turned in copy for . . . [dean] The letter is in effect . . . a notification of what I expect of him—no less than a reversal of position [on smoking in Memorial Hall].

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29 August 1990—Regular smoking in men’s room on 2^nd floor—Call from Cicely Harmon saying VP Maxine Colm is handling my case with the Academic Senate—Decided to declare “university service” for all this struggle to have a smoke-free working environment! [Fat chance of getting {annual service} credit for it!]

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1 September 1990 [Shingles aftermath] post herpetic neuralgia on scalp—but I will get a smoke free work place—I will change UD to that extent.

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12 September 1990 [Chairman] determined to offer the [endowed] chair to [an older male] from Princeton instead of Lois Potter—My contribution, aloud: “He smokes, she doesn’t.” To myself, “No way in Hell!” [Chairman, in meeting, publicly] reviewed the new no-smoking policy smoothly, butter not melting etc

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17 September 1990—Called Hayward’s office about smoking cleaning women.

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25 October 1990—RW smoking away—I got very sick because I did not notice it soon enough—Left word for Hayward Brock.

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5 November 1990—Mailed letters to Hayward and Maxine—want violations on record—Someone has been smoking in the dome, even.

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7 November 1990—Wrote the Director of Libraries after she refused to move ashtray urns from the entrances: “If I as part Choctaw and part Cherokee complained that the only way I could get into Morris Library was to walk past signs where the urns read: ‘<SC>the only good indian is a dead indian</SC>’ you would find the authority, fast, to remove the signs. I don’t see that a psychological assault such as a racist sign should be regarded as necessarily more dangerous than a direct physical assault, which is what anyone allergic to tobacco smoke now suffers in order to enter the library.” I added parenthetically: “the users of Smoking Room 323 [in Morris Library] cannot sit in their own smoke: they often prop open the door to let smoke go out into the stacks.” I continued: “I am sending a copy of this letter and (with your permission) a copy of your letter to Ronald Whittington, Maxine Colm, Robin Elliott, and Dean Edith Anderson as a way of raising consciousness about the need to see anyone’s objection to smoking by an entrance to a building of the University of Delaware strictly as an access issue. We build ramps for people confined to wheelchairs. We can find ways of preventing unnecessary damage to the health of people who are still mobile but already damaged by tobacco smoke.” [The urns and the smokers stayed, and the door to Smoking Room 323 continued to be open to the stacks much of the time. I retired early in large part because I never could gain smoke-free access to the library.]

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