Stinky Behavior

[dr_tectonic]

On the way to Jeff's Star Wars game tonight, I stopped to pick up dinner. While I was parking, a car drove past me and the driver tossed a lit cigarette butt out the window.

Now, smoking is a personal decision. Me, I don't like cigarette smoke, but if you do, that's fine. There's no reason we can't all get along if we're just polite about allowing smokers to be near smoke and non-smokers to not be near it.

Littering is another matter entirely.

People using the ground as an ashtray makes me cranky.

So after getting out of my car, I went over and picked up the (still-smoldering) cigarette butt and walked over to the offending car. The driver was still in the car, so I knocked on the window to get her attention. She cracked her door a little, and I said, (in a polite tone of voice), "Excuse me, I think you dropped this."

And she said, "Oh!" and took it. Kind of as if it was, in fact, some kind of accidental mistake. So I kind of half-smiled, as if we had completed some normal random-stranger interaction. And then I left.

I'm not really sure what the point of this story is, unless it's to share what seems to be (in my experience) an effective and mostly polite way of providing negative feedback to someone who is exhibiting socially unacceptable behavior.

I think it works, so I'm glad I did it. (Though it is a little bit obnoxious, and I feel sort of sorry about that.) But mostly I just wish it was unnecessary.

I think it was karmic payback that my fingers then smelled really awful until I got to Jeff's and washed them.

Comments

[saintpookie.livejournal.com]

As a smoker, soon to be quitting, I don't see anything particularly rude about what you did. Just because someone smokes, doesn't give them the right to be a twit. I personally use an ashtray, don't smoke around my non-smoking friends (mostly), don't blow smoke in people's faces, or any of the other obnoxious habits that seem to be associated with smokers.
Guess I just wanted to pipe up and say not all of us smokers are asses.

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

See, I knew there were lots of well-behaved smokers out there. Good to know you're one of them! =)

But I'm also glad to hear you're quitting soon.
Good luck on that; KFM tells me that it's hard. But you can doo eet!

[saintpookie.livejournal.com]

Thanks. :) It is hard to quit, I had quit for a couple months, then lost my job. Stress makes us do stupid things sometimes, and we fall back on old crutches. But it's time to give it another go.

Two packs left, then I'm done.

[goobermunch.livejournal.com]

Nah. Quitting's easy. I've quit at least 4 times! Staying quit's hard!

Good luck with the quitting, I know how much fun it's not. One thing that always helps me is to really pay attention to my body's response to the act of smoking. The nicotine's okay, but the way my lungs tighten up and the foul taste left in my mouth were pretty effective ways of reminding myself that smoking really wasn't good for me.

--G

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Good one on you, says I..

Why is it that most of the really annoying modern impolitenesses these days involve autos? (I suppose if we were in Holland, they'd largely involve bicycles...)

[arcticturtle.livejournal.com]

A car is an insulating chrysalis, a bubble that moves through the world yet is separated from it by glass and engine noise and a sound system. It makes motorists feel that they are not part of the world, and damage to the world is not relevant to them.

*shrug* Maybe. Or something like that.

We live on a somewhat busy rural road, and when I feel a need to make myself grumpy, I can always take a trash bag to the roadside and pick up the garbage that accumulates there. Then I sometimes wonder if, once the mortgage is paid off, we could make a living off the deposits on the recyclables tossed there.

Go You

[baronet.livejournal.com]

I've often wanted to do exactly that, including the very polite "I think you dropped this." I'm glad that you did, and that it worked out the way a fantasy should.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

Good for you! I've always wanted to do this. I never had the guts.