With reference to the other thread and giving up. me and the misses were talking about when people used to smoke inside the work place.
When did this stop ?
My better half suggests that she remembers council staff smoking while dealing with customers in the early 80's.
I remember a IT consultancy job I turned up to in the late 90's where the MD was smoking at his desk.
The whole place stank and I bet his staff were not impressed.
I remember that has ashtray was full by 11am and he was starting on his next 20 ciggies !
Say for arguments sake back in the 50's or 60's, were non smokers looked at weirdly if they did NOT smoke (since so many people must have smoked).
Wasn't everyone smoking back then ?
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In my place it was banned in about 1986/7/8 or so.
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Up to around the time Zero suggests smoking was allowed virtually anywhere that it didn't cause a fire hazard. In fact if you went into someone's home you would get the cigs out without asking and an ashtray would be found from somewhere and placed in front of you.
I wouldn't dream of lighting up in any enclosed space now.
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It became law in England in the work place on 1 July 2007. Doesn't seem like 3 and a half years ago!
I *may* know of a workplace where the window is always open, the ashtray is where it's always been and anyone who doesn't like it can, er, make haste :)
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It's never stopped in trucks.
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I worked for a motor trader in the 90s who'd only employ smokers. Stopped them complaining when he lit up apparently.
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>> It's never stopped in trucks.
>>
But it's illegal though. As it would be to smoke in my car. Or Humph's.
I did a bit of work at Manchester Tobacco (owned at the time by a Japanese company)... smoking was allowed but you had to have specially purchased cigarettes if the brand was made there. Bonded warehouse and all that.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Tue 23 Nov 10 at 21:54
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>> But it's illegal though. As it would be to smoke in my car. Or Humph's.
I don't doubt it, i only wish they'd nick a few...incidentally has anyone ever been nicked for smoking in a company vehicle?
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>> >> It's never stopped in trucks.
>> >>
>>
>> But it's illegal though. As it would be to smoke in my car. Or Humph's.
>>
I'm not sure on that. If the truck has a sleeper cab it counts as the drivers accommodation, which would probably exempt it.
Are hotels still allowed to have smokers rooms?
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>> Are hotels still allowed to have smokers rooms?
yes
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When I started working in 1978 smoking in the office was the default. The smell was absorbed by everything; seats, carpets, employees and even the walls themselves.
By the mid/late eighties it began to be unacceptable and smoking in open plan offices was only allowed if nobody objected. At first you needed to be brave to object but 'no smoking' gradually became the norm in larger rooms. It persisted in single occupant cellular offices and those where a group of smokers co-habited well into the last years of the 90s.
Some senior staff with their own rooms persisted almost up to the statutory ban. I well remember helping clear a building in early 2002. One of the long serving senior divisional managers had been a notorious chain smoker; even though she'd retired in 1999 the fixtures in her former room still stank of ciggies!!
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At the company I worked for between 1986-1988, the MD chain smoked cigars in his office. There was an extractor fan in the interior wall of his office with the outlet directly above the heads of the 2 secretaries who worked for him. So basically his cigar smoke was extracted from his office for them to breathe. They found it unpleasant but normal.
The first time I encountered a smoking ban was whilst working on a project for a company in Southern Germany in 1989. Most of the employees smoked, but smoking was not allowed in the office. This was to protect the PCs which apparently didn't take too well to the tar being sucked into the housing and condensing on the motherboards.
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It was compulsory during the war
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I just about remember it on the top deck of buses, which must have been banned around 1992.
For nearly all my living memory though smoking in buildings has only been allowed in pubs and clubs and other such venues. I think most other businesses had their own no smoking rules well before the smoking ban.
I do remember smoking in train stations and in enclosed bus stations and I think a lot of them only banned it after it became law.
I think very few people smoke indoors these days, even in their own houses. I reckon about 5% of the houses I go to contain smokers.
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Rattle's post stirred memories of smoking on trains and the tube.
Our commuter trains in 90s had the smoking area at the London end of each set. Except for a space between the drivers cab and the first set of doors which seated about 12 and could be locked out for parcels storage.
For several months there was a group of us in the habit of using that portion of the first (06:50) express. We had a constant running battle with smokers who'd do either or both of not closing the trains exterior doors in winter or not closing the manual sliding door between them and us.
One of them's still a regular traveller and stlll gives be 'daggers' when he sees me!!
Tube smoking, IIRC, stopped abruptly in the aftermath of the Kings X fire in '87.
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The watershed which marked the beginnings of a move towards banning smoking in public buildings was probably the King's Cross fire, which certainly led to a complete ban on the London underground. The Bradford football fire from the same decade had a discarded cigarette attributed as the most likely cause.
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To think smoking at one time was allowed on planes.... although there are some who will say overall air quality was better then. They couldn't recycle so much air for obvious reasons.
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I smoked on Plane to Aus in 83. It was banned in the loos by then tho.
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I think we can conclude that smoking then probably started to become anti social at some point in the 1980s.
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When I was a child at the end of the war and into the fifties, most adults chain-smoked more or less all the time. People who didn't like it (children for example) could damn well lump it. I have inherited in inextirpable form a large part of that attitude, so up yours everyone.
My father's work involved much contact with naval ordnance and sometimes took place in areas where naval ordnance was stored in large, indeed enormous, quantities. As a child I remember him often at gates and doors placing his cigarettes and matches in a steel box that was then padlocked and taken into custody by a policeman of some sort.
I always wondered why they bothered with the cigarettes since without a source of intense heat they are harmless.
Perhaps it was understood how demented addicts can be, and assumed that my father and his colleagues, if the weed remained available, might try to improvise by rubbing two sticks together, or trying something even more risky with some of the ordnance.
But it wasn't my place to ask, so I never did.
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>> I always wondered why they bothered with the cigarettes since without a source of intense
>> heat they are harmless.
>>
>> Perhaps it was understood how demented addicts can be, and assumed that my father and
>> his colleagues, if the weed remained available, might try to improvise by rubbing two sticks
>> together, or trying something even more risky with some of the ordnance.
>>
You could well be right. Taking any form of smoking material into a coal mine (ie underground) was a serious disciplinary offence almost from the beginning of the industry. I used to deliver to an explosives factory where the same rules applied to visiting drivers as you mentioned. When I asked about the cigarettes, I was told that it stemmed from one foolish driver, having handed his matches in at the gate, succumbing to temptation and being caught lighting a cigarette by means of the dashboard cigar lighter, then a novelty in lorry cabs.
As for policing smoking in lorries; fine, but be careful what you wish for. Next thing you know, you won't be able to eat a Polo whilst driving one. ;-)
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>> You could well be right. Taking any form of smoking material into a coal mine
>> (ie underground) was a serious disciplinary offence almost from the beginning of the industry.
Mates of mine work on the offshore rigs.
they have ONE place to smoke on board, which is a sealed unit, apparently, with an airlock door system, and ONE source of ignition on board - a car-type ciggie lighter set into the wall.
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I think we can conclude that smoking then probably started to become anti social at>> some point in the 1980s.
No about 1604 :-)
www.jesus-is-lord.com/kjcounte.htm
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I remember having a job interview around 97 where the Female MD smoked cigars throughout the interview. Charming lady, but still didnt get the job
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I remember when I took the final part of my ADI tests back in the mid eighties the examiner who was playing the part of my pupil (called Mr Bean in fact) smoked a pipe while he was driving.
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I am aware of one big shot tycoon who still smokes cigars in his office. No doubt there are more.
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When did smoking in the work place stop ? - Zero
