Why You Need A Cigarette Break (Even When You Don’t Smoke!)
I don’t smoke, but I’m always amazed how surprisingly positive an experience it is to hang with smokers. My first boss, the late Bill Nolff, was a smoker. We worked in sales at Transpo, a manufacturer of car parts. Bill, like many of the other sales guys, smoked regularly. They used to walk outside and smoke by the back door. The company, ran by an autocratic and clinically Bi-Polar entrepreneur, decided they wanted to eliminate smoking. To discourage the smoking, management created a ‘no smoking on property’ policy forcing the smokers to go walk across the street to get their nicotine fix.
The aforementioned autocratic and Bi-Polar owner didn’t like smoking because all he ever wanted to see salespeople do was make calls. His short sighted opinion was that smoking was time stolen from the company. In reality, it was stress release, team building, information sharing and strategy sessions. That was thirty years ago, and it’s still true today. I was recently reminded of that on one of my vacations.
I went on a cruise. Actually I’ve been on a bunch of them but this one was very different. I went solo. All by myself. I wanted to try something new. Also, I’m a ship nerd. I see them as the world’s biggest gadgets. I also wanted to see this particular ship and how this particular line, a European brand, was different. You can watch all the videos on YouTube, but it’s never even close to the experience of being there. In addition I wanted to experience the company’s private island. I could write several articles about the industry and in fact I have. I had a small window to go at a price I could afford and nobody else was available. So I bit the bullet and booked the trip.
Still, I’m a social guy and I was feeling some anxiety about being alone. I figured I’d make friends by being active on that sailing’s Facebook group. Yes, there is a facebook group for virtually every single sailing on every single cruise ship. In short order I was made an admin and helped coordinate and lead a couple of events. I made some acquaintances on the ship, but ultimately, the people I thought I’d hang with, I didn’t. There was one facebook ‘friend’ who was a smoker. At some point while walking with her we were led to the back of the ship by another smoker. The bar at the back of the ship was one of the locations where smoking was allowed. I hung out that afternoon, and even though I’m not a smoker I went back the next day, and the next. I Chatted, laughed, and connected with others who were there smoking. The social interaction helped create a bond with a couple of new longer term friends. Even not being a smoker I became part of the smoking community. This whole experience reminded me of the days back at Transpo and ultimately it made me think about the power of smoking as a community builder.
I wondered why smoking is so powerful as a human connector? I decided there were a couple of core, but somewhat unpleasant, reasons. The first is simple addiction. The second is that the activity is shunned by most of society who’s not addicted. Since it’s an addiction, people are actively drawn to it. If the environment is like my old workplace the same people are drawn to the same location at virtually the same time of day. This creates regular interactions and those interactions, overtime, create bonds. If the environment is like a cruise, or some other leisurely pursuit, then people just hang out or lounge smoking. That was the key, I was hanging out with the smokers who were just sitting out back smoking and drinking all day. Smoking isn’t an instant thing, it takes a little time. Even the quickest cigarette takes several minutes to smoke, and smokers typically try and get a few in during a break. So if your smoking, your also hanging around and talking. Your connecting. This may be why smoking was so important of an activity to Native Americans.
I’d like to have much more of this level of connection in my life, but I’m not a smoker. I do enjoy a cold beer. That being said, it’s rare that you see the same outcome out of drinkers like you do smokers. I wondered why can’t I build the same sort of community when I’m drinking? There are many similar elements but it doesn’t come to the same end. With smoking, it’s little breaks all day, even during work and the smoking area is usually something you can walk to. With drinking, you can mostly only do it at night, and to be social you have to go to bars. Drinking also impairs your judgment, where smoking does not. So it seems like the same thing, but it’s not.
Of course if you aren’t already hooked on smoking, you don’t want to start because of all the issues related to cancer. It’s a shame that smoking is so connected to cancer. Cancer is really bad, probably one of the worst things in human existence. It could be argued that cancer is why virtually all of society has concluded that smoking is really bad. If we could figure out how to have smoking without the cancer and other issues, like the smell, in theory smoking could go back to being socially acceptable. To that point, I’d say we figured that problem out with vaping. It’s basically smoke but without the carcinogens and it seems to me that it is a bit more socially acceptable.
Vaping, at least for now, can happen indoors and is more readily acceptable in other public areas. It doesn’t have as much of a socially negative connotation, and perhaps more importantly for this conversation, it doesn’t smell bad. This means it’s not as powerful of a community building activity. If you can pop out a vape in the building and take a few puffs and nobody is the wiser, then where’s the motivation to walk across the street and hang with the other shunned ‘vapers’? If your not hanging out, then there is no community.
Still vaping isn’t as socially accepted as you would think it could be. The vaping industry would argue it’s not the nicotine that’s the problem, it’s the hundreds of other chemicals inhaled in a burning chemical reaction that causes cancer. Even if the vaping industry is right about cancer, any form of addiction is bad and nicotine is certainly addictive. Society in general doesn’t like addiction hence society doesn’t like vaping.
When you put it all together, smoking still seems to be unparalleled at community building. To that end, I wound up coming to the unlikely conclusion that it’s beneficial to hang out with the smokers. I’m not suggesting anyone pick up smoking as a habit so you can go hang out. It’s also not always possible. It’s simply awkward if you are going to the corner where they are standing for a quick smoke like back in my Transpo days. It’s much less awkward if you’re sitting on the smoking side of the bar, or on the back of the ship. You don’t have to smoke to enjoy the sun, the view of the ocean, and the drinks. You can sit for hours and bond with the smokers. Going back to the cancer conversation, there are obviously issues with second hand smoke, but I find that as a universal courtesy smokers try and keep it away from any non-smokers in the area. This mitigates the issues related to secondhand smoke a little.
If you hang out with smokers, I think the time you spend there will be well spent. You’ll learn things. You’ll make friends and professional connections. Smokers are a small group of people who, through life’s journey, got hooked on a substance that the rest of society decided is bad. But people, for the most part, are not bad. I like people, more often than not they bring value to my life even if they have an expensive and mostly shunned habit. So I’m going to keep hanging out with smokers where I can. I think it’s definitely worth it. That’s true even if one of the prices I have to pay is the regular need to wash the smell of smoke out of my clothing.
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