Jester and the Bong

When I first joined the Dark Satanic Mill, long ago in the mists of time, the company’s smoking policy was, “don’t smoke in the office. If you want to smoke, do it on the fire escape”. It seemed fair enough to me. There were non-smokers working there who didn’t want their environment polluted and how could I blame them?

For a while, we had a dedicated smoking room but that was consigned to the dustbin of DSM bad ideas and smokers were forced outside, which was obviously a good move. I was a smoker when I first joined up and had been since the tender age of 13, when I lost count of how many cigarettes I had smoked in my lifetime. I gave up on 26 September 2004 and I haven’t smoked a cigarette since then.

After the blanket ban on smoking in public places, the DSM put up a smokers’ shelter, a bit like a small bus shelter with an ashtray in it. It is there that the smokers gather, chat, gossip, bitch and, of course, destroy their lungs and various other organs.

I walk past it on my way from the canteen to the new building, where I now work. It was there that I discovered to my dismay that one of the more pleasant call centre managers, a man I have come to regard as a friend, is a smoker. I’m sorry but I have the zeal of the convert and look down on smokers as lesser beings. It was a bitter disappointment to me and I will have to regale him of tales of people who have died of lung cancer until he gives up, if only to shut me up.

It was also there that a group of younger Asian jesters gathered with a hookah a week or two ago. I wish that I had seen it but unfortunately, I was not in the right place at the right time and didn’t. Apparently they were all gathered round it taking long drags on the mint tobacco that they had brought for the purpose. They even invited a fairly senior member of staff to join them. He demurred.

Unfortunately, somebody got the wrong end of the stick and might even have thought that it contained something less legal than tobacco and so the following e-mail was sent by our MD’s secretary:

All,

It has been noted that there has been smoking outside the designated smoking area. Please be advised that smoking is only allowed inside the smoking shelter and the immediate area in front and not in the bike shed areas.

I would also like to clarify that it is only cigarettes, cigars and small personal pipes that are authorised on the premises and under no circumstances are multiple personal use of bong pipes allowed.

If you have any queries regarding this, please do not hesitate to contact me.

So it’s okay to use crack pipes then.