Almost everyone smokes as if their pulmonary well-being depended on it - the multinational mélange of gooks; the dishwashers, who are all Czechs here; the servers, who are American natives - creating an atmosphere in which oxygen is only an occasional pollutant. My first morning at Jerry's, when the hypoglycemic shakes set in, I complain to one of my fellow servers that I don't understand how she can go so long without food. 'Well, I don't understand how can go so long without a cigarette,' she responds in a tone of reproach. Because work is what you do for other; smoking is what you do for yourself. I don't know why the atismoking crusaders have never grasped the element of defiant self-nurturance that makes the habit so endearing to its victims - as if, in the American workplace, the only thing people have to call their own is the tumors they are nourishing and the spare moments they devote to feeding them.
( Barbara Ehrenreich )
[ Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) ]
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