Thursday, February 05, 2009

1 cigarette, 1 dollar...

On most any slow night I'll stand outside and smoke a cigarette. Let's not get into the debate about how bad it is for me. If it weighed that heavy on my mind I might go to a gym once in a while. Since I don't own a gym membership there's no need to even bring it up.

Usually there's at least one or two people that always stop and ask if they can bum a smoke or better yet, "borrow" a cigarette. The second question is funny to me and if I'm in a good mood I'll go along with "Uh.. how do you plan on borrowing a cigarette? I don't want it back after your done with it."

99% of the time my answer is, "No." There was a time when I received cigarettes very cheap. Almost to the point that I never paid for them. This helped out a lot considering the price of a pack these days. Even now I'm trying to talk a relative into sending me some in the mail just because they're cheaper there than here.

Now, there's two things that you can do that will piss me off. That I actually take personally. The first is steal from me. If I see someone try to walk away with any type of my property I automatically become furious. The second thing is to cost me money. This doesn't make me furious but it will make me hot under the collar. Especially when your cheap ass knows that a pack of cigarettes are expensive and you keep asking to bum them off of me.

I understand times are hard for bartenders. Even though this bartender still makes decent money for four hours of work. I didn't mind bumming him cigarettes when they were free but now I'm paying well over $5 a pack for these things. Even if there was a common decency involved where he bought me a pack it would be better.

Why doesn't he buy his own? Well, you see, he doesn't smoke. He only smokes when he's at work which makes no sense since you can't smoke inside the establishment any more.

So when he last asked for a smoke, I said plainly, "You know, I have to buy these now."

"Ok.." he stared blankly at me with his hand out, "So uh.. you want a quarter or something? That's what they come out to be right?"

"No, I think it's about a dollar now."

"Pfft.. yea right..." I hand him a cigarette and he goes outside. This happens three or four times a night. Luckily we only work a couple nights together but this is going to change.

The other night I had to get into the trunk of my car for something. As I was moving some things around I found a couple of old packs of cigarettes. They've probably been in my trunk since last summer. Since they've been in my trunk for so long they're obviously stale. I figure I'll just keep a pack of the stale smokes in my pocket and when he asks for one I'll give him one of those. Once those run out he's all done.

Funny how you can tell a complete stranger no but a coworker you're a little more cordial with.