Thursday, June 18, 2009

Nic Fix


There were many little things to get used to when I changed Coasts and moved to California 10 years ago. Perhaps the easiest of these was not cleaning ashtrays at work. The OSHA smoking ban was already a few years old when I moved here and had not come even close to D.C. yet. Guests smoking at the bar had never really bothered me much, but the cleaning ashtrays and the subsequently taring of my index finger was pretty gross. When smoking bans started spreading, I was very curious as to how it was going to go over in the more addicted markets. New York and Paris sprang to mind.


Well it seems some Brits are taking a mechanical approach to bringing back the old times. E-Lites are electronic nicotine delivery devices shaped to look like old-fashioned cancer-sticks.


Pretty damn silly....they will probably make millions.

2 comments:

Alex Newhouse said...

See if there's one thing I miss, in my job, is lighting cigarettes and changing ashtrays. We made a point, at the bar, to never let a dirty ashrtay. We'd change them every time a cigarette was finished.

And I also loved to light my customers cigarettes. Girls would be talking, with a cigaretet in their mouth, looking in their purse for their lighter and I'd just flick my bic, nonchalently.

It's an attention you can't provide anymore, there's nothing that replaced it.

Neyah White said...

What? No sliding a lit matchbook from downbar?

Seriously A, while I do appreciate your urge to serve, I looked at cleaning ashtrays as more of a neccessary health and cleanliness issue than as 'nice touch.'

As for lighting cigarettes 'nonchalantly'...well I trust you can come up with some other way to provide attention.

I am not trying to mess with you, but I cannot understand missing cigarette service.