Working in a non-smoking building in Los Angeles in the 1980s


I've been lucky, I've never had to work in a building which allowed smoking, even going back to the 1980s. But that's my point of view, since I've never been a smoker. But even smokers are human, and I have memories of feeling sorry for those people when I worked for Blue Cross of California.

Yes, of course there were people who worked for a health care company who smoked - a LOT of people still smoked in the 1980s, in spite of the known health hazards. Of course at the bright and shining entrance to the Corporate Headquarters for the biggest health care company in California, they really didn't want people standing there smoking. So the smokers had a place that they had to go to, far away from everything. I can remember seeing them outside, through the window of the cafeteria.

And no, the people smoking weren't just outside of the window, they had to walk a good distance, and really if you didn't know about it, you wouldn't have realized what was happening. It does rain in California, and it does get cold in the winter, and while there were awnings people could stand under, it couldn't have been pleasant for them. I wonder how many people stopped smoking just so they wouldn't have to go through that?

I've always been a "live and let live" kind of person. Do what you want as long as it's not hurting anyone else is what I think. And if smoking didn't require something that smells very bad to me to be sent through the air, I wouldn't mind it. Of course, for Blue Cross of California, an insurance company, they really didn't want to be paying out for people who had given themselves lung cancer with smoking, so it does seem to make sense that they wanted to discourage it. The healthier people are, the longer they pay their health care premiums, and get nothing out of it.

Like I say, I've been lucky. When I moved back to Phoenix and started working downtown, they had just made the building non-smoking. You could still see the tobacco stains on the ceiling above certain desks, and it kinda made me cringe. Just a few years before and I would not have been able to work there, or breathe.

Still, smoking is perfectly legal, and this is a free country, so people have the right to do it. And it's like everything else, someone's freedom extends until it infringes on someone else's. And before the 1980s, I'm sure that since the vast majority of people smoked, it wouldn't have been a problem.

Image at the top of this post: with my coworkers at Blue Cross of California in 1987. No ashtrays on that table!
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