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We're engaged in a little 'debate' at work about the current smoking shelter and cycle shelter provision and I thought where better to seek advice than STW.
We have a reasonably new building that has a decent covered, but open fronted, cycle shed. The smoking shelter is also covered and open fronted, being in fact the very same aforementioned cycle shed and a free standing ash tray!
Now as a non-smoking cyclist I am clearly biased, but the mixing of these two activities seems farcical from a simple health perspective. Until recently the number of bikers and smokers has meant that we've been able to keep our distance as we creep through the cloud to recover our bikes at the end of the day. As people are returning to the office however, the number of smokers is increasing, as are the number of cyclists (I get that some people may be both but bear with me), so now people are having to stand, lean on or perch beside bikes to get their nicotine fix. In particular, facilities are promoting a sustainable transport model due to the limited parking provision, so to make cycling a less attractive prospect seems ridiculous.
I have raised this with the powers that be and they were rather dismissive in their response, convinced that any alternative would be expensive and problematic. It's also complicated by the fact that I work for the owners of the building, while the smokers, and probably other cyclists too, are tenants.
Has anyone experience of such a conflict, or know of any specific regs that can be applied here, beyond 'common' sense, to make them seriously look at alternatives regardless of the potential costs and inconvenience? I've asked the question "how would you like me to put a cup of coffee on the bonnet of your car while dropping ash on the windscreen" but it was laughed off.
Start taking your bike into the office, and parking it next to the tea station.
I'm not a fan of smoking, but in the grand scheme of things, tbh that wouldn't bother me, sorry. I've no idea what the coffee has to do with it.
Fair enough. A cup of coffee and a cig seem to go together in most cases. The saddle of a bike makes the perfect cup holder.
Had the same situation at a previous job. Never even occurred to me to mention it.
Good to know, sounds like I'm making a problem where there isn't one.
Probably the only practical thing you can do is ask for a proper bin/ashtray thing to be installed, as like all smokers these clowns sound grim & lazy and more than happy to litter the floor. Then, if they don't use it, sweep up all the ends with a dustpan & brush and dump them on one of the ****'s desks.
The saddle of a bike makes the perfect cup holder.
Buy yourself one of them wireless dropper seatposts.
Fire coffee into space from your desk when you spot someone balancing their brew on your saddle.
Yeah like the sort of thing that'd annoy me a bit but I wouldn't choose it as my hill to die on. There's no regulation that'll help you. Only thing would be if folk were finding their bikes were getting covered in ash and saddles burnt with fag ends.
IME of riding to work in many different places, the key factor is:
Do any of the owners/directors ride to work?
If not, expect cycling to receive the bare minimum of attention.
Take up smoking yourself
Its a nice way to break the day up. Wandering down for an espresso and a Gitane, clutching a book of french poetry
I sometimes miss the 'spirit of the blitz' camaraderie of being huddled against a biting winter wind and horizontal rain as we fed our addiction
Smokers are also the most clued up people in any business and know not only the latest gossip about Louise in accounts, but also the minute details of the machinations of all power struggles, up to and including at board level. If theres going to be a round of redundancies or a corporate buyout, they'll be the first to know. You can be sure of that
Based on your username @Dr_Bakes i iz disappoint this thread isn't about blazing chronic 😀
There's no smoke without fire, so ask management to fire all the smokers.
If you bike is been leaned on etc, ask Management how they'd like it if it was their car.
Mae an issue of the litter is all that can be done IMO. I do hate this attitude that a lot of European smokers have (UK probably the worst) for smoking litter
Just make sure you have a decent lock. You know what smoking types are like 😀
Go and spend 10 minutes out of every of the 8 hours they pay you for, in the bike shelter doing a bit of tinkering on your bike, looking at it, standing around or generally being non-productive.
It would annoy me, but this is very much down to personal feelings about smoking. I get annoyed by anyone smoking in public if I have to breathe it in. I think the idea of keeping your bike in the office sounds like your best bet, you shouldn't have to go near someone smoking if you don't want to.
This thread title had me feeling a little bit sad.
It made me remember the first time I met Ray Eden.
He was having a ciggie before the start of a race at the old Beastway.
A courier at the time he used to cycle out from town,drop his work bag and have a go.
Full of enthusiasm he would surge through the pack at the start,only to get dropped in a wheezing mess half a lap later.The rest of us couldn't believe his pre race prep,but he slowly gave up the fags,and week by week he got faster and faster.
RIP Ray.
So OP,tell your colleagues to chuck the fags and take up cycling,it could change their lives and your bike shed atmosphere 😉
Has anyone experience of such a conflict,
How about cycling on a road. Cars,buses,trucks et all. Plenty say bicycles have no place being in traffic, at least given their vulnerability.
I get annoyed by anyone smoking in public if I have to breathe it in.
You breath in traffic fumes, are you as 'angry' there 😕
And what or why be 'angry' about what someone else does.
Such is the argument militant vegans have. People eat meat, they dont and get so so angry about it.
Go and spend 10 minutes out of every of the 8 hours they pay you for, in the bike shelter doing a bit of tinkering on your bike, looking at it, standing around or generally being non-productive.
This.
And if anyone has a problem with it you can counter them by saying you are doing something (when fixing your bike) which will make you fitter and healthier, taking less days off work and therefore more productive and cheaper for the company.
Ask why they haven’t banned smoking from all company property, like a lot of businesses.
Take your bike inside. Say you can't be around the smoke. If they moan, take a few days off every 2 weeks due to the passive smoke.
If the cycle shelter has three sides it may not be open enough to be used as a smoking shelter in the workplace. I’d be checking the regs there if I were you.
Go have a break next to their cars and sit your mug upon the bonnet whilst leaning on their car
I bloody hate smoking and smokers who think it’s ok to litter everywhere, they don’t realise their fag butts are a huge part of plastic pollution
We have a reasonably new building that has a decent covered, but open fronted, cycle shed.
Assuming it's only open fronted (i.e. it has sides), I think it's illegal to smoke in them.
And what or why be ‘angry’ about what someone else does.
Such is the argument militant vegans have. People eat meat, they dont and get so so angry about it.
So vegans get angry, but you're the one randomly grinding your axe about it in a thread about smoking 😀 ?
- finbar (a carnivore)
Smoking shelters should be 75% open to atmosphere. If the bike shed isn't, it cant be a designated smoking area.
Dont understand why its 'too hard/expensive' to build another shelter to sperate the activities?!?! That sounds like a loads of manure!
Spend the next week balancing your cuppa on the roof, lean on front wing and tap a bit of fag ash on the bosses German whip.
It is a difficult one - it would rile me some, particularly as more folk want to use the space. We did have a message go around our business park a few years ago to point out bike sheds are bike sheds, not smoking sheds....
This would wind me up too, btw - not only would I not want to have to suffer the clouds of smoke depositing/retrieving my bike, but I'd also not want anything soft (bags, bartape) I had on my bike absorbing it all.
I'd have no problem, if the smokers leave no litter and touch no bikes.
It's not mixing smoking and cycling, it's mixing smoking and storing bikes. But I'm old and remember as a child when pretty much every adult in the family smoked, and the smell brings back happy memories.
Now as a non-smoking cyclist I am clearly biased, but the mixing of these two activities seems farcical from a simple health perspective.
What health perspective is that? Image?
They aren't forcing you to actually smoke are they? I mean there's a bit of smoke in the air but so there is on your journey home I'd bet.
I'm not a smoker and I think it's a terrible idea, and I'm happy to see them discouraged via punitive means like this (for their own benefit) but I don't think you have much of a leg to stand on here. Your complaint seems to be 'I don't want those beastly smokers near me', which I don't think has a lot of merit.
I’m not a smoker and I think it’s a terrible idea, and I’m happy to see them discouraged via punitive means like this (for their own benefit) but I don’t think you have much of a leg to stand on here. Your complaint seems to be ‘I don’t want those beastly smokers near me’, which I don’t think has a lot of merit.
I think the argument of mixing smoking and cycling is weird, but I think it's entirely reasonable that as a non-smoker, you shouldn't have to share an enclosed space with smokers.
The bike shed at my office is next to the smoker's shelter. I've always thought of it as extra security.
The smokers may be providing the benefit of being a deterrent to bike thieves.
I’m not a fan of smoking, but in the grand scheme of things, tbh that wouldn’t bother me, sorry.
It's mildly annoying, but you aren't going to get cancer from a bit of ciggy smoke wafting around while you're getting your bike out. Back in the olden days, this was the sign on the lunch room door.
I think it’s entirely reasonable that as a non-smoker, you shouldn’t have to share an enclosed space with smokers.
It's not exactly enclosed, nor are you in there for long, I'd assume. If you have a zero tolerance policy for fag smoke then fine, but in reality, I'd just crack on. I'd take a much tougher view of litter though.
Smoking shelters should be 75% open to atmosphere.
No, it's 50% (it's in the link that Aidy posted).
So if it's got a back and a roof, it's fine, it it's got 3 walls and a roof it's a substaionaly enclosed space and can't be smoked in.
Was expecting tales of jolly japes, not the mixing smoking with cycling that I was thinking of ☹️
Buy yourself one of them wireless dropper seatposts.
Fire coffee into space from your desk when you spot someone balancing their brew on your saddle.
For the win. Wouldn’t bother me enough to complain, but would have some fun flinging cups about.
but the mixing of these two activities seems farcical from a simple health perspective
Both activities are frowned upon in society, so putting them together makes sense in many people's minds 😉
you shouldn’t have to share an enclosed space with smokers.
If its a smoking shelter it can't be enclosed, so still not sure what the issue is
@Murray, thanks for that. Was told when I was an apprentice, and smoked, that it was 75% which was why they took out the bottom perspex panels of all the walls and both top and bottom of the front to meet requirement.
People leaning on my bike and using it as a cup holder would really piss me off.
When parking in a works car park. I used to find crazy little round mark on my windows. Turns out that when the sun was out, smokers liked to lean on my car and would stub their cigs out on my car. Which was nice. ****ers. One of them even got irate the time I discovered this by leaving for a meeting in the middle of the day and disturbing his repose and witnessed him stubbing out in my presence…
I do hate this attitude that a lot of European smokers have (UK probably the worst) for smoking litter
I didn't know that was a thing now. I tried smoking litter once when I was a kid, it was shite. Fags were much better!
As an ex-smoker I'd have no problem with having to pass a cloud of smoke twice a day, but I've spent enough time in smoking shelters to know how grim they can be, even for hardened smokers.
Two problems I'd have with it:
I keep my bikes in house and would not want them smelling of smoke.
People crowding around and leaning on bikes is inevitably going to lead to damage at some point. If it was people sitting on the cars in the car park it wouldn't be tolerated for a second.
Aside from all that, from what's described, it's a bike shelter - why are people even smoking in there at all?
I'm confused what the problem is for the company. As far as I'm aware they're not obliged to provide any shelter at all but they can tell people to smoke somewhere else. 5 minute job typing out an email.
When the smoking ban came in the company I was was working at had just the same arrangement, the bike shelter was also smoking shelter, but it was also right next to the building, and when windows were open in summer smoke would waft in through the windows... One of the engineers spotted some point in the legislation (or a related standard) about the minimum distance from a building that designated smoking areas should be set up, he was a brilliant complainer, really good at calmly making a point and re-stating it calmly over and over, until whichever manager was involved just caved in...
A week later the smokers were moved to the far side of the carpark with a bench and a fag butts bin but no shelter from the rain other than an old tree and they weren't huffing their smoke all over our bikes anymore. that was enough to persuade some of them to quit actually.
Worth googling if you're welfare is being compromised for smokers, just because it's convenient the office manager.