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July 4, 2006

City of Cigarettes

Attention Smokers!
This bathroom is not only used for smoking.
Please open the window and flush cigarette butts down the toilet when finished.
-Management

I stared in awe at this sign hung on the bathroom door of the office building where I recently got a job doing market research. The first thing that came to my mind was the stereotypical scene of the girls in high school who would use the out-of-the-way “bad girls’ bathroom” to sneak puffs between classes. A sign like this would have been a cause for celebration. It was the perfect way of saying, “We know what you’re doing. We don’t like it, but we can’t stop you so try a little harder to cover it up.”

Rome, like most major European cities, is notorious for it’s large population of smokers (not as large as in the 1950s before the link with cancer became known, but larger than the U.S. smoker count). When I first moved here two years ago, I was appalled by the number of people I saw smoking…and the number of cigarettes they went through in a day. Bars and restaurants encouraged smoking and no one would give you a hard time if you lit up in a “non smoking” zone. Rules are often bent or broken in this city.

In January 2005 that all changed. The Italian government banned smoking in all indoor public places. As a waitress in a popular restaurant (and a non-smoker), I was relieved that I could finally come home from work without the stench of 8-hours’ worth of chain-smokers clinging to my clothing. Businesses, however, were not so happy that their customers had to step outside for a cigarettes as opposed to ordering another drink to accompany it.

In the end, statistics show that there has been a small decrease in cigarette consumption since the ban – but that doesn’t make sneaking a cigarette during work hours any less common. Standing outside the bathroom, face-to-face with that sign, I realized that old habits die hard…especially in a culture with thousands of years of history. Italians may not always play by the rules, but they’ll find their way around them.

Posted by Kelsea  at 8:28 AM | Permalink

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