Friday 29 March 2013

The Monster Under The Bed

Further to last week's post about P&O's undocumented e-cig policy, a reply has been received to a complaint lodged by the passengers concerned. It's the same lazy, lily-livered crap as usual, and reads something like this.
Dear Mr So-and-so 
We accept that e-cigs are harmless but we're shit scared that someone will see the vapour and light up a real cigarette. 
This would make our staff have to do some work in approaching customers and telling them to stop. 
Yours sincerely
I.M.A. Pussy
Now, thousands of venues across the country are perfectly comfortable with allowing e-cigs, in fact three of us were vaping openly in a packed central London bar just a couple of weeks ago with full permission from the enlightened owner. Not an eyebrow was raised, let alone others sparking up in sympathy. There is also the small matter of the hundreds of thousands of RyanAir flights where they are encouraged, without any apparent problem.

Considering this, have there ever been any reports, anywhere, of P&O's scenario actually happening? If so, I can't say I'm come across them.

E-cigs prompting mass ban-breaking is like the monster under the bed. Some kids may be scared of it, but it simply doesn't exist anywhere but in the kid's imagination.

Besides, if it is so tiresome to approach people and ask them to stop doing something, perhaps ignorant P&O could avoid stressing their poor overworked staff by telling them not to hassle innocent vapers, eh?


2 comments:

Steve Brown said...

A couple of weeks ago I went to Terminal 5 at Heathrow to pick up my daughter. I'd recently purchased an e-cig and had taken to puffing on it at intervals to see if it affected my tobacco consumption.
Without even thinking, when I was in the Terminal and gazing at the arrivals board, I took out the e-cig and puffed on it. A lady at a desk nearby waved her hands at me so I waved back. The I saw her speaking energetically on the phone. A minute or two later an obviously more senior lady approached me, as she got near I lifted by e-cig to my mouth, puffed on it to show the blue light at the end. The approaching lady stopped, grinned, waved and went back to whence she came.
Nice experience.

Dick_Puddlecote said...

Marvellous. :)


Some get it, some (the less intelligent) don't. Thing is, I'm still waiting to read just one story about all these people lighting up because they see an e-cig. There are plenty of companies like Wetherspoons saying it could happen, but still not a single reported case of it ever happening anywhere in the world.


And even if it did, do these clowns think that an Environmental Health Officer (who are tasked with policing the smoking ban) instantly appears like the shopkeeper in Mr Benn and issues them with a £2,500 fine or something? For P&O it would mean a helicopter flight or a Star Trek beaming up. That's if councils could be bothered, which they can't since funding for enforcement ended in 2008.


Let's face it, anyone using this excuse is plainly just fucking stupid.