The smoking room: A room where smokers gather to exchange random useless pieces of information with buddy smokers while thinking about something else. That’s my narrow definition, or in other cases the water cooler in the corporate world, but with more time and harm.

Whenever I go down for a puff or two, I can’t but help ear drop on the surrounding people. There is only one smoking room for about 500 people, so I guess many break the rules, some adhere, some find new locations, but its still a great place to get to know the darker side of a business. people think they are really at a comfort room, or confession chamber or better yet at home with friends.

The crowd is made up of 1% performers, 2% doers, 7% losers, complainers, whiners, and more losers.

For about 6 weeks I continued to visit the small smoking room that seemed to irritate the living daylights out of me. I started calling or pulling a friend along for company against the evil that lurked in the background-(The foulest stench is in the air,The funk of forty thousand years,And grizzly ghouls from every tomb,Are closing in to seal your doom,And though you fight to stay alive,Your body starts to shiver,For no mere mortal can resist,The evil of the thriller) you need to play some michael Jackson Thriller music in the background to feel how scary it is, especially with the laugh in the end!

I know they don’t mean harm, but the talks that go on in this room can make or break your day, in most cases break if you let it in. Apart from the football news updates and amazing waste of your time people that analyze the game for every minute on the minute, its all bad negative vibes.

They talk to one another complaining away in the morning, afternoon and just before they leave, and wake up the next day wondering why they feel like a run over dead cat?

The subjects covered which they feel need national assistance are covered in every social gathering but with more intensity here:

• Bad football managements, under the take referees, lost penalties.
• The suffering marriage for the last 8 years.
• The divorcee who is showing his friend who is still boss in the broken home by taking away the children.
• The bad place they work in for the last 15 years. Why not leave? its an option you know.
• The crazy rich and their wild cars, stop smoking, work harder, stop complaining and maybe some day you’ll be the envy of this rooms crowd?
• The flood and who died, who to blame, finger pointing and saving.
• The young new manager that thinks he knows it all, trust me he does!
• The company and its new smoking law, everyday they talk about it, more rooms, more power to smokers, more this & that, get over it! smoking is a dying thing!
• Gossip & more gossip, sometimes I wonder if men gossip more than girls?and do they suffer from PMS?
• Girls on TV, girls in the mall, girls while traveling, girls in cars, girls across the table from him and his wife? If only I wasn’t married they tell each other, remember jerk that’s why you got married, its not true, married men think they can get more women, its all in the that thick skull of yours,its the ones that talk that never can do jack!
• Imagination of a better world, ignited by a negative wave. Imagine this really busy workers dream come true, or better yet, let’s not and pretend we did!
• Health problems, great massages, accidents, fatal injuries, poisoned food at a local famous restaurant, bad service, lousy airlines, telephone provider problems,auto maintenance issues, speeding tickets, divorce, facebook flirting issues- the man with 20 odd fake identities catching his friends and girlfriends cheating on his poor soul, too  much work to do… and the list goes on.
• Newspaper headline education. At least complete the reading and then blabber your mouth!

I once told a Human resource guy that if a company wants to find the 80% that don’t work, all they have to do is make more mouse traps( smoking rooms) and catch the mice at play while the cats away, he laughed and pointed out that most of them where all here!

I go to the room every hour or so, sometimes forgetting and sometimes too busy.What seems to catch my attention is the ones that are always there, no matter when I go there I find the same faces at any given hour or half hour. They seem to live there, making friends with everyone except me, funny and thank God. I assume they kind of figured me out that I don’t take BS & negative talk much, I tend to diffuse it on the spot, NOW TELL ME WHERE THE FUN IS? if he keeps hitting us with bright sunny side up stories?

They seem to have fallen victim to their own words, forgotten the meaning of positivity and smoke some more, as if it helps.

I guess with all the smoking rooms across the world in airports and the street experience I am not enjoying, I think its time to put PRIORITY on my new years resolutions, especially that I am not associated with the smoking room fans in way or form. Maybe first on weekends, then every once in a while, and suddenly I guess nothing, just fresh air? sounds like a plan to me.

I thought I couldn’t afford to take her out and smoke as well.  So I gave up cigarettes.  Then I took her out and one day I looked at her and thought:  “Oh well,” and I went back to smoking again, and that was better.  ~Benny Hill
One thousand Americans stop smoking every day – by dying.  ~Author Unknown
There’s something luxurious about having a girl light your cigarette.  In fact, I got married once on account of that.  ~Harold Robbins
Remember, if you smoke after sex you’re doing it too fast.  ~Woody Allen

mamdooh.alradadi

me@mamdoohalradadi.com