More ‘50’s Manners for Smoking

Don't be sneaky in reaching for a smoke. Take the pack out. Offer around. If a man declines, fine; don't offer the next time. If a woman declines, you re-offer every time you smoke yourself. That's etiquette for you. Say you're with a woman at the theater. Intermission comes and you're dying for a smoke. Your companion doesn't want one. What do you do? Well, Idiot, go out and smoke alone. After all, as Kipling said, a “woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.”

Tobacco Taboos Help Clear the Air

In their eagerness to protect minority rights, lawmakers have neglected the most persecuted minority of them all: Non-smokers. The trouble with the non-smoker is that he is integrated when he would rather be segregated. In church or museum, he may find respite from the nicotine pall, but anywhere else he's fated to burning nostrils, slinging eyes and semi-suffocation. Superiority in numbers, however, doesn't give the smoker the right to spurn certain taboos with respect to his weed. 

These Include: 

• Don't smoke at religious ceremonies.
• Ditto at weddings, funerals, dedications. 
• Don't smoke in sickrooms, either, unless the occupant lights up first. 
• Don't lay your cigarette on the edge of a table or other piece of furniture. Not only does the table burn; so does the table's owner. 
• AVOID asphyxiating people. Watch where the smoke drifts when you lay down your cigarette. 
• And when you finally extinguish the thing, do a bang-up job. Ashes are for ashtrays. 
• Take a hint If your host or hostess hasn't provided ashtrays, it may mean smoking is frowned upon. There are more no smoking signs than "No Smoking" signs. 
• That goes for fancy dinner parties, too. The absence of ashtrays probably means one thing: the gourmets prefer their salads unsullied by smoke. 
• UNLESS you're a hood in a B-movie, clear your mouth of fuming impediments and stogies when talking, shaking hands or tipping your hat. 
• Don't be sneaky in reaching for a smoke. Take the pack out. Offer around. 
• If a man declines, fine; don't offer the next time. If a woman declines, you re-offer every time you smoke yourself. That's etiquette for you. Say you're with a woman at the theater. Intermission comes and you're dying for a smoke. Your companion doesn't want one. What do you do? Well, Idiot, go out and smoke alone. After all, as Kipling said, a "woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke." 

Q & A ON P'S & Q'S 

(Q) "I'm job-hunting. During interviews I get jittery and light up a cigarette. Should I?" B. P.

(A) It's poor manners to light up In any stranger's office without permission. It may be disastrous in a job Interview.

By Don Goodwin in “Male Polish,” 1959

🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia