Where There’s Smoke…, Part 2

I had a fairly late call from security letting me know of a guest they busted smoking in the stairwell. This is a 300-room hotel with ten stories. The guest had been found actively smoking a cigarette on the third-floor landing of the fire escape. There were pictures documenting the incident, and the entire stairway smelled of smoke. The guest owned up to it but wanted to speak with a manager first thing in the morning.

After some review, I found that the guest was with a conference connected to a disorder that caused massive allergies. It was mostly young families trying to cope with and drive research for a cure. Mostly kids are affected, and they literally have to eat special food through a tube because they are so allergic to literally everything.

The guest decided that it was too cold — fifty degrees Fahrenheit — to bother following the state law of smoking outside and smoked in the stairway. So much for the sick kids they put at risk. 

I confronted the guest in the morning and asked why they would put so many families at risk as well as break state law, and the response I got was that the guest smoking in the stairwell causing a fire risk and allergy issue was a retired firefighter and police officer.

When confronted with the danger he put the entire hotel and the very sick families in, his excuse was that he wasn’t affecting his wife who had the illness. The guest proceeded to spit-scream in my face that I wasn’t a firefighter and he was, and therefore, he should be able to smoke where he pleased.

Funnily enough, he changed his tone after I explained the issues and danger to the organizer of the conference.

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Where There’s Smoke…