Nicotine Lunch

Like most workaday swine, I ply my trade in a dull grey cubicle in a dull grey building in a dull grey corporate park. You know these places … a complex of several identical, unimaginative, ugly-yet-functional buildings with ample parking, and within walking distance of several eateries and at least one coffee house. Essentially carbon-copy strip malls each containing the same cloned appearance, shops, and decor. And they always have clever and whimsical names, often recalling some idyllic paradise, or sophisticated locale. They're called Gardens or Parks and have creative pseudo-European spelling such as Pointe. Yet another affront to our lives, where conformity is integrated into every last minute detail, helping keep the drones in line. Soviet Russia aint got nothing on this.

Get used to it, Chico, it’s the shape of the New America. Either climb on board or prepare to be run over. Now is not the time for heroes.

The New America! Love it or the terrorists win.

The Corporate Park in which I spend 9 hours a day is no different. It's called a Garden Centre, managing the rare double of both idyll and Euro. There are four buildings in the Centre, each exactly the same as the other aside from the logos at the top. There are three parking structures, and a little food-court complete with Daphne’s, Baja Fresh, some Chinese place the name of which escapes me, Pismo Grill, and a Coffee Bean so the workers are never without some trendy choice for food or other.

Oh, the owners of the property also just finished construction of a rather extravagant outdoor addition, complete with benches and a few “sculptures” (if you consider a giant cement sphere and a long piece of shale positioned on end to be sculpture), surrounded by grass and some shade trees. The area is in the shape of an oval, and covers close to 100 square yards. The design is sort of maze-like, with bench arrays placed here and there, some at right angles and others almost making a small square. The idea (as near as I can tell) is to provide space for a large number of people (looks like 100 could fit there easily), while maintaining a veneer of intimacy within any little bench grouping. Pretty clever, actually.

Essentially, it seems the ideal place to sit, chow down a couple of tacos, maybe do a bit of reading, and just relax while enjoying the sun.

Me gusta tacos y burritos con salsa picante!

That is, it would have been. See, one thing conspicuously absent in the design and implementation of the new lunch area was ashtrays. The place is totally devoid of them. There is an area on another part of the grounds which serves the smokers – complete with many benches and plenty of ashtrays.

So, where do you think the smokers go?

That sweet Laramie taste!

Yep. They’re climbing all over the new lunch area like ants over a sugar cube. No ashtrays? Well, gee, that must be why god invented pavement. Or grass. Or benches. Or Styrofoam cups with a little bit of coffee remaining into which the butt can be doused and the whole packaged dumped into the nearby trash can. Or, just left on the ground. Or on the bench.

And smokers wonder why they are hated.

Ook ook.