On and off, there has been a problem where we end up with a lot of cigarette smoke leaking into the SCCS media lounge because on of the Tarble employees has had an indoor cigarette break. This most recently happened again this past week, so we (the sysadmins) decided to do something about it.
I wrote an e-mail to Linda, the head of Dining Services, with a polite request to pass the message on to the employees of Essie Mae’s. When I was writing it, I did consider that it might be better if I talked about it with one of the workers I know, but I didn’t want to have a confrontational conversation. E-mail has the advantage of being impersonal, and Linda seemed like the logical contact for this.
She got back to me fairly quickly, saying “Nick: I will pass this along to Marie, who is the snack bar manager. I am truly sorry this is happening and will be sure our employees are addressed. You should also make this known to your fellow students since I see many of them smoking in Tarble as well. As a non-smoker I feel for you and this seems to be an issue throughout campus. Please let me know if this continues to be a problem.” Sounds like a problem solved to me.
Admittedly, I don’t usually confront students about this either. For example, I happened to pass through the back hall of Tarble last night on my way to the Media Lounge (which Public Safety left unlocked again, grawr), and a number of people were there smoking (or smoking up, for that matter). I didn’t say anything, although I think in that case there was an outnumbering issue.
Anyway, today at lunch, Marie was behind the counter and actually had a copy of my e-mail that Linda had forwarded to her. She asked me why I hadn’t come to talk to her, and I really just stumbled over my words. I apologized, of course, but I didn’t expect this to be a problem. Even worse than that, she mentioned that one of the employees confessed to having smoked repeatedly in the storeroom, and that she was being pressured to (as I understood her) fire him!!
So my first reaction was guilt (well… duh), since my complaint started this mess. I’ve tried a couple of times to write a second e-mail to Linda, but I just can’t come up with anything. I think I’ll try and find her in her Sharples office, although I don’t think she’ll be available until Monday.
Hopefully this isn’t actually as bad as it sounds… I just wanted the smoking to stop. :o\ Feel free to provide advice. On a related note, did I go about this in totally the wrong way? ::sigh::
“Free As A Bird” from Anthology 1 by The Beatles
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