[ryandrake]

I think people forget how ubiquitous smoking was. I remember back in the 80s, you basically couldn't go anywhere without ending up stinking like an ashtray. And it was even worse decades earlier before I was born. Everyone bellyached as anti-smoking laws kicked in, but slowly, attitudes changed, and now, it's not such a big deal. I bet if you got rid of anti-smoking laws, you wouldn't even see a huge uptake in public smoking or smoking in workplaces these days, because people's minds have been changed and there are a lot fewer smokers.

[reaperducer]

I remember back in the 80s, you basically couldn't go anywhere without ending up stinking like an ashtray.

Can confirm. I visited many a windowless office in Manhattan where everyone smoked, and air circulation was nil.

Fixing electronics in those days always started with swabbing a thick layer of tar off the circuit boards.

[technofiend]

It's probably hard to fathom now but while working at Chevron in 1990 / 1991 the two smokers in my group got their own office so no one else had to share with them while they smoked at their respective desks. Thankfully they kept the door closed, but any time you had to go in there everything - the walls, the ceiling, their keyboards and monitors, their books - everything had an odiferous brown patina. It was like walking into a bar. The fact that last comparison no longer really works tells me how much the world has changed for the better.

[Spooky23]

I had to do some work at a customer datacenter, which was a converted print/mainframe room in a 70s high-rise with lots of windows.

The customer had built a wall blocking all of the windows in the late 80s (this was circa 2000), we had to go in the the area inbetween.... 10-15 years of no interior cleaning and high temps resulted in these weird formations of tar drips. It almost looked like a cave formation. Absolutely vile.

The story from the site staff was that the print and mainframe operators back in the day would essentially sit and continuously smoke, all day, all night. IIRC, we found a half dozen defunct cigarette machines.

[technofiend]

Hahahhaah. That's cool and disgusting at the same time. A former coworker shared with me he was tasked to investigate why the mainframe was throwing errors only at night. He discovered a couple of operators were rolling a couple and then disconnecting the air ducting to the mainframe to use as a covert way to vent their own exhaust.