Often overlooked is the potential of restaurant diners to fight tobacco consumption through their choice of waitperson.
Here in Austin, Texas, where I have resided since 1997, most recently, I have established a recent tradition when I dine out of asking the host or hostess to please seat me at a dining table where my assigned server will be someone who never consumes any tobacco products at all.
Several hosts and hostesses in a variety of restaurants in northwest Austin have each very kindly honored that polite request of mine.
I have explained to each of those hosts and hostesses that as a customer dining in that restaurant, and as a member of several anti-smoking civic groups, I want to feel confident from the very start that none of the tip money I leave will go toward financing any tobacco habit by my server during that individual's leisuretime.
And it does truly feel great to sense that when I tip a waiter or waitress, he or she will be using that money to purchase a new book, buy healthful groceries, etc.
I should add, incidentally, that there are inevitable occasions when the host or hostess will inform me that "all of our servers on duty at the moment are smokers." One strategy I've tried, when I receive a disclosure of that type, is to ask to please be seated in the section of the waitperson on duty who currently consumes the LEAST quantity of tobacco products.
In that way, I as a customer can financially reward that waitperson for choosing to minimize his consumption of tobacco products, the hope being that he might eventually eliminate tobacco consumption from his own lifestyle.
This dining-out tradition of mine financially benefits not only the non-smoking servers, but also the smoking servers who are thereby given additional financial incentive to overcome their smoking addiction as soon as possible. And successful completion of a smoking-addiction program by each such smoker employed as a server in a restaurant will also bring to that individual a wide array of other benefits.
Those tangible long-term benefits include enhancement of his medical and emotional health and of his ability to comply with the law and achieve a consistently friendly style toward a wide variety of acquaintances and coworkers and work supervisors. Non-smokers also save thousands of dollars per year that otherwise might have gone toward the purchase of tobacco products----and that money saved can be directed toward more salutary and creative items for each such former smoker.
I should add, incidentally, that I will myself gladly contribute financially toward expansion of successful and honorable treatment programs throughout this nation for anyone and everyone, including any restaurant waitpersons, who on his own volition seeks to be cured of their current addiction to tobacco products.
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