The Bar Manager vs. The Cigarette – It was about eight years ago when I first started working in restaurants and bars.

It was about eight years ago when I first started working in restaurants and bars. It was eight years ago I started smoking cigarettes. I’d heard that a lot of people pick up the habit when they get into the service industry. The servers do it. The patrons do it. Like long shifts and small tips, it is just part of the culture. All it took was a gig behind the bar and one bad relationship to make me an official smoker.

After a few years on the job, I didn’t think twice about feeling short of breath or coming home smelling like an ashtray. That’s just nightlife, right? That’s just rock ‘n’ roll. No big deal. It never occurred to me that I had actually forgotten what it was like to feel healthy.

And it wasn’t just my smoking, either. It was those all around me night after night at the bar. The older I got, the more the secondhand smoke took its toll. I would work a normal shift, not drink a thing and still feel terrible the next morning. I would go to the gym and barely make it through a one-mile jog. Finally, I realized that what I was feeling was not normal for someone who otherwise should have been a healthy young adult.

But I was young, and still surrounded by the smoke-filled bar culture. I didn’t do much about the issue until my mother’s battle with cancer. Then I looked into my family’s history with heart disease and started researching the debate over smoking in public places, restaurants and bars. I took a good hard look at my health. I quit smoking.

Since earning my graduate degree from LSU last fall, I have remained in the industry. At least now I am more educated on the issue. I hope others consider the facts, too. In 2010, the Let’s Be Totally Clear campaign conducted a series of air quality studies in Louisiana. Out of 27 bars tested in Baton Rouge, 87% were considered unhealthy, and 41% had air quality considered hazardous. With the average bartender working 28 hours a week, that’s a lot of time in a hazardous environment.

How many nonsmoking bar patrons, musicians and service industry workers are subjected to dangerous air quality on a nightly basis? I’m not saying everyone should quit, and as a bar manager at Spanish Moon, I certainly don’t want those patrons to be inconvenienced. The thing is, it really comes down to choosing the lesser of two evils, and that’s something we in the service industry need to consider along with bar owners, city officials and policy-makers.