Today's Douchebag

Meg Dalton:

Think the battle over smoking in public has died down since the passage of the smoking ban? Apparently tempers still flare occasionally.

"I will be back," vowed Meg Dalton in one of the heated e-mails she and John Bayliss, owner of Fremont's English-style The George & Dragon Pub, have exchanged for weeks about smoking on the bar's deck. Bayliss, during the argument, had banned Dalton from his establishment.

The exchange began May 19 when Dalton e-mailed Bayliss saying she was new in town and had gone to the bar during the two previous weekends. "On all of these occasions both of your outdoor decks were full of smokers and the smoke was billowing into the inside of the bar," she wrote. "This is unacceptable and I trust that you will immediately correct this situation."

Dalton had copied the health agency, Public Health -- Seattle & King County, which sent inspectors to the bar, and after finding someone smoking, issued a warning, agency spokeswoman Hilary Karasz said. Inspectors will go back and the next violation will carry a $100 fine, she said.

But Bayliss, not pleased by the inspection, blamed Dalton in a June 4 e-mail for cutbacks: "so thank you very much ... now our business sales have dropped because the smokers can't smoke outside ... they are just going to go to one of a thousand places where people smoke on patios or outside the bars. So now I will have to terminate the employment of several staff ... "

The George & Dragon is one of my favorite bars in the city, and it bothers the hell out of me that it's dealing with economic hardship because some obnoxious cunt couldn't deal with cigarette smoke wafting in from the outside. I've always been willing to listen to the arguments of smoking ban proponents on the grounds of protecting workers (even though I often disagree), but the people who believe that smoking bans should exist for the patrons don't have an excuse for their actions. They simply don't comprehend what it means to live in a free society.