The cost of smoking goes way beyond the price of a pack of cigarettes. It's more than the money wasted repairing and replacing items that were ruined by a stray ash or the smaell of smoke.
When I think about the total cost of smoking, I know that TIME is a significant contributor to the bottom line.
Smokers who work are confined to certain times a day when they can go out and take a smoke. Whatever that time amounts to, I'm guessing to around an hour a day, could so easily be used for something else. I remember that mad dash at the designated moment to get to my supplies and then rush to the designated smoke area and then puff as quickly as possible to get a couple of cigarettes in before returning to work. If it was cold and nasty or even horribly hot and humid - it just didn't matter. I feel sorry for my co-workers who had to live with the smells afterwards!
Those of us who spent time as "closet smokers" had the additional constraints fo trying not to let anybody see us. For me, that meant the addtional time to go out to the parking lot and get in my car. Sometimes I just drove around at lunch so I could smoke.
At home, no project got started without a smoke first That project could as small as moving the laundry from the washer to the dryer, but there had to be a smoke before and probably after. Bigger projects required frequent breaks and took at least twice as long to complete.
After I got married, I spent a lot of time thinking of errands that had to be run so I could smoke without being seen. I don't know how many trips to the hardware store I made because I "forgot" some little thing. Grocery stores, pet food, dry cleaners - any errand served as cover to smoke during the weekend.
I spent time finding parks where I could pull over in the shade and smoke in the summer. During the winter, I looked for areas that might block the wind so I could leave the window rolled down.
So many minutes and hours gone literally up in smoke. Another reason to keep the quit
PT
