Nicotine makes you a better worker with the downside being that it lowers your life expectancy significantly but that is a chance your employer is willing to take. It's the free market at work. If it was legal, they'd give you MDMA breaks or cocaine breaks too so you could show back up and get that temporary brain bump to maximize shareholder value.

It still seemed the most bizarre thing about working in the food service industry is that everyone seemed to smoke. You love food so much to spend your life preparing it and yet your turn your mouth into an ashtray so you probably spend your life tasting food as if it had been eaten in the middle of a forest fire.

documentaries? were they on TCM?