Back in September, I noted a New York Post story about a New York City bartender who was fired for looking the other way around smoking customers. It looks like she may have been stuck between a rock and a hard place on the issue. The rock being Michael Bloomberg's stringent anti-ashtray law, and the hard place being her employer who didn't want his bartenders making waves with the customers. In the end, she was the fall guy. Here is her comment/letter in it's entirety:

Below please find the letter that I wrote to the editor of the NY Post in response to the story published about me. You'll find that everything that was published therein was either untrue or contained such inherent vagaries that it was not possible to ascertain the facts regarding the events as they had actually occurred. Please read:

"To the editor:
re: Bartender Fired in Puff Huff 9/28

I am the bartender who is losing her job over this incident and I was, to say the least, greatly dismayed by the story that was printed about me. A number of things bother me about this article beginning with fabricated quotes being attributed to me. But that aside, the details of the incidents involving health department inspectors who entered the bar as well as my employer's smoking policy at the time were blatantly omitted from your story. There was no mention of the fact, which I expressly related to your reporter, that my boss, Mr. DeMarco, had been allowing patrons to smoke in the bar up until the time of the first inspection. All of the staff at Puffy's were given instructions by him to "don't ask, don't tell" when it came to customers lighting up on the premises. In other words, we were told to ignore smoking in the bar altogether. Consequently, I was between a rock and a hard place when the inspectors came to call. Admittedly, I did lose my temper with one inspector upon the suggestion that I call the police on my customers, who by the way are my bread and butter as I depend on their tips for my livelihood. However, there was also no mention of the fact that my angry words were reiterated to me verbatim in retaliation by the same inspector in question. Furthermore, immediately following this short exchange, I extricated myself from the situation realizing that what I had done was wrong. The half-hour shouting match described in your article took place between the inspector and a couple of outraged customers, one of whom had asked to see her badge and was refused. I was in no way involved in the situation at that point except as an eye-witness. Mr. DeMarco was not on the scene until most of this had already passed and therefore cannot act as a reliable source of information regarding these events. He was once again not around at all when the follow up inspection occurred three weeks later.

By the time that this next inspection came around, a strict no-smoking policy had been put in place and no one was found smoking on the premises. It is stated in the article that I "ignored" the inspector during this second visit, this being the reason on record for the loss of my job. In fact, this was not the case at all. On this occasion, after identifying herself, the inspector wandered around the bar for several minutes without asking me for any help and at one point let herself into the basement storage area. When she returned upstairs, she planted herself behind the bar and attempted to block me as I was running about serving my customers. She had still not spoken to me about anything specific at this point. I politely told her that I would be with her just as soon as I'd finished taking care of my customers. Just as I'd finished she raised her voice at me declaring that she was going to give me two minutes to show her where the bar's health permit was. I immediately lead her to the area where the permit was hanging while she shouted at me "Where is it? Give it to me now!" Mr. DeMarco telephoned the bar just after this and I put him on the line with the inspector who claimed to him that I was being 'uncooperative'. No ticket was issued on this occasion.

The end result of all of this is that I am being railroaded out of a job that I desperately need by a heartless employer who is trying to cover his own back and who will not listen to a single rational word that I have to say regarding the matter. I have honestly been looking for work, this time outside of the bar industry, for one month now and have had no success as of yet. I worry that any potential employer who may have read the story that you've printed will have misconstrued my role in the events in question and that I will be therefore hindered from finding work. Certain people may hold as a motto that "any publicity is good publicity", however I am a person of meager financial means who values and guards above all her character and work ethic. Regardless of any personal opinion that I may have about the anti-smoking law, I have no axe to grind with the inspectors themselves. I am, overall, distressed at the moment over my impending bout with unemployment considering the current economic circumstances and righteously feel that I should somehow set the record straight. I kindly thank you for your attention regarding this matter.

Sincerely,
Lisa Marie Dallas"

Of course, not a single word of this was published and in the weeks that have followed I have become thoroughly impoverished. I have $3 to last me for about one week while I wait for a check from a job that I've done for a Temp agency, and my unemployment benefits for the weeks in between are well below the average welfare recipient's payment. I am in danger of losing my apartment by the end of the year because I cannot come up with enough money to make ends meet even after working a few full-time weeks. So, it seems, that this has all worked out ironically 'great' for me.

I contend that my character was defamed by my boss and the NY Post's Sunday editor. I did not and still do not appreciate being exploited for this cause even though I vehemently disagree with the anti-smoking laws that are cropping up around the world. I believe that, instead of the issuance of severely restrictive decrees from 'on high' as we have been given here in NY, there should be some sentiment of sanity and sound proven science involved in the process of setting up such ordinances as these having to deal with public health. Instead, there is only political rhetoric backed up by merely manipulated and unanalyzed statistics which, unfortuneately, seem to hold more sway than facts themselves. But then again, the bar-going public, whose health is at stake, was never seriously polled about what they percieve to be the facts of the issue in the first place. Who needs facts when you've got the government and the media at hand to portray them for you? In any case, given the choice, I believe that if the ban were to be rescinded, the same public would still walk right back into that very same bar where they've always been hanging out, perhaps even with a better sense of freedom than anyone around here has had recently. While I cannot explicate in its entirety the breadth of my thought on the issue at the moment, I do have to get back to figuring out what I'm going to do with the $3 that I've got left to live on for the next week. Thank you for letting me clarify my role in this issue.

-Lisa Marie Dallas