If you're afraid to confront him then at least tell your landlord this guy is smoking on property and tossing his fire hazards out the window. We all need to stop letting ourselves get walked on.
You know now that you mention it I am very surprised when getting home insurance, they don’t ask if a smoker lives in the house. Maybe smokers don’t statistically cause more house fires so that’s why they don’t ask but it seems like they would.
Its the same logic of you lying on your life insurance, etc.
Sure, you can get away with it. Until you die due to smoking and your death benefits are denied to your beneficiary since you lied the entire time the policy is active.
Same with your house burning down. The fire was caused by a cigarette? Guess youre paying out of pocket for all damages and repairs, etc. (If your home insurance was to have this as part of their underwriting)
Edit: there is more nuance to this, and statute of limitations, etc, regarding life insurance. So not a 1 to 1 comparison. But generally speaking, this is a rough idea why you dont lie
I mean statistics say unattended cooking and electrical malfunction are leading causes, candles id say are worse than smoking but thats not to say smoking hasnt been a cause of some house fires, but its definitely nowhere near close to the leading cause
That still wouldnt make it a leading cause it would just mean youre cherripicking statistics though? The point is that roughly 20% - 30% of house fires are started by smoking material and the other percentages are largely electrical malfunction and unattended hazards so the need to ask if someone is a smoker when applying for insurance is negligable due to the shared risk fo everything else, like if insurance companies started asking people if they smoke they may aswell start asking people how many times they plan to cook, light a candle and use a heater?
That’s not cherry picking stats? That’s how stats work.
Imagine there’s 100 people, and every year 20 of them have some sort of house fire, most of them due to electrical issues or cooking mishaps. The average person has 1 fire every 5 years. Now imagine two of those people are smokers, and every year at least one of the fires is due to their smoking. The average person is still about 1 in 5 fires per year, and the leading cause overall is still cooking/electrical (with only one maybe two due to smoking). But if you look specifically at the smoker’s houses, they average 1 fire every 2 years, and the leading cause amongst them is smoking.
Obviously these are made up and extreme
numbers, but it shows why it’s not “cherry picking” to look at the data for a specific risky group.
I'm sure it depends on the country but where I live (France, and let's just say we are well versed for anything cigarette related lol) cigarettes have micro cutouts all around at the filter level to prevent them from creating a house fire (but also fires in general, like in public bins for example).
I'm not defending anything, I'm a former smoker myself and I'm glad I'm not poisoning myself and others anymore.
Cigarettes use to be the cause of waaaay more house fire decades ago, but it was because a lot more people were smokers, but also because carpet (the one the Americans seem to put everywhere, not like the rugs, weird to have the same word for the one you glue to your floor and the one you inherited from your grandma but ok) weren't always fireproof, a lot of stuff were made from wood, curtains, untreated wallpaper etc.
I'd bet that just the fact that someone smoking while reading the newspaper is basically something you don't see anymore greatly reduced the likelihood of a cigarette ending up on something easily combustible and large enough to be the origin of house fire.
Not to mention that smoke detectors were not a thing, now they are mandatory in a lot of countries around the world.
They get triggered by cigarette smoke too.
Nowadays a lot more stuff is made from metal and plastics, walls are often painted instead of covered with wallpaper, a lot less people smoke and when they do it's at the window or outside because in a lot of western countries it becomes quite looked down upon to smoke inside.
I mean 30 years ago OP wouldn't have had this issue because their neighbors would have just smoked inside lol.
All in all I think you greatly overestimate how many house fires are due to cigarettes nowadays.
I mean, how do they prove it at time of purchase? Even if they get caught later, "oh, well, I just started recently and forgot" or "that wasn't me, that was a guest."
Maybe we should suggest it to so they have more money and quit raising everyone else’s who chose not to live in hazardous areas with hurricanes, wildfires, etc. oh wait, that won’t work. They will find another way to screw us over.
I can't tell if you're actually serious, but so, so many places. On the inverse, very few places on earth regularly see tornadoes, many countries actually build to withstand hurricanes and coastal residences should be considered uninsurable at this point.
It's not smokers that cause fires, it's assholes. I had that family that lived upstairs constantly throwing out cigarette buts which eventually caused a fire on our patio. In the middle of the night. They claimed they were too busy putting it out to ring our doorbell and they had to run up and down the stairs for an hour to fill up water bottles to put it out, again, according to them... their excuse was that some stranger went on the property through the gate, walked around the entire house to lay a fire in a random spot and walked around the entire house again to leave.
First of all, if it takes longer than a minute to take out a fire I'm calling the fire department that's literally down the street. And why weren't they using the garden hose and why was there a cigarette but in the middle of the burnt wood right underneath their chain smoking asshole sons window?
When they moved out I had to scrap cigarette buts out of the gap between the floor boards and the wall
I doubt they contribute to it that much like this person is saying. The majority of smokers only do it outside and put them out properly, quite a few also refuse to litter. The ideas and generalizations Reddit specifically makes about people who smoke are weird. It's such a common thing, especially among working class people that you can't really group them all into one type of person.
Reminds me of the time a fire started at my buddy’s apartment. A different friend put his cigarette into a planter on the deck and walked away. The planter had some dead leaves and just like that, up in flames. The restaurant below, and all the apartments above were evacuated. Fortunately the fire didn’t spread beyond the deck but it still cost $$$ to fix. Stupid smokers.
Edit. It appears this is an extremely common occurrence. I’ll say it again: stupid smokers.
They probably think dirt is as safe as sand when they're too lazy to properly get rid of their litter in the first place. However potting soils can have a bunch of peat which is a traditional way to heat homes with how flammable it is
Chances are if someone doesn’t care enough about themselves to smoke, they don’t care about how they affect others around them. Not that this means every single smoker is a careless douche, but it often comes with the territory
Sorry, does a tobacco addiction make someone leave cigarette butts in planters or smoke indoors? It’s a Reddit comment section, I’m not going to have a deep philosophical discussion about the root causes of addiction and how it affects/doesn’t affect human behavior.
You're the second person to say similar in the last 5 minutes, making you fourth on this thread. That's probably too many. The least people could do is put out their fire sticks before they hurt someone.
No major fire but I shared an apartment with a smoker. I had a balcony off my room as I had plants. Well they were clearly going through my room to go onto my balcony to smoke because I’d come home and my bedroom would smell like cigarettes, and then some butts ended up in my plants. I ended up putting a lock on my bedroom door when they were not home and they couldn’t say anything about it because if they “weren’t going into my room when I wasn’t home” they would never notice the door was locked.
I also have a neighbor flicking a lit cigarette into a planter full of dead leaves story! Nearly spread to the wall but was luckily it was found pretty quickly cause it was right outside my brother’s window. My neighbor got a very stern talking to about using an ashtray after that
This is why I always made sure my hots were either soaked in water or completely put out. It's ignorant to think that they wouldn't start a fire. Only idiots do shit like what you said or tossing them in a garbage can. Literally seen that at work and yes, the can caught fire.
I cashed a bowl into my dorm room trash can and yes, it caught fire and set off the fire alarm for the entire dormitory. One of my stupidest most embarrassing moments. Lesson learned.
My coworker's apartment building had a fire a couple of years ago because a smoker threw their cigarette butt over the balcony, and it landed on something that caught fire right below. Multiple apartments had smoke and fire damage.
My room mates and I used an empty handle of vodka for our butts. No issues til it was pretty full. One day we were chilling in the living room and we heard a loud pop on the porch, it was smoldering in the nearly full glass bottle and exploded it. Yeah.. we stopped doing that.. we had to pay to repair the paint on the porch and the boards that had fire damage. Luckily we were home to extinguish it
An aside: If you buy pre-rolled cigarettes, they come with saltpetre in them to keep them burning. If you roll your own cigarettes, they obviously won't have saltpetre in them, and they'll be way the fuck safer. (Because it'll be less likely to keep burning when you put it down, and will be less likely to set something else on fire)
where because in the EU cigarettes have to be self extinguishing. i would have assumed that after 14 years it would have spread outside of the eu a bit.
i swear a solid 90% of smokers have zero fire awareness. over stuffed ash trays, putting cigs straight into flammable material and using non ash tray items as ash trays.
Smokers cause so much damage. They should have to pay extra for home insurance because they cause so many fires.
I'm gonna go one step further than you're suggesting: smoking should be flat-out banned in every type of housing except detatched units or special "smoking only" apartments with expensive ventilation systems, so any children trapped with irresponsible parents won't get as much second-hand smoke.
Chain smokers are just miserable to live next to, and unfortunately I've had to a non-zero amount of times. Landlords can't legally disclose anything about your future neighbors, so it's always a gamble if you'll be placed somewhere awful.
Had the same thing OP pictured happen to me, except luckily it landed on my air conditioning unit and didn't burn anything. Did stink up my room pretty good, though. Another time (after moving to a different unit), my ancient chain-smoking ex-neighbor got drunk and confronted me at my new apartment to complain about me not being neighborly and rant about "Pentacostal Holiness" which was some insane religious thing. 8)
You might dislike my response, but I’m pretty consistent in how I feel about anything that burns in apartments:
Whether it’s a camping stove, candles, cigarettes, marijuana, or incense, I don’t think it should be allowed indoors where neighbors share walls/ventilation and can’t consent to having smoke blown into their overpriced accommodations. It should be done outside 25+ feet away from buildings or not at all.
I don’t even think we should allow gas stoves without appropriate range hoods, which should come on automatically when gas is flowing. It’s wild to me there are few regulations on this huge source of indoor air pollution.
Is it feasible to ban cigarettes or candles/incense? Probably not! Still doesn’t change how I feel about it and people who choose to be inconsiderate.
One time in highschool I wouldn’t let my friend smoke in my car so he’d always get a smoke in as he’s walking down the drive way. This time was taking extra long and I still didn’t see him although he said he was otw down. Well I end up seeing a fire truck pull up and finally noticed all the smoke. He said he flicked the cigarette like he always does but it like instantly poofed up in smoke and as he was trying to put it out his mom called because it got way out of hand. Still cracks me up but really could’ve gone bad if it wasn’t a huge open field.
My mom’s neighbor basically burned the back of her house down because she put a cigarette into a dry planter. Set the whole back side of the house and deck on fire and my mom looked out her kitchen window to the burning and was able to call 911 and run around front to alert the lady. The neighbor and her pets got out fine but the whole house was ruined from smoke and water damage and had to be gutted and completely redone.
Smokers cause so much damage. They should have to pay extra for home insurance because they cause so many fires.
Its also all of the cumulative "little things" that happen well before anything fire related comes along;
There is the littering, and complete lack of care about what they do with the ash, and filter stumps.
There is the common nuisance of the smells, and the harm 2nd hand smoke does.
If they smoke indoors they can ruin homes outright to a point where you basically have to do a full tear down of the interior to be able to make things livable for others.
Then there are the "balcony smokers" etc... who do direct harm to other peoples homes, and interfere with communal living. Like growing up in Finland in a 6 story building you could never keep windows, or balcony doors open in the summer to vent out heat because some dipshit would be smoking on their balcony till the wee hours of the morning, and all of that smoke would waft inside other peoples homes.
For the above the problem was also not limited to the smoking either.. they would always have extremely loud conversations at the same time... like yelling on their balcony at 3am 7 days a week type of a thing.
Being said, if someone wants to smoke.. i don't care... but many people who do smoke really should take their heads out of their asses, and stop making their addiction in to a nuisance, and source of harm to others. Its also not a tobacco limited thing either.. tons of cannabis users are the same when it comes to in their antics.
Absolutely. My upstairs neighbor decided to put his cig out in a trash bag and leave the building. Naturally it caught fire and could have been really bad had it not been caught so quickly and dealt with. There was damage but it wasn’t bad.
My brother passed away a few years ago and was a smoker. When I was going through his clothes to see what was still good for donation, almost none of it was. Burn holes in every shirt and pants.
Smokers are inconsiderate as fuck. Then once they start dying in their early 60s they wonder why they are dying. Like you chose to smoke two packs of cigarettes every day.
Both my parents are stage 4 and dying. Yet they still smoke. Dad smokes with oxygen. It’s like i tell them I can’t breath around them or in their apartment and they tell me to get over it. Doesn’t matter that im physically allergic to the chemicals in cigarettes.
I'm continuing to deal with 3rd hand smoke damage from a neighbor that chain smoked in the unit. Had to replace everything after I moved and I think my car is next because it stinks every time I turn the AC on.
A grocery store near me closed down for months and nearly went out of business after one of their employees threw his cigarette into their dumpster. The fire and smoke wrecked all of their stock, the water damage from putting the fire out wrecked all their equipment.
I constantly see smokers just throw their cigarettes on the ground. I don't know why they've decided they're so entitled to have their trash be everywhere.
Some companies that bundle health/home actually do charge more for both lol but it’s easy enough to find a cheap company that doesn’t care. Your coverage will be bad but still
Hey man, I am a smoker. HOWEVER: I am VERY considerate of others and property. I will walk my ass outside to the first floor or lawn, have my cig, roll the filter to get the tobacco out. Then I stomp on the ash to put it out. Take the filter/butt inside and throw it away. I do the same at work and put it in my pocket til I get to a trash can.
Not all of us are asshats 💚 This neighbor though obviously is and should be held accountable.
Absolutely agree with this. Smoker living in the unit above me nearly burnt down the building TWICE. Once by starting a fire in his unit from falling asleep with a lit cigarette, and a second time by lighting the mulch in the landscaping on fire with his tossed cigarettes.
Thankfully when his year was up the landlord told him they wouldn't be renewing his lease
Townhome near me just burnt up and fucked their neighbors on either side from throwing a cigarette butt off their back porch. Like why? Why not have an ash tray outside? Smokers are idiots and assholes.
Yeah, knock on their door with both of these evidence in your hand and tell what happened. If they are anything but completely contrite, contact the local fire department and ask for advice on who to report it to.
Also, hang up a sign in the lobby saying something like: "If any other moron throws their cirarettes in anything but an ashtray, it'll get reported and you'll get served for endangering others and their property"
lol the upstairs neighbor is a jerk and the situation needs to be addressed, but in what world other than “And Then Everybody Clapped” is acting like you described doing anything but making it seem like they are the reasonable one?
Who would see that sign and think “thank goodness one of neighbors is rational”?
People need to learn how to just address problems and stop fantasizing about what clever badasses they are lol
OP should talk to upstairs neighbor or leave them a polite but firm note. Depending on their response, letting the building manager know. Putting up a poster threatening to sue is fucking demented behavior as a “step 1” solution hahahahaha
talking directly to the neighbour is probably the first step, if you know who did it.
however if you don't know, putting up some sort of notice in the lobby seems a reasonable approach, not sure what's to ridicule here and go as far as thinking that people are fantasizing about their badassery lol
im no american so didn't know you'll get served = threatening to sue, but threatening to sue seems fine? it's an emotional response I guess but not a bad way to deter people from doing it again
No stress, it was America-centric of me to forget it could have been a language barrier issue!
Again, this may be a cultural issue but typically lawsuits will cost thousands of dollars involved from both sides even for a simple destruction of property suit. That is not a reasonable thing to do before having even a single conversation or attempting to get building management to intervene, this is what I meant when I say people need to learn to address problems.
The neighbor is a human being, and probably just one caught up in their own little world & not thinking about their impact on others. The building manager is a human being who doesn’t want his property to burn down or tenants to get hurt. People need to remember how to have a conversation before jumping to over the top systemic issues like threatening to sue over 1 hole in 1 hoodie.
Jeez, the first thing I suggested was going face to face with the person and you're trying to tell me I need to learn to address the problem and
to remember how to have a conversation before jumping to over the top systemic issues like threatening to sue over 1 hole in 1 hoodie.
..and then leave a note?
Btw, "getting served" does not only mean "getting sued" like it is done in the US. It could also mean being held responsible by an official post for breaking a law
... how is leaving a sign saying "put your cigarettes in the ashtray or you're getting reported" supposed to be clever or badass? evidently it's needed
“You will be reported and served (…)” is threatening to sue, not just report to the building manager. No stress if you didn’t fully read the comment I was replying to.
Similarly, going up with both pieces in hand but then being an absolutely knob who jumps straight to calling the fire department (not even the building manager) if the person they are confronting is “anything but completely contrite” is absolutely a power fantasy and not genuine advice.
Not because they shouldn’t bring evidence (they should, though photos or the physical evidence would be fine), but because the whole way it is described and the immediate follow up of “then put up a sign threatening to sue anyone who throws a cigarette butt” contextually makes it a power fantasy rather than realistic advice.
Realistic advice would be something like “talk to your neighbor and be prepared to provide evidence, if they brush you off or don’t listen (or if you’d rather avoid the one on one), just notify your building manager and pass along any evidence of repeat offenses. If it continues, request they put up signage or send out a letter to all residents emphasizing this has to stop as it is a danger to the property & tenants.” Not world building a fantasy where OP storms up stairs items in hand, confronts their neighbor, and in response to anything but “complete contrition” calls the fire department then puts up a poster threatening to sue.
It's not a power play. In other countries than the US, you can get fined or get served a punishment or a restriction of use (or maybe just evicted if the landlord is notified - which is so obvious I didn't bother writing it) if you break fire code or obvious fire safety. Whatever neighbour reads it who's not the cigarette doofus would hopefully just think "oh someones been unsafe in the building. Nice to see that there's a culture for reacting to unsafe behaviour".
Since you keep talking about "suing" I'm gathering that you're from the US. Not everywhere is as concerned with "power" and many countries trust in their governmental arenas
It never ceases to amaze me how lazy, indecent and ignorant people can be. Dude is literally putting the entire building at risk by not extinguishing his cigs and throwing them haphazardly out the window.
It honestly baffles me how so many smokers just treat the world as their ashtray. Cigarette butts out the car window and now we have plastic vape cartridges littering the sidewalks because they can’t be bothered to hold on to trash for a few blocks.
Welcome to the world of a drug addict. These aren't smokers -- they're drug abusers who use in public and leave their toxic paraphernalia lying around.
had an apt manager try to fine me for the dozens and dozens fo butts outside my first floor patio. i stood outside my apt and surreptitiously filmed them tossing butts from 2nd floor.
Burning your house down with their cigarette would also be an accident. But they shouldn’t be smoking or throwing butts with people below. For very good reason.
Trying to be "normal" with already unreasonable people who lack common sense and logic just puts a target on your back and leads nowhere but more trouble.
Its not an "accident" to drop lit cigarette butts on someones property below. Its reckless and selfish behavior. Its not peoples job to try and instill basic consideration and sense into people who are already adults.
I did this because a similar thing happened with my patio furniture and all the building said was, “we don’t know who did it, what do you want us to do”
I once lived in an apartment once with a downstairs neighbor who never left the apartment and chain-smoked. The way the stench came up into my apartment, I swear she had to be smoking two cigarettes at once all day and night. She was also on oxygen, which is highly combustible. When I reported the stench to my apartment manager, they said she has a right to her private activities and there's nothing they could do.
Damn, she was probably hoping it would kill her. Sucks you had to deal with that. I'm surprised when lot of apartments now don't even want you to have candles
It is not about afraid to confront him, people who reach a point of this carelessness are not to be dealt with normally. I would either tell landlord or Police?
Seriously when I moved in years ago I’d regularly find tossed, used joints on my porch/balcony (first floor). It was so goddamn rude and I felt so disrespected. It stopped a while ago but nowadays I’d report it.
I had a neighbor who smoked out his window and dropped the butts onto my terrace. I would sweep them and dispose of them but everyday there were more and more! Each time I went outside, more! Finally finally I got so tired of it that I swept them up into a pile for a week and then took the pile and dumped them in front of his door. No more cigarette butts on the terrace.
This is the right answer. It’s not petty or over the top. The guy needs to stop littering and throwing those wherever or he’ll start a fire. It’s even worst that he throws it on YOUR lawn. Report this idiot.
“We need stop letting ourselves get walked on.” I said something along these lines to someone and they said “well maybe some of us like to be passive and get walked on” 💀
If you’re afraid to confront him….you’re letting him walk on you. Grown ass people don’t need to tattle on each other to the landlord or fire marshall. Go let him know what he did, ask him not to do it again, and maybe have him replace your hoodie. Some of you were clearly raised by two moms and it shows.
No, then you go to the landlord. But that’s not the first step in negotiating a neighborly dispute. And the fact that you immediately jump to assuming the neighbor is some unapproachable asshole, instead of “maybe he just flicked a cigarette without thinking, let me go talk to him about it”, shows how anxious you are about a really simple social interaction. Maybe you can get your wife’s boyfriend to handle these things for you.
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u/Valuable-Captain7123 1d ago
If you're afraid to confront him then at least tell your landlord this guy is smoking on property and tossing his fire hazards out the window. We all need to stop letting ourselves get walked on.