Smoking Cigarettes Will Advance Your Career

Goddammit Joel Stein! You've blown my cover! Writing for Business Week today, Stein talks to smokers at different offices who say smoking has actually helped advance their careers by allowing them to meet people from other departments and to form a deep camaraderie with some of their coworkers.

This is exactly why I've been smoking a pack a day for the past 3 years-  to meet people and exchange ideas, to get that edge over my pink-lunged competition. It's exactly how I've gotten this far (barback, intern, subletter) in my adult life and career and now Stein's let everyone in on the secret.

Stein says that smokers are still the cool kids who smoke "because it goes along with all their other self-destructive, class-cutting, early-sex, authority-flouting coolness." It's totally true and worth the few years it takes off your life. Seriously.