> You would go to a restaurant and the first thing your hostess would ask is "smoking or non"?

In parts of the US this question was common in restaurants through at least the late 90s, maybe a bit longer.

As someone who was a kid during that time period, I heard it many times at a buffet-style steakhouse my family would go to for get-togethers, birthdays, etc. It's fuzzy but I think they may have even still asked into the 2000s. We took the smoking section through most of my childhood since my parents smoked, but they quit later on so we switched.

At least that building was big enough to where the division kind of made a difference… it had a very high ceiling and was huge. It did absolutely nothing in smaller buildings though.