NORTH BAY, ON—Clare Talbot, a server at a bustling North Bay diner declared late last night that she would never smoke again for the rest of her entire life. After chain-smoking three packs of cigarettes in a frenzied, nicotine-fuelled swansong, Talbot proudly butted out her final cigarette.

"Mark my words," she added, pointing her index finger skyward.

Sixteen hours after quitting, Talbot, who has smoked since she was a teenager, reports feeling healthier, cleaner, and decades younger.

But despite Talbot's enthusiasm, close friends are skeptical.

"She won't last," laughs co-worker Jan Boutillier, who typically dips out to hack a dart with Talbot a dozen times per shift. "She does this every few months. I saw her breathing through a rolled-up receipt behind the dumpster this morning. But by far the worst part is how high and mighty she gets when she "quits.'"

From the moment Talbot's shift began at 6 am on her first tobacco-free day, complaints began rolling in about her condescending new attitude.

Talbot was seen standing next to Boutillier with her arms crossed, repeatedly berating the woman she was just yesterday begging to join her for a cigarette. She was then overheard scolding, "You'll never find a man with those disgusting yellow teeth, JAN."

A tense moment of silence passed before Talbot added, "Every cigarette you smoke takes one day off your life."

"Carol told me that if I don't quit now I'll die a slow, agonizing death, and it will be all my fault," chuckles Burl Hannigan, a long-haul trucker and regular customer at the diner. "If anything, the pep pills will get me first."

"I wish she'd stop yelling at me during my smoke breaks," whispers Boutillier, who now crouches in a ditch behind the diner so she can puff far away from the watchful eyes of Carol. "She claims she wants to help me but I think she's secretly just trying to breathe my secondhand smoke."

Talbot explains that it all comes from a good place. "I know I can be hard on Jan and the others, but I just want to help these spineless, weak-willed, jellyfish," she says. "What they don't realize is that the power to change comes from within and sometimes it takes a little tough love to release that power. As someone who overcame a twenty-five year nicotine addiction for two-thirds of a day, I should be an inspiration to them. I'm like Tony Robbins. Mother Teresa. Maybe a little Gandhi mixed in there too."