Gawd, whatever that stench was, you were wearing a bucketful of it lady. I paid my 10 bucks to see National Treasure, got there early and picked good seats - halfway up and in the middle. By the time you came in and plopped your heinous odor 4 seats away from us, the theater had filled up in such a manner that we didn’t have a good place to move to. We had to endure. It was a rough two hours. My eyes are still watering over an hour later. I think you gave my contacts a chemical burn. Fuck you bitch. I don’t know how you could stand yourself, much less how your husband could.
If you wear more than one squirt of fragrance, you are wearing too much. Really. Stop it. :mad:
There has got to be a market for bottled hydrogen sulfide in a little squirt bottle to be used as a weapon against over-perfumers and perhaps even over-farters…
perhaps in the latter case a bottle of very volatile perfume would be the weapon?
Way back in the dark ages I had a job as a security guard, and the jacket was provided along with the uniform… it was handed over to me and I immediately returned it. It had the most godawful stench of some cheapass perfume. The office sent it through a dry cleaners 3 times and finally had to throw away the damned thing because they couldnt get the stench of the perfume out.
At least once a week I arrive at work with a headache and sore throat attributable to being stuck on the train near someone who subscribes to the more-is-better school of fragrance application.
I don’t understand how people can not realize that they reek. Do they not observe the people around them choking and covering their mouths and blinking back the tears?
I don’t object to properly applied fragrance, but I’m still not a huge fan, and I don’t wear it. I feel like by the time I’ve used shampoo and conditioner, styling products, body lotion, and anti-perspirant, I’m already worried that something might be too strong, or clashing. Why would I add yet another, entirely unnecessary scent on top of all that?
I had the misfortune of getting behind a mom and her teenage daughter at the grocery store. I’m blithely minding my own business when all of a sudden my throat closes up in protest. That girl must have dumped the entire bottle on herself. I’m not generally affected by perfumes but it was difficult to breathe and I had to change directions in an attempt to get in front of them. I could tell where she’d been, even aisles away, it was so strong. It was sickening.
What’s even worse are the people who drown themselves in cologne in an effort to mask body odor.
Many years ago, I climbed into a crowded streetcar while carrying a brief case in each hand. I ended up directly facing and nearly touching a woman who wore far too much perfume. It caused me to instantly and violently sneeze.
She apologized for the perfume as she wiped my snot off her face, and left the streetcar at the next stop.
My daughter used to drown herself in the stuff as a teenager. No amount of talk could convince her that less was better. I guess I can understand someone having a medical condition requiring the masking of odors, though. The worst are those who are trying to cover up stale tobacco odor with perfume. It just smells like someone dumped cheap perfume in an ashtray. And when they’re not sitting next to Hockey Monkey, they’re sitting next to me.
“Ma’am, the stench of your fragrance is unbearable.” Yes, that would go over really well.
This problem has been discussed here before, and there’s been nonscientific speculation that in the case of some elderly ladies at least, their sense of smell is deficient and they don’t realize how much they’re overdoing it. Anosmia (lack of or deficient smell capability) might affect a lot of these folks. At work a gentle but firm word from their supervisor could do the trick. Your odds of succeeding in behavior modification through a public reprimand to a stranger are zilch, not to mention undesirable feedback from Madame Floral Assault.
The opposite side of the coin is that some people are really, really hypersensitive to fragrance, whether from perfume or natural sources. Personally, I tend to be tolerant of or like strong fragrances (especially from plants/flowers) but not overdone perfume.
My sense of smell is definitely lacking, so if someone is wearing enough perfume to bother me, it’s weapons-grade.
Agreed. I smoke, and I can’t imagine why anyone would try to cover that with perfume. If your clothes smell like smoke, the answer is a bit of baking soda (or Febreze, in a pinch) and a tumble in the dryer, NOT a soaking in Designer Imposters.
The worst offenders are those dumb asses that squirt fragrance on and then come to the GYM. Like I really want to work out and suck in precious air soaked with “Sweet Pea” from BBW. Thanks bitch.
No one needs to put perfume or body spray on to work out, EVER.
It happened to me in a cinema, some teenage girls who had all drenched themselves in “Stella” by Stella Mccartney. Now, they were teenage girls, and muslim teenage girls in hijab, and I suppose that perfume is one of the few ways they had of feeling feminine and whatnot, but it still stank and I can’t bear the stuff now.
I also can’t bear the smell of “Flowers” by Kenzo because I used to have a co-worker who felt that anytime she had been handling body fluids she needed to reapply her perfume, and she is a nurse so that meant re-appling 10 times a day!
This is a sore subject with me. I have chronic pulmonary disease from workplace exposure to irritating chemicals, and perfumes often hurt me. The last time I flew to Europe I was stuck on a packed jet for 9 hours seated behind a guy doused in perfume that burned me into a 6 month bout of illness. I have given up air travel and downsized my career a little in response to that experience. Perfumes often contain chemicals that are classed as hazardous and irritating, for example amines. There are many, many cases of perfumes injuring innocent bystanders. Therefore, it seems to me that they should be made illegal, and I imagine they would be if they were only recently introduced.
There are times when I could quite happily be a hermit, and that is mostly because of perfumes. I gave up my 20-year subscription to the ballet because it was getting more and more unbearable to sit through 2 or 3 hours of being gassed by every perfume/cologne/aftershave/body spray wearing goon in Vancouver. Nothing I buy is “April Fresh”. Nothing has that “Outdoor Scent”. Everything is unscented. Once I mistakenly bought a bucket of scented laundry soap and even though it was in the trunk of my car it made me sick as I drove homeward and I turned around and took it back. The older I get the more sensitive I am to these awful smells, and now that one of my grandsons is “into” body spray I have met “Axe” and Axe lost - into the garbage can.
Unless you are dirty, that is, unless you haven’t bathed or showered in days, you do not “stink”. The ordinary smell of the ordinary human person is not nasty. Yes, I know there are exceptions to that, but they are few and far between. Our culture has become utterly abandoned to the idea that the smell of sweat is bad. No, kiddoes, the smell of man sweat is pleasant to a woman, that is part of Nature’s grand plan.
I am not advocating that people stop bathing. Just that plain old soap and water and maybe an unscented deodorant are sufficient to keep us “nice”. My doctor’s office is now a “scent free” zone. Many hospitals are. Some offices are. Not enough, though.
The thing is, I’m not averse to perfumes or colognes. I like certain scents very much and ocassionally wear perfume myself. Moderation is the key. I don’t want to be 20 feet away from you and smell your cologne. Some scents are migraine triggers for me. Thankfully not many of these are perfumes, but woefully most of them are Christmas scents like pine and cinnamon (the artificial candle/potpourri kind, not the real thing). It’s hard for me to shop during the season because of the blinding headaches.
But back to the body fragrances…I don’t mind walking by you and catching a whiff and thinking oooh, that smells nice. I do mind if I can smell you coming, and going, and for a half hour after you’re gone.
I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m able to smell better than the average human (I mean with my nose), and I agree with this. I can smell human skin and human hair, and it doesn’t bother me (even fresh sweat doesn’t bug me). Almost every scent added to the human body makes me want to gag, though. Most people’s cologne and perfume is too much for me; what’s too much for an average smeller is almost unbearable for me. The message I would like to give scent-wearers (ALL scent-wearers) is that your lovely perfume is someone else’s stench. I will guarantee you that with any perfume you can name, someone in a crowd will hate it with a passion (and probably more than one someone). If you insist on wearing a scent, a tiny little bit between your breasts under your shirt will allow you to smell it, but it won’t waft out much to anyone else.
Some scents are worse than annoyances to me – they cause me to immediately start having an asthma attack. Fortunately, there’s only one ingredient that seems to cause that reaction; I don’t know what it is, but I can spot it a long way off, and will go to heroic lengths to immediately leave that person’s presence.
Of course, that didn’t help the time I was working in an office where a coworker came in drowning in Eau de Stench and promptly caused me to have the most severe asthma attack right there in the lobby – my husband walked in in the middle of it, and ended up taking me straight to the ER. But would my superiors ask the bitch to stop wearing that perfume, even though they clearly had a workplace hazard on their hands? No, because it was a “hygiene” issue, not a “health” issue. Since when is an asthma attack not a health issue?
Anyway, I left that job and promptly got another one with better hours, pay, benefits, and nicer people to boot. I hope they all keeled over at that crappy office from Eau de Stench.
My workplace requests that its employees avoid wearing fragrances, especially strong ones. What I’ve found interesting over the last few years is that I’ve noticed one woman who wore perfume anyway that was annoyingly strong, but many men wearing killer cologne or aftershave.
