One of my coworkers left breath spray on my desk. apparently they are anonymously telling me I have bad breath. Now I am so mortified and embarrassed! I will forever wonder who left it. How do I handle this?
Reported for forum change.
Maybe chew gum after meals, and/or use the breath spray
Use the spray, I guess. Maybe get some breath mints too?
How’s your dental hygiene?
Keep a toothbrush and toothpaste at work and use it after lunch.
Leave a bottle of butt spray on their desks?
Be grateful that someone took the (albeit anonymous) step to let you know. Better to know than not, right?
Bad breath can have a lot of causes - maybe it’s time to schedule a check up with your dentist.
floss daily. lots of bad breath can be bacteria growing under your gums. this is also very bad for teeth.
tongue scraping or brushing may help for bacteria growing there.
ask dentist.
This. And drink plenty of water. I have a coworker with bad breath and I’ve noticed that she hardly ever drinks any water.
I wouldn’t recommend gum, mints or spray. They cover the smell for 10 minutes maybe, but then it comes back, and sometimes with a vengeance if sugar is involved (gets all those smelly bacteria working!). Just brush your teeth during the day.
Get your tonsils and adenoids checked. I didn’t have bad breath normally, but during allergy season, or any time I had a cold, my breath according to my husband, smelled like mildew. I had been told to get my adenoids and tonsils removed when I was 23, but I didn’t have the insurance for it at the time. At 34 I had it done, and breath problems gone. Also, other problems that had actually meant to be addressed by the tonsil-adenoidectomy gone too, like my ears constantly getting stopped up for no reason, and getting headaches on airplanes.
Drinking water is a good idea too. On Yom Kippur, when people are fasting, including not drinking water, people who do not normally have bad breath often are stinking.
If you are a smoker, you are either going to have to live with it, or quit, at least during working hours, if you don’t want to offend. Maybe you can switch to nicotine gum or vaping at work.
Anyway, if you aren’t a smoker, see a dentist, and an ENT (ear-nose-throat doctor), in that order, although you might need to see a GP for a referral to an ENT.
Good luck. This is a symptom of something, and you want to figure out what.
most common causes are teeth and gums, see dentist first.
next common might be mouth, sinuses and throat, see general doctor and then maybe ear/nose/throat doctor after dental is ruled out.
next might be stomach, see general doctor first on this.
In addition to the suggestions above, I strongly recommend flossing your teeth daily. A lot of smelly crud accumulates between your teeth and brushing won’t remove it.
I’d also suggest cleaning your tongue whenever your brush your teeth, either with your toothbrush or a tongue cleaner (which looks like an oddly-shaped toothbrush). This may trigger a gag reflex if you’ve never done it before, but if you keep at it you’ll eventually overcome that.
Floss every night, brush your tongue and gargle with your mouthwash.
Well the thing is, if the OP won’t be able to tell if his/her breath smells, s/he won’t know if any of the above advice is working. Since she was apparently unaware of it to begin with.
So I think s/he needs to ask a close friend/family member/co-worker for their honest opinion (more than one would be good). And start with a dentist visit/step up oral hygiene, since that’s the most common cause. If the issue is as simple as being the only smoker in the workplace, then that might be the message conveyed. It’s all guesswork without asking around, though. Might simply be someone in the workplace who doesn’t like her and is pulling a sneaky stunt.
I have a diabetic friend, who both takes daily insulin and has poor kidney function. Common causes of bad breath (see my link in post 8.) Occasionally she smells fairly - fruity and metallic; it’s an odd smell. But she can’t help it and it’s not a hygiene issue.
It is really hard to tell someone that they have bad breath. Don’t be embarrassed. It’s just awkward.
I used to smoke and had a favorite customer tell me that I reeked. I knew he told me because he cared and so I started chewing gum. Now I’m hooked on gum, but I don’t think I offend anyone with my breath anymore.
Tonsil stones can cause bad breath. There are tons of videos on youtube and popthatzit.com about removing them.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tonsil+stone+removal
Wow. That must be what caused my “mildew” breath when I had allergies or a cold, because I used to cough those up all the time whenever I was phlegmmy. And if those are normal tonsils, mine were HUGE, even the one that sagged. One of mine was swollen and hard all the time, and the other one looked like it had literally blown out.
I’m so glad I got them removed. It was without a doubt the most painful thing I have ever gone through, and I am still so glad I had it done. It dialed my allergies way down, I get fewer colds, and the cold I get are of shorter duration, plus I don’t have my ears stop up at random times-- just driving through hills was hell, and sometimes when I had a cold, my ears would stop up for days.
The next time you see your doctor, mention it to her. There are many medical conditions that cause halitosis. Some medications cause it also.
I’m sorry for your embarrassment. I wish that person wasn’t such a coward about telling you, gently, in person. Tho like another poster mentioned, it’s better to know than not to know. Any chance they could have left it on your desk accidentally? Maybe someone dropped it in the hallway near your desk and someone assumed it was yours?
Either way, don’t take it too personally. Do what you can. Talk to your doctor just in case. But it’s just a thing bodies do sometimes.
FWIW, I echo the tonsil stone thing. I have occasional bad breath, but when I poke at my tonsils gently, I pull out nasty stones and bits of stones, and my breath improves a lot.
So I’ve been doing some reading on tonsil stones, and I probably had more of them than I realized, because I remember sometimes feeling like there was something stuck in my throat, and coughing and gargling for a long time until I got rid of it. Anyway, infected tonsils are more likely to develop them, sure enough, which probably also includes tonsils inflamed from allergies, and post nasal drip contributes to the development of them.
If the OP has lots of bouts of sore throats, whether they are diagnosed as tonsillitis or not, these nasty little things could very well be the culprit.
I didn’t bother reading up on how to prevent them, since I don’t have tonsils, but there were lots of references. I’d start with a doctor, though. It could be the OP is a candidate for a tonsillectomy, because tonsil stones could be a symptom of something. They aren’t necessarily, apparently, but they could indicate that the OP has enlarged tonsils, or something.