I worked for a year as a case manager in housing for the homeless in my city. One day, one of our clients came down and said there was a horrible smell upstairs. Two of my co-workers went up to check what the smell was, and it turns out that one of our residents died in his room. To make matters worse he had been dead for 10 days in a room with a window shut and it was 90 degrees outside.
Because I didn’t feint from the smell, somehow I ended up helping carry the body bag and open the windows to air the room. I also had to go in an bleach the room to kill the bacteria in the carpet so we could handle it to clear the room.
That was the worst thing I have ever smelled. Typing this brings it back to me, and I want to puke again.
One of the chemists at my university is a sulfur organic chemist. It is occasionally a fight to determine who has to go up to his lab to get back the condenser/beakers/vacuum punp/whatever else he might have borrowed for the week/month/year. He’s a bit of a penny-pincher, that one! Anyways, his lab stinks, hence the fights
Guaiacol is pretty nasty as well. Its a subsrate that we used in an enzymology lab for a whole semester. Its a pretty bad stink, but the worst part about it is that it follows you around. The smell will stick to clothes/books/bags…anything at all and it takes WEEKS to fade completely. But when you go into that lab once a week…I tended to wear the same clothes every Thursday so as not to permeate my whole wardrobe with the smell! And maybe its just me, but you never really get used to it - you just ALWAYS smell it, even if its the tiniest trace amounts. Its just so permanent…thats what makes it nasty.
Rotten potato stench has gotta be one of the top three most overpoweringly bad smells I’ve personally ever encountered. It just permeates everything.
Dog rolling in dead thing, check. That’s pretty awful. I always wondered where they find dead things to roll in, because I can’t ever find whatever it is.
The worst for me was what I thought HAD to be a decomposing human. It was a very hot summer day, and as I pulled into the parking lot at work I was hit by a wall of the foulest smell I’d ever smelled. There was a dumpster at the back of the lot, and its lid was slightly ajar, and I thought, “Oh, dear gawd, someone must have dumped a body in there!” (Since I read murder mysteries, I think I know everything.) I called the cops, who came out, sniffed, and agreed that there was probably a dead body in there, although they wouldn’t go and look until the coroner arrived! So the coroner’s van pulls up alongside the dumpster, the coroner’s guy gets out, sniffs, and says “oh, sh*t.” They open the lid… and there’s a pile of dead fish. I felt at least somewhat validated that the professionals thought it had to be a dead human, too.
The absolute worse smell known to man…EVER…is Playdough. Not only do I severely gag when I smell that stuff but I get this bizarrely splitting headache that goes right to my temples. I haven’t smelled that horrible stench in years and for very good reason.
One time in middle (junior high) school, I went to the locker room after physical education class and I took a whiff of the most powerful odor of FAB (feet, ass & balls).
I swear, it smelled like really bad cheese.
Ever since then, I tended to stay away from any locker rooms.
I was walking past a Burger King and a truck was pumping out the grease trap. For one brief moment I got a whiff of what seemed to be rancid fat. I was very close to heaving on the footpath and avoided fast food joints for months after.
My worst: My roommate in my freshman year of college had broken his ankle or something a few years back and had to have surgery for it; as part of the surgery they put a pin in there. Afterwards they let him have the pin. He kept it in a little jar.
I was never dumb (or drunk) enough to fall for the “hey, wanna smell something rank?” trick, but I was in the room several times when somebody did. And the whiffs I caught of that thing, even from yards away…
No, I’m not joking. For a few years I worked security at an amusement park to make money for college. A really foolish, arrogant worker in the “safari” section was notorious for tormenting the big cats, i.e. throwing firecrackers at them, gunning the jeep at them while they sunning, etc. Early one very hot, humid summer day, on his day off, he 1. entered the compound alone and 2. got out of the jeep, leaving even the emergency shotgun behind. He wasn’t fast enough. Some 10 hours later a few traumatized safari patrons noticed exactly what the lions were eating.
I was chintzy seasonal security, armed to the teeth with a whistle and radio, neither of which worked. But I still got assigned to “keep the lions away” (!) and help bodybag the corpse. It was bloated, half-eaten and flyblown. The reek of rotting blood and flesh, lion piss and dung was indescribable. After all these years the mere whiff of a litter box is enough to trigger dry heaves.
Dog rolling in dead stuff? check.
Organic chem lab? check.
Two others:
When I was a little kid I found an empty gallon milk jug. After playing with it for a while, I opened it, stuck my nose in and found that it (the jug) hadn’t been washed out. To this day, I can still remember the smell of X-week-old spoiled milk dregs.
One of the dumbasses in my college dorm was eating squid for a snack and decided to heat it up in the dorm’s basement microwave, but somehow forgot about it and left it cooking. I’ve smelled worse things, but the fact that it was powerful enough to empty out a five-floor building is something I found impressive.
Sounds reminiscent of lutefisk. But with lutefisk, people do it intentionally. And eat the results. I don’t know how Scandahoovians manage. Most people doing this would be forced to clean the kitchen by torching the entire house.
I’m gonna go with “dead human body” too. When I was a lab tech student, we got to watch an autopsy, and the smell of the dead body combined with the formaldehyde, then abdominal gases and blood and hot bone dust (from sawing the skull opened) thrown into the mix - that was a truly awful stench. Like others have said, it’s the kind of smell that gets in your nose and you can’t get it out, even after you are away from the stinky area. It’s a very distinctive smell, too - nothing smells like a dead body.
Agreed about dead human bodies and the ones that have been around too long are really bad but there is something about burned human flesh that makes me think for that it is the worst. Maybe because I relate to what has happened or something.
But the one I really do not to ever smell again is that of my own fear that has built up over hours and hours of not knowing if I would live or die. There is something about revulsion of self that makes that a smell that can not be forgotten, no need to get a whiff, it never goes away.
I’ve done lutefisk, very dead critter, 20 year old urinal drains ripped out during construction, sewer backup, and the steam that comes out of a restaurant kitchen garbage can when you spray it out for the first time in WAY too long. The meat cooler drawers there were actually worse than any of those.
Some of these caused me to vomit, but considering the fact that I was pretty much constantly hung over at the time it didn’t take much to get that reaction.
The second worst I’ve ever smelled was grease trap. I had to spend far too long in a process involving a steak knife and a shrimp that was blocking the proper flow of liquid kitchen waste.
That was nasty. It didn’t hold a candle to the worst one, though. I was working a summer job, and part of it was cleaning out an area of a parking garage that had been used for storage. Apparently, someone had gotten in there at some point and decided to relieve themselves.
I don’t know if it was the effects of time, the guy’s diet, or a unique array of bacteria, but I’d take grease trap with a side of roadkill and freshly opened intestinal cavity glazed with raw sewage over that any day.
I could not get within 30 feet of the offending matter.
Fortunately my co-worker was made of sterner stuff and handled it while I was, uh, busy. Fortunately, I was busy in a container which was easily disposed of.
When I was working at the funeral home I had to take a stiff to the crematorium which was about an hour to an hour and a half away. The guy was a bit ripe and it was just after x-mas and freezing cold. I realized that I was driving with the windows rolled down, going about 90 mph trying to out run the smell. It was like one of the Bugs Bunny cartoons where you see Bugs in a canoe paddling like all-get-out and then the camera pans back and you see his persuer in the back of the canoe paddling like mad trying to catch him.
Definately the worst, however, was the smell coming from the vagina of an elderly customer we had while I was working there. I can’t really describe the smell. Have you ever smoked pot, then smoked the resin? (I, of course, would never break the law, but I’ve been around those nasty criminals.) You know how the resin when it burns has that thick, sweet pungent smell. The smell has character and shape. It has personality. Well, where resin has that smell and smells good, this lady’s vagina had a smell that exuded a thick pungent character of its own. It has a sweet tone to it, but not in a good way, it coaxed you into it and then TOO LATE!! it had you…all those glands along the side of your lower jaw instantly start tightening and pumping out saliva while your gag reflex triggers and you feel your stomach muscles spasm–almost like they’re warming up for the marathon puke you’re about to endure. Your mouth starts to open and your eyes begin to bug out. But nobody else seems to notice, so you can’t respond without looking like a wimp. “I gotta take a leak,” you say and exit quickly, sprinting for the break room sucking in as much clean air as you possibly can and the sweat rolls down your face and the electric feeling of those saliva glands getting ready for the vomit slowly subsides and you realize you’re going to be okay.
I don’t know what it was that made that smell come from her. I thought that it was a self-cleaning organ! Anyway, I’ve been deathly afraid of getting my nose too close to one of them ever since. Maybe that explains why I’m so bad with women…
My ex-boss played a prank on his boss where he took a dead rat, and placed in a sticky mailing envelope. He then stuck it to the bottom of the boss’ desk. We all forgot about it for a while, until we began to wonder where on earth all the flies were coming from, and just what that horrible smell in his office was. After about a month, it was taken out on a day the boss was away.
The rat had somehow liquified, trapped in the bag for a month. My boss inadvertently opened it in the process of getting it to the toilet to flush it, the smell was absolutely horrible. Just the small amount of leakage that the bag allowed made my stomach convulse, I only barely managed to keep my lunch when it was opened.
Maybe that explains why I’m so bad with women…