Are we too sensitive, re matters involving sense of smell?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Thought initially of making this a Pit thread; but overall sentiments are probably not strong enough to be Pit-appropriate.

The following, prompted by a recent correspondence on another message board on which I spend time (that one is heavily delicacy / kindness / consideration-oriented; so “getting into it” re this issue in the way I see; would, on there, just get me heavily jumped-on). The general drift of that correspondence: given that a fair number of people suffer from “fragrance allergies” (being at close quarters with someone wearing perfume or the like, liable to trigger for them, asthma and / or migraines); the majority verdict was that it would be right and reasonable for any place of business, to require people visiting it for business purposes, to refrain when visiting, from wearing anything with an easily-perceptible perfumed-type odour – for the sake of those staff at the visited place, who may be fragrance-allergic.

While seeing it as proper for people to try to make reasonable accommodations for those who suffer from acute allergies – reading the stuff set out above, has a bit tipped me over the edge, into the sentiment of: in the affluent West nowadays, life threatens to become a perpetual scary minefield, regarding the danger of one’s offending, olfactory-wise – and by no means just in a health-crisis context.

“Artificial nice smells” can be found horribly offensive. The smell of burning tobacco is, among very many “goodthinkers”, right up there with the satanic brimstone of earlier times (OK, regarding that issue, there is the public-health factor; but I would contend that numerous anti-smokers abhor the smell in itself, and because of that, bring in in their support, the “poisoning others” thing). People get furiously angry about the proximity of folk whose standard of personal hygiene is sub-optimal – but are also particular about how those folk try to mask their smelliness, if they do. A mention was made in the correspondence touched on above, of a large performance group whose members were told not to wear perfumes / colognes / scented lotions and such; but, to make sure to wear unscented deodorants. If I’d belonged to said group, I’d have been much tempted to respond: “What kind of totalitarian outfit is this? Stuff your performance group.” – and walked out of it, for keeps.

I’m perhaps biased by having a weak sense of smell, thus being upset by few aromas; and by having the good fortune not to suffer from any allergies: but I sometimes feel that in the privileged First World, olfactory anxieties risk getting out of hand, and – for insufficient cause – in the hope of making life more like heaven; in fact causing it more to resemble hell. As regards the smell-related worries and objections mentioned above: I imagine someone from 1914 reading through same, and responding: “That’s batshit crazy”. Are we, a hundred years later, becoming so super-sensitive and easily-upset and hard to please and unwilling to compromise, and finding life on Earth so hard to handle; that we should have the plug pulled on us altogether?

2

I don’t know that I have allergies to odors, but I don’t like a lot of smells. My daughter is fond of floral and fruit scented body wash, shampoo, conditioner, and lotions. While I love the scents of fresh flowers or fruits, the artificial ones in personal products (or scented candles and air fresheners, for that matter) smell awful to me. In general, I don’t mind perfumes or colognes, unless the wearer reeks of it. I had a coworker whose favorite cologne was so strong, I’d get headaches when she first got to work. My own mother tends to douse herself with her favorite, as I discovered after spending 4 weeks on a cruise ship with her.

Poor hygiene is a different matter - unless there’s a health condition, there’s no excuse as far as I’m concerned. As for personal products, in an ideal world, everyone would practice moderation. And manufacturers would offer more unscented options for those of us who don’t want to smell like a walking fruit bowl. Yeah, that’ll happen.

3

How people smell is way down on the list of things that offend me about them, although being able to squirt them in the face with a seltzer bottle under the guise of “trying to combat the oderiferousness” does have a certain appeal.

That said, I have no sense of smell, lost it about 10 years ago, and it was 10 years prior to that that I encountered the last major offender, a lady at Target HQ who wore enough perfume to stun a yak. People who had just got into the elevator would step back out if she got in. So, I wasn’t even aware that this was still a thing…

4

I’m in an odd camp on this. I have asthma and get migraines. And I wear and enjoy perfume.

So my compromise is to only put on a tiny bit of perfume when going to work. And by tiny bit, I mean one spray on one wrist, then touching the other wrist, then touching my chest. (It seems to work; even at my allergist no one notices. And they’re a fragrance-free joint.)

One of the problems, I think, is that people ***douse ***themselves in whatever scent. If I can smell your cologne from across the room, it’s too strong.

I personally have had to ask two coworkers to change their perfume. I hated to do it, but I was truly allergic and needed to use my inhaler multiple times when they wore the scent in question. I handled by apologizing for having to bring it up, explaining the problem, and offering to buy a new perfume. Both people just said they’d change to another perfume, no problem.

I don’t know why we can’t handle things in that way. Not “Your perfume makes me sick!” (which sounds all dramatic and finger-pointy), but “Your perfume smells lovely, but I seem to get a migraine when you wear it…I’m so sorry, can you wear something else? I’ll pay for something new that you like and I"m not allergic to.”

That said, even I think that sometimes some of these “allergies” are a bit histrionic.

5

OP, you are biased because you have a weak sense of smell.

I have lost cummulative days of work because one of my coworkers decided to marinate in patchouli before coming to work, or someone else doused the entire restroom with Lysol, or another person thought spraying Lysol over their own and everyone else’s desk surfaces and following up with some cologne was a good idea. In each case, I asked in the least aggressive, most polite way I could that they please discontinue putting those odors in the air. In each case, I tried to abort the incipient migraine with a mega dose of Tylenol/aspirin/caffeine. In each case, I lost hours of work while I coped with vision disturbances, nausea, and throbbing head pain.

In the grand scheme of things, you having to eschew fragrances in a public area does not come close to me being able to stay upright and earn my living. You’ll cope.

6

Oh, man, and just yesterday I had a customer in the store where I work whose scent (don’t know if it was perfume, body wash, shampoo, or what) was suffocating. In that I really did feel suffocated when she walked by. And the smell lingered wherever she had been for a good 5-10 minutes, such that other customers were commenting on it.

It wasn’t that it was a bad smell, just that the quantity of it was overwhelming.

Look, I get that we need some compromise to have a society. I’m an allergic person with mild asthma who lives in a world with scent-lovers and is required to re-stock the perfume aisle where I work. This is why I take an anti-histamine before going to work.

That said, there are people who douse themselves with odor to an excess. I have no idea how we’d set limits or enforce them in any reasonable manner, but I sure wish we could.

7

Re allergies: it is a difficult one, and one feels that the only decent thing, is to give proper consideration to the allergy-sufferer.

However, from a good deal of what is heard nowadays – as in my OP, not only re perfumes and allergies thereto – I find self feeling that in comparison with more primitive places and times, we in the affluent First World are spoilt rotten as regards comfortable and agreeable living conditions; and the better such become, the more angrily we bitch about ever slighter violations of them. Concerning allergies: being brutal (and meaning nothing personal directed at anybody), one takes it that in a primitive milieu, the severely allergic just die – most likely in infancy or childhood. In realms not of life-threatening allergy, just of inconvenience and unpleasantness – much of the angst, anger and hostility expressed over these things, seems to me excessive; and of a heat more appropriately directed at the truly vile and cruel things which people can deliberately do to each other.

By the way, I wasn’t really aware up till now, of the propensity on some people’s part – told of here – to anoint themselves with powerful perfumes “by the bucketful”. Agreed – that seems odd and over-the-top. As well as being poorly endowed with sense of smell, I’m male; would say that perfume-type doings are basically more a women’s thing – anyway, this “saturation” over-perfuming, is re this time and place, a new thing to me.

I realise – as I said in OP, and as phouka “gives back to me” – my own weak sense of smell likely makes me less empathic than I might be, to those who suffer on this scene. A late uncle of mine had, like me, a poor sense of smell. His wife, on the other hand, possessed a very acute sense of same. He was wont to remark: “Thank God my sense of smell is weak. Pat [his wife] picks up in strength, all the bad smells that there are around; and it makes her life a misery.”

8

On one hand I dislike when I can smell someone’s perfume before I even see them. I don’t have allergies or anything, it’s just annoying. Like a cloud that hits you. We all get to marinate in the crap. Also, burnt popcorn and reheating fish. Ugh.

On the other hand I realize that hundreds of years ago everything smelled of shit, piss, and animals. The food wasn’t refrigerated. No one bathed regularly. People covered up with overpowering perfumes. There weren’t special snowflakes complaining about every little smell that offended them. I guess if you were allergic you just died in childhood.

9

Yep, they did. Just like diabetics used to die off quickly, and people with heart disease or spinal injuries… Now we have concessions for them as well, from insulin and syringes to handicapped parking and wheelchair ramps.

Inflicting breathing difficulty on another human being is, in fact, a vile and cruel thing to do. On the other hand, we have people like one customer of my store who shops wearing a face mask and a medic alert bracelet… seems a bit extreme, but if she’s that sensitive maybe that’s what she has to do. For darn sure the rest of the world isn’t going to go completely scentless to accommodate her.

The men are catching up.

It’s also getting harder to find unscented products in some categories. These things seem to go in cycles.

10

I can imagine a few highly-spoilt scions of royalty or the nobility, doing so. Hopefully someone – maybe the court jester, with his guaranteed immunity as regards his taking the mickey – would have told them to get real.
[quoting self – “would say that perfume-type doings are basically more a women’s thing”]

So one gathers. For sure, the marketing folks involved will greatly wish it it be so.

11

I used to be pretty immune to smells. . . then I got pregnant. I feel like apologizing to everyone I know with a sensitive nose. Holy Hell, I had no idea how bad it is.

It was really horrible in the early days. Every time I smelled something really bad I’d puke. If I ever come across the person who smokes in my office garage stairwell, I am going to puke on them.

Also, hundreds of years ago they were convinced bad smells caused disease.

12

My wife is allergic to musk. If she spends more than fifteen minutes around someone wearing heavy perfume with a musky scent, she gets a pounding headache which knocks her out of action for hours.

She’s pretty sure her grandmother was similarly susceptible. She can remember decades ago her grandmother having to take to bed because of her “sick headaches”. Of course, nobody back then made the connection between grandma’s “sick headaches” and allergies. It was just a random unexplained affliction that struck her down from time to time.

As for whether annoyance at excess perfume use is justified … how would you feel about having a nice afternoon ruined by the thoughtless actions of a stranger? In the grand scheme of things it’s pretty minor, but it’s still a pain in the ass.

13

I don’t have much of a sense of smell, if any. I feel pretty lucky in that respect. Sometimes people say, “Mmm, bacon!” but mostly they say, “Oh God, [cigarette smoke/fish/bad breath/farts/wet dog/etc.]!” I imagine it must be nauseating to have to sample a bit of all the people you run into over the course of a day.

At the same time, I sometimes wonder if bad smells are really that big a deal.

14

I love the post/user name combo.

I’ve avoided posting because I am a bit confused. I’m not sure if the OP is suggesting those of us with sensivities are just pansies who should suck it up because in the olden days we’d just be dead. But I am one of those with asthma that is often triggered by smells. My main triggers are bleach*, smoke and very strong perfumes. I agree with those who say, someone else’s right to breathe trumps another’s right to unneccessarily douse themselves with strong scents.

*I’d say 99% of the people who clean with bleach mix it wrong. If mixed at a proper dilution for most pathogens it is not that strong unless I am standing right over the bucket.

15

I don’t think we’re sensitive enough, actually. If you work in a place with only two womens’ restrooms, and people are applying everything from clouds of hairspray, to obliterating farts with half cans of Glade, and dousing themselves in cologne to obscure a smoking break, you know something’s got to give.
I find myself using the mens’ room when no one is looking.

And I firmly believe that the inventor of Axe should spend eternity in a sty of hog cholera infected swine.

16

I confess to having been, in my OP, a bit less than fair or reasonable (I was a little “the better for drink” last night, when making it). I’d wondered whether to post it in the Pit, but felt that my gripe was probably too feeble to justify doing that.

In principle anyway, I appreciate the plight of those who are clinically allergic to – assorted things, not just fragrances / scents / perfumes; and accept that as we nowadays have understanding of those conditions and ways of managing them, it is right that people who suffer from them, should be accommodated. Sometimes, though, I feel that people’s loathing of perceived bad smells can spill over from the “allergy” sphere, into attitudes more hysterical and fascistic, than are warranted by the more general issue.

The thread on another board which prompted my OP on this one (the original board takes an extremely benign and “goodthinking” line, and posting on there what I did in my OP here, would likely have got me into trouble); has basically turned out to be a pretty reasoned and sensible discussion of the pros and cons of trying to enforce compliance with a workplace “scent-free” rule, on visitors wishing to do business with the undertaking – with a fair number of participants, pointing out possible “cons”. I just found irritating, the vehemence with which some asserted that of course visitors should be forced to fall in line; and if they were prospective customers who were pissed-off at this and took their business elsewhere, too bad. Plus, the anecdote – mentioned in my OP – of the director of the large choir, who essentially instructed the choir members, re all choir functions, not to wear colognes, perfumes, scented lotions and so on; but told them to wear unscented deodorant. To be honest, that tale just made me – allergy-factor or not – see red. An attitude – and, with a feel of not requesting, but commanding – on the part of the director; which seems to me appropriate to Big Brother-style dictatorships, not to free societies composed of free citizens.

17

This thread came to mind while reading The Italian Boy, a book about body snatchers in 1830s London. The author mentions that after the resurrectionists dug up a body that had been buried for a day or two they’d leave it stashed somewhere, often under the benches of an inn where the criminal element hung out, while they shopped around for someone to buy it off them. My thought was: “Whoa, you couldn’t try that these days without getting some serious smell complaints from all the people trying to eat!”

The gist of the book is that a few guys were suspected of murder because the body they sold to a hospital was way too fresh, at only three days old.

18

My take is that the “scent-free” dictates have gotten out of hand and that there seem to be a lot more people these days who interpret “I don’t like that smell” as “That smell is making me physically ill”. Maybe it’s the popularity of the “multiple chemical sensitivity” syndrome nonsense.
[QUOTE=vontsira]
The smell of burning tobacco is, among very many “goodthinkers”, right up there with the satanic brimstone of earlier times (OK, regarding that issue, there is the public-health factor; but I would contend that numerous anti-smokers abhor the smell in itself, and because of that, bring in in their support, the “poisoning others” thing).
[/QUOTE]
I would contend otherwise - that something strong enough to set people to coughing, that aggravates asthma or other pulmonary conditions and can cause acute cardiac events and over time, cancer, produces negative reactions that involve far more than dislike of tobacco smoke odor.

19

That is why I wear this perfume,

to remind people of the good ol’ days.

20

Speaking to the choir director anecdote, have you ever sung in a large performance choir? First, you are jammed together just like sardines in a tin, standing up, wearing floor-length polyester clothing usually black, for a couple of hours. You really sweat. And the very last thing anyone wants is for their eyes to start itching or their nose to start running because the person right in front of you whose head you could rest your music folder on if you relaxed your elbows an inch sprayed their hair with, well, anything, pretty much.

All the choir directors I’ve ever sung under have emphasized lots of unscented deodorant no perfumes, for performances. Usually practices are a lot more relaxed (and roomy).

Also, choir directors ARE dictators, by and large. People who aren’t incredibly bossy make crappy choir directors.