On Saturday, we were in the pet aisle of the supermarket and as I was putting a jug of cat litter into the cart I smelled a horrible smell. You know the smell when you forget you have clothes in the washer and they dry with that disgusting stink? That smell. It was incredibly strong. You could taste this smell.
“My god!” I exclaimed. “That smell! They must have gotten these bags wet or something.”
I pulled out the jug of litter and smelled it. I even smelled my own shirt, wondering if there could be some way I hadn’t noticed that smell earlier.
Then I noticed that my husband was looking a bit strange. “Don’t you smell that horrible smell?”
He looked to his right then said, in a low voice, “I think was that guy who just walked by.” I argued that there was simply no way that smell came from a person. It wasn’t a person smell.
We went down the aisle and around the corner, encountering the same horrific smell. This time it was obvious it was the guy. He was pushing a cart with a child in a car seat, and he was filthy. His pants looked like he had worn them through a a swamp. Maybe he had.
There’s little doubt he heard me.
I feel like a heel. I didn’t apologize. I wouldn’t even know how to apologize.
Would anyone else feel awful about this, or am I just being a neurotic freak again?
Edited to add: Three guesses what Lynyrd Skynyrd song I have running through my head.
If you made a negative comment about someone that they overheard, and you would not have made the comment to that person’s face, you should feel bad.
On the other hand, it was a stranger in a supermarket. Think twice before making nasty comments where you might be overheard, and then forget about it. Obsessing is both normal and neurotic.
There isn’t anything to feel bad about. You smelled a horrific smell and commented on it like any normal person would. The fact that such a thing was coming from a person has little bearing on the matter as long as you were honestly wondering where it came from. What were you supposed to apologize for?
“Good sir, you really do smell horrible but I know how hard you people have it working down in the sewer for sub-minimum wage and all and you don’t have anymore clothes so I will refrain from such commentary in the future.”
In the supermarket that I worked in during high school, we had a regular customer dubbed cat-man by everyone. He was one step above homeless and lived with many, many cats. He always smelled like concentrated cat urine and could honestly smell up whole sections of the store and we would have to ventilate after he left. Some doofuses took to following him around with air freshener and spraying. That was rude. He was also one of those people found dead after several days with only the cats tending the body. I only heard the barest of details.
I’d feel bad, but there’s no use beating yourself up over it. This thread is timely since I saw “dead worm guy” again today. Dead worm guy is, well, a guy who smells like dead worms. I feel bad for him because he most likely doesn’t have much control over it. I leave the room asap when he’s around, and stay away for awhile after he’s gone as the scent lingers.
Once several years ago, I was riding the city bus, and soon after sitting down, I noticed this horrible smell. Man, it was noxious. My eyes were watering and I was getting ready to start gagging. I turned to the lady behind me and commented on it- “OH MY GOD, do you SMELL that?! What the hell is that smell?!”
She responds in a quiet little voice, “It’s me- I have a skin condition.” And went on to apologize several times.
I died a little and I still cringe when I think about that. Now I keep my smell comments to myself.
I can understand why you’d feel bad, but it was an honest flub because, honestly, you didn’t think there was any way that smell was coming from a person. I say let it go. Of course, you’re talking to a person with chronic Foot In Mouth disease, so I’ve had many more opportunities than you have to practice letting it go.
One of the things I hate that my husband does is talking about “what’s that smell???” all the time because it could be a person or that person’s effects that stink. So…yes, I’m sorry but, IMO, you should feel a little bad.
When I worked in the Truck Gate and we’d have smelly truckers (not that many, given the number of people who flowed through), we’d spray this serious industrial air freshener after they left.
The more they smelled, the sooner we’d spray. If we were not all that bad, we’d wait until they got out of sight. If they were nasty bad smelling, we’d start spraying the moment they got out the door.
Then we got the guy so bad that one of my guys asked me if he could directly spray the individual.
Sadly, No.
But we refused to allow him back into the building on his way out of the gate.
If it was that bad and he’s walking anywhere near the air freshener/lysol aisle, go over there, pick up a can, and beat him over the head with it.
Bad! Bad Smelly Man! Bad!
Edit: I’d say Gimme Three Steps, but you probably mean That Smell.
I’ve known only two smells that can literally be tasted. Both of them had to do with rotting flesh – one from an animal and one from a student in my classroom. Just one student in all of those years. I sent her with a note to the Guidance Office so that they could talk with her privately.
Sometimes people get used to their own stench and they can’t tell that they smell. It’s better that he heard it from a perfect stranger.
If he has the skin disease and can’t help it, he probably hears this comment frequently. Forgive yourself. You are only human, despite your name.
Come to think of it, forgive yourself anyway. It wasn’t intentional. Even if it had been and you’ve come around now to wishing you hadn’t said anything, ease up on yourself.
On the other hand, I have five fingers.
When I was six years old, I closed a school bus door on the finger of a little girl. Her finger was in the mechanism that the driver uses to close the door. It must have hurt like hell to have a finger crushed like that, but she just looked at me with these big eyes and didn’t cry out. Her name was Mary and that was almost 58 years ago.
What good has it done either of us that I can’t forget hurting her?
I recently had an experience that made me feel bad and I didn’t even say anything.
I was in the sporting goods store looking for something and I heard this voice. It was kind of an amazing, great voice–sort of low and purring and growly but melodic at the same time. I couldn’t see who it was. A few minutes later I was standing in line to check out and I heard the same voice behind me so I turned around to see who it was.
And there as this woman who had obviously had some kind of terribly accident. Her chin was fused to her neck with this shiny red skin…that is to say, she had no neck, and the skin was really scarred going on down to her chest. So I turned around, saw that, and I have the kind of face, unfortunately, that really shows what I feel, which at that moment was horror. There was a guy with her and he saw me and put his arm around her.
I turned away really quickly. I kept thinking she probably gets that reaction a lot–which doesn’t help. I felt really bad; I wished I hadn’t turned around, I felt stupid that what I had thought was a great voice was obviously some kind of vocal chord damage–all that.
Then I thought that probably she shouldn’t go out in public without a bag over her head, and probably I shouldn’t either.
I did something similar once; we were in a bar, and I guess we were feeling cocky, because I made some comment to the guys I was with about how weird the hair was on the girl in front of us. The loser I was with wasn’t content with talking quietly, so he said some nasty comment about her hair nice and loud. She turned around, and I saw it was a black girl, who had probably gone to great lengths to straighten her hair as much as it was. I could have crawled into the floor and died, then. Since then, I have learned how big a deal hair is to black women (I didn’t really know that at the time; I just knew we were insulting someone over something they had little control over and that we were being dicks).
Anonymous girl who had her hair insulted in a bar for no good reason whatsoever, you have my sincere apology.
I think you should learn from the experience and forgive yourself, jsgoddess. You didn’t mean to insult the guy, but it happened anyway.
