[way off topic]
Archaic word of the day: Cornobbled
Definition: Hit with a fish.
Example: 1.Ponder Stibbons cornobbled lissener.
2. “My God!” Cried lissener. “I’ve been cornobbled!”
Take it to HR if the boss is trying to smack you down for it. If your fan is the only way you can work and still be able to breathe, note it down and note that you were told to turn it off. Perfume can be as much an OHS issue as loose wiring or broken desks/chairs, and needs to be addressed promptly. Not at some nebulous time in the future.
I’ve worked in two offices where one of the women started wearing a perfume that causes me to have severe asthma attacks. In one case the management absolutely refused to ask her to stop wearing it, even though they nearly had to call 911 because I was having such a severe attack, and in the other one they sent out such a namby-pamby email that the bitch put on extra and walked past my desk every chance she got. I ended up having to leave both jobs within two weeks; it was either that or my health.
But hey, maybe if you could manage a severe asthma attack right in the middle of the office, management would maybe figure out you’re not being a drama queen and that it really does bother you? Either that or walk around with a big can of Lysol, spraying ostentatiously. Or you might do what I would have done had I not gotten a nice fat pay raise at each of my new jobs – go to OSHA and complain about a workplace health hazard and management’s refusal to mitigate.
Oh, man. Somebody needs to be bitch-slapped.
That’s the second time that’s been mentioned in this thread. Stupid question: Would that work? I’d think it would only exacerbate the problem. In other words, how does Lysol work?
If you use the same scent for years, eventually you’re unable to smell it yourself. This is why it’s important to change your scent every 5 years at a minimum. Your coworker may be dousing herself with so much because she literally can’t smell it anymore, and other coworkers may also be inurred to the scent by now.
Of course, truth and reason aren’t going to help you in this situation, but it’s nice to know.
I have no idea if Lysol would help; it’s the spraying of the Lysol that would make the statement, I would think. And you could in all innocence claim it was “so my coworkers don’t have to smell the cigar smoke that lingers on me!”
Febreeze perhaps?
If I can smell my perfume more than a wee little bit, I’ve put too much on. And I hardly ever wear it anyway – I tend to prefer the smell of my peppermint-rosemary soap.
I worked alongside a woman who… well, when I first saw her, I immediately thought of Miss Piggy. Heavily hairsprayed curls in a fountain all around her head. Eyebrows shaved off and painted back on. Heavy, heavy eyemakeup. Heavy everythingmakeup, really. And to top it all off… well, I don’t happen to be slim, but I don’t wear skintight shirts and jeans either.
And, naturally, she sprayed herself down with some perfume that smelled, honest to Og, like bug killer. :eek:
Freeze a can of shaving cream (not gel). Bring it into the office still ice cold. Just before she arrives, carefully cut off one end and hide it at her work area. Get out of range, you just lit a 10-15 minute fuse. Look busy. Most importantly, don’t come crying to me if it isn’t completely frozen when you cut the end off and you get a booboo.
It’s not a perfume specific message, but it’s a message of sorts.
I used to work across the aisle from someone who would douse herself in perfume, trim her nails at her desk, farted regularly, and told all her callers to have a blesséd day.
I don’t take joy in the misfortune of others (HA!) but I did punch the air the day I heard she was being “retired.” Beastly person!
So the shaving cream explodes or what? Me no understand.
It expands in volume 20X at room temperature.
Could it be “Tea Rose”? I knew someone who used that a bit too liberally, and some of the guys took to stamping their feet as if they were crushing roaches before she finally caught on to the joke and eased up on the scent. (And before anyone comments on that, we were all teenagers working retail and not yet the sophisticated, urbane citizens we later became. 
)
Yes, some people can be oblivious to their scent, either because their sense of smell is poor or because they’ve densensitized themselves to it. Your manager is off-base here though - strong smells that are distracting to the point of making you ill are bad, period, whether it’s photocopier fumes or a colleague’s perfume.
Um, how about buying the perfume and spraying your supervisor’s office with it? :eek:
Ugh, I agree that heavy perfume is revolting. If we’re going to ban smoking in workplaces in order to avoid spreading irritating fumes and stenches around unnecessarily, we should apply the same principle to other unnecessary stenches.
If somebody can smell your perfume when they’re standing right next to you (or closer), that’s one thing. But if you’re leaving your odor around in places that you are not currently occupying, you need to wash that shit off. As the saying goes, spraying yourself with toxic waste is not sexy.
Here’s yer list of organizations etc. that have a “scent free awareness” or “indoor air quality improvement” focus.
If it were me, I’d go to HR and explain what’s going on. Heavy perfume can be a migraine trigger for me, so I’d probably end up getting a doctor’s note explaining this.
Or maybe not.
Who are you going to trust, a man who actually owns an oven mitt, or your pal Waverly, who pulls hunks of charred flesh out of the oven with his bare hands?
Well, you could go to work in a hospital where you have duties that require you to deal directly with patients.
In my hospital, perfume, cologne or any other smelly stuff is verboten if you have to have contact with patients. Some of them are on chemo or radiation or some other treatment that already makes them queasy, and the extra aroma of Eau de Walgreens might just trip their trigger.
Say…you might try that. Tell them you’ve just begun Interferon and ribavirin treatments for Hep C and that strong smells make you nauseated.
Then hurk up on her desk.
A friend of mine had to deal with something like this. I loaned him a gas mask with a loud, wheezy cartridge; his buddies had to get their own. You can buy the S10 for around $30-40, sometimes even less. It’s only really effective if there are several of you doing it; otherwise it looks like one person complaining too much.
Carry it around with you. Every time the source gets too close, roll your eyes, take out the mask, clear it, and continue doing whatever it was you were doing, like it was just another part of your day you had to suffer through.
It only takes a couple days.