I quit 5-1/2 months ago. It’s very true, I had no idea how bad I smelled. I have told my teenage son not to smoke in the house anymore (and of course, urged him to quit) and when he does I can smell the stench. I can smell people in the office when they come back from smoking outside. Walking into a bar can be rough! I can even pick out a smoker when one passes me at the mall, or whatever! It’s amazing. That’s why people who have never quit don’t understand how bad it is for non-smokers. They’ve never smelled it!
I’m lucky that my fiance (an ex-smoker) kept seeing me in the beginning. I must have tasted like dog crap.
My WAG: Since it’s winter, maybe the guy’s coat is saturated. Could you suggest he get it cleaned? It might just piss him off, but then again, he might listen.
We have a woman who goes out at least every hour for a smoke to keep herself “productive”. She starts coughing, proceeds into a combination of coughing and wheezing then hoarks for awhile until she finally spits yet another lung nugget into her waste paper basket. I feel bad for the janitorial crew who has to pick up her loogie infested trash can and empty it.
The problem with that is that until relatively recently, smokers were Entitled (whether or not they were Fucktards is a different story), so your friends premise is flawed.
The steady erosion of those entitlements has led to many a bitter smoker, much as consistently leaving ones duties unattented and returning to stink up the office creates unhappy co-workers like the OP.
Job duties aside, I don’t the co-worker mentioned in the OP is any worse than those women[sup]1[/sup] who have lost their sense of smell and now marinate in their favorite perfume before coming to work. Thankfully, I don’t currently work with any, but I have in the past. Given a choice between the two, I’ll take a heavy smoker any day.
Though I’m sure it happens, I’ve never noticed this behavior with the men.
It’s the acting-like-Fucktards that caused them to lose their entitlements. Her premise is right on the money.
Which is still better than the way things were. The fact that they’re still acting like Entitled Fucktards is not surprising. Nor should losing their entitlements be an excuse to act that way.
My husband complains of his stinky smoking co-workers quite often. He says they go out for a morning and afternoon 10 minute smoke, never mind it is 20 below outside, they go. And one in particular, he has complained about, smells like a “poopy diaper used as an ashtray.” I’ve wondered if it was the brand she smokes, but he thinks it has nothing to do with her brand of cigarette. He thinks she must take a giant shit while on break, goes out for an aftershit smoke, and drags it all back inside when she is done. He just tries to steer clear of her until she dissipates.
I work in a non-smoking office currently, though I once worked in a place where 4 of my co-workers smoked (out of 6 of us - small office). They would go outside the building to smoke almost every hour for 15 to 20 minutes, in pairs, throughout the day. Well, our employer noticed and decided to have all employees clock out at break. We were officially allowed one 10 minute break in the morning, one 10 minute break in the afternoon. Anything more was docked off our paychecks. Going outside and being timed made it really inconvenient for these people … the building has the city’s slowest elevator, plus winters are cold here. So, being that most of them are overweight as well as smokers, and having only 10 minutes to run down (try to run down) stairs or wait 5 minutes (and this is no exaggeration) for the elevator to get up to the third floor, really made it inconvenient to be a smoker there. The irony of these smokers is that this was a medical office I worked in. Nothing like heading for a doctors appointment and seeing half the staff out there puffing away and then having them come back in smelling like ashtrays while they get up close and personal with you.
Usually it’s women who offend like this, but there’s the occasional man who either thinks he’s God’s gift to women, and “enhances” his appeal by dousing himself in (usually a very nasty smelling) cologne, or he doesn’t like to bathe, and thinks he can cover it up with cologne. At any rate, male or female, these people are also quite offensive. At best, they can make a workplace unpleasant to work in, at worst they can trigger asthma or allergy attacks or migraines. Which is why I said, in an earlier post in this thread:
People need to be considerate of their coworkers, period. This includes not having garlic pizza for lunch if one is going to be working in close quarters with other people in the afternoon.
We had one of those at our office about a year ago. He’d go to the bathroom three or four times a day to re-apply. I counted one time how many squirts of the awful stuff he gave himself–9. 32 squirts a day while at work, God knows how many he did before he came in.
Well, no offense, but your guys’s super sonic sense of smell isn’t really the smokers problem, then. Same as if you had crazy allergies and expected your coworkers to bathe in hypoallergenic soap and not use any perfumes or so forth. There comes a point where your ailments become an undue burden on those around you and it would be a bit inconsiderate of you to try to impose them on others. Now, it would be NICE if the smokers were sensitive to your unusually sharp sense of smell, I’d like to think I would be, but they’re hardly insensitive fuckwads if they don’t, you know?
I don’t know about the Devil’s Grandmother, but MY post merely answered the question of whether there ARE people who have a sharp sense of smell, such as that which you expressed doubt over.
I certainly didn’t state, nor expect, any smokers to know that or else they’re insensitive. I don’t think that we have all that “sharp a sense of smell” either. Smoke is very acrid and insidious, the smell clings to clothing, and as I mentioned, in the case of some smokers it just comes out of their pores, if they’re really heavy smokers.
However, in the case of the OP, the coworker is VERY close to her, it’s not as if she can “get away”. And this happens frequently to non-smokers where they DON’T say anything. Particularly if the smokers is extremely polite and smokes outside, and so on.
We know that the smokers “can’t help it” in a manner of speaking. But that’s another thread, we know that quitting is hard. However, no matter how careful the smoker is (standing up wind, bathing frequently, airing their clothing, etc), it IS very apparent, and it CAN be smelled.
Do we think they’re “insensitive fuckwads”? No, we just think they smell. And they can explain how “some smokers smell, but I know I don’t” all they want, it doesn’t make them insensitive, just lacking in the ability to detect the odor (like I said, we know they can’t help their habit, my poor sister has been trying for years, and even SHE won’t smoke when she knows she wants to smell fresh).
So no, we don’t think they’re insensitive (other than to the odor), but that they shouldn’t delude themselves that it isn’t there either.
Point taken. Didn’t mean to upset you, I have seen non-smokers who act as if the smoker is intentionally trying to piss them off by daring to smell like smoke for a few minutes after a cig. (Yes, I know it lingers on some permenantly, but on the flipside, it doesn’t on others.) That’s where my whole “if you’re superly duperly sensitive that’s not really the smokers problem” came from.
I didn’t say he was an insensitive fuckwad. I said he was smelly and not doing his job (answering the phone). I have no idea if he tries to accommodate my nose. I really doubt he does because I’ve never mentioned it to him. I can’t imagine commenting on the personal hygiene of a coworker, unless (obviously) it was a two-line rant on an anonymous message board.
Nor did I ever claim I was allergic. I’m not. I’d be just as unhappy if he smelled like…burnt toast or something.
Most of them are not smelly. Some are only slightly smelly.
Some could gag a maggot.
Like my one true love’s parents. I cannot be in their house for any length of time. It’s nausiating.
I think the smell is a combination of things.
1: Chain smoking. I haven’t noticed the horrible smell from moderate smokers.
2: Smoking primarily in confined areas. I.E. their home with the windows closed.
It’s not fresh smoke that stinks like that. It’s the stale, set into fabric and seeped into the paint smoke that gags us. It’s set into their clothes.
My one true love’s brother died of cancer just last week. I’m sure his chain smoking didn’t help him. We have been staying in his house and doing the cleaning detail. Even after a week, the stench of stale smoke lingers. All the clothes in his closet, the carpet, furniture, his car, even the damn tissues stink like that.
I live in an apartment complex where the apartments are triplexes. The elderly lady whose bedroom adjoins mine is a chain-smoker, and the smell absolutely leaches through the walls. There’s not a damn thing I can do about it, because she’s doing it in the privacy of her own home.
Additionally, these are very thick, sound-proof walls, because before she moved in, I tested my sound system in my bedroom with another neighbor and marked on the volume control the point at which he could hear my music. I use one of those ionizer air purifiers to combat the smell, but cigarette smoke is like water or light. If it can find a way to get in, it will.
Then there’s the male nurse I used to work with in the ER, who had to leave a “code” (Cardiac or respiratory arrest) to go out back to the ambulance dock for his “breathing treatment.”
I didn’t post what I just now wrote to point fingers. As a respiratory therapist I know full well how tough a time people have quitting. My point is that there are folks who smoke and who know that they may smell, and then there’s those of us who do what we can to try to alleviate the odors as best we can, without pissing or getting pissed off.
OP, I think perhaps a friendly “sit-down” with your intern may be in order. If nothing else, at least you will know that you tried.
Being a non-smoker isn’t pleasant when one is allergic to synthetic scents and things like smoke. My sense of smell and my reactions get much worse when I’m sick. This year I had to change dormitories in an effort to keep from getting sick every time I entered the room I shared with my former roommate. Same thing with my friends that smoke heavily… I just can’t be around the scent for too long before I get a sinus-related reaction.
Now, on the occasions where it does bother me and I have the opportunity to do something about it, I mention to them that I’m allergic and hope it will help… but first I normally try and get away from whatever the intense scent is. To be honest, unless it’s one of those perfume mongers or the scent is making me feel sick, I don’t mention it… but some people act as if I killed their firstborn child when I mention it. My former roommate was notorious for giving that reaction. (*Note: she sprayed those victoria’s secret perfumes that are meant to be a light body spray, i.e. it’s strong enough that one spray will perfume you pretty efficiently. I was in bed one morning while she was bathing in it, and counted how many sprays she used: 15. She went out to the bathroom, and then sprayed 5 more sprays before she left the room. I guess she didn’t hear me coughing and sputtering while still trying to hide from the perfume under my comforter.
I realize that not everyone reacts as badly as I do to perfume and smoke, but I know I’m not the only person around who can’t handle a large amount of synthetic scents.
Mirrored Indigo Shadows, I don’t know why you felt the need to post in a teeny tiny font, but it was unreadable until I removed the font formatting. Please have some consideration for those of us with older eyes.
