You said you walked by 6 feet from Aromatic Boy, Eva. But you left out the important detail: Could you smell him fromm that far away?
The first time I read this thread, I had managed to block from my memory THE worst smelling person in the entire universe. I worked at a small personal injury law firm in Texas many years ago, and for some unknown reason one of the attorneys took on a pedestrian/auto accident case for a homeless guy. He settled the case for several thousand dollars, and the guy came into the office to sign the papers.
I kid you not, you could smell him outside the building. The stench in the lobby was indescribable. He didn’t even have a shirt on, which might have blocked at least SOME of the smell. The inside of a garbage truck smells like expensive perfume compared to this man’s fragrance. My desk was 100 feet down the hall, and even racing down there as fast as I could, I could STILL smell him. The poor receptionist was in tears at being trapped with him. Needless to say, he was rushed out of the office in true record time.
Damn. Now it’s going to take several more years to block him from my memory again.
**Mama Tiger, ** that you [NOT!] for reminding me of the smelliest person I ever met in person, also while working at a personal injury law firm (actually they also handled worker’s comp).
He had severed part of a finger on a piece of industrial machinery at work (a band saw, IIRC). The injury wouldn’t have been that bad in the general range of things we used to see at that office (which were pretty horrendous), except that the concept of keeping the wound clean and changing the bandages before they rotted off had apparently escaped him. It got infected, and well, I don’t think I need to elaborate further, because I’m sure you’d all like your most recent meal to stay put.
The sad part? Although IL law provides for absolute liability on the part of the employer in a case like that, the employer in this case didn’t want to pay medical expenses or permanent disability because “it was his fault for coming to work drunk.” Then why the fuck did you let him work on a band saw?
Oh well, at least I didn’t have to sit next to the guy for three hours. He did, however, leave a grease spot on the chair he had been sitting in. The chair had to be reupholstered.