Ok, it’s not so much a lesson as an observation. I have a new employee in my department at work. She’s not a great beauty, but she’s a reasonably attractive woman in her 40’s. I say that only because it has a bearing on what’s to follow. She’s very nice, and I like her a lot, but she has a little problem with personal hygiene. I don’t know how often she bathes, but it’s not often enough. Now, we all know that other cultures often have a decidedly different outlook on the subject than we do. In fact, Americans are often accused of being obssessed with cleanliness, but quite frankly, I’d rather not smell like a goat, thank you very much. Not to mention the germ theory of disease. This woman happens to be Persian. They prefer being called Persian, I think because in their minds, it elevates them by recalling the glory days when the Persian Empire ruled the world. You know, before that little problem with the Greeks.
It’s one thing to encounter a man who smells, but it’s very disconcerting when it’s a woman. And it’s not like she’s an old peasant woman in traditional garb. The other day I watched as she primped in front of a mirror, fooling with her hair until she got it just so, and it occurred to me that here is a woman who is aware enough of her presentation to care what she looks like, but either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that everyone around her gives her a wide berth because she smells like the Giants locker room after the Super Bowl.
I’m considering adding a new question to the interview process, something along the lines of, “You didn’t just bathe for this interview, right?” Think I’d get written up for cultural hate speech?
You goof! It’s not that she doesn’t bathe; it’s that she’s wearing one of those camel-based perfumes.
TOOL OF THE SOAPY PATRIARCHY!
I live in a community with many Persians. They are usually the children of political dissidents that don’t identify with the current Iranian regime. In my area in particular, many are Jewish so they really super don’t identify with the current Iranian regime.
They aren’t trying to recall some past glory at all, just trying to separate their ethnicity from politics.
BATHINGIST!
MayBee: Thanks for that.
My niece is married to an Iranian Jew. I’ve heard them refer to themselves as both Iranian and Persian. However “American” trumps both of those other designations by a factor of ten. They are a very admirable people, good hearted, joyful and their women are are cherished as equals and partners.
Also I’ve never noticed any issues with hygiene do it may be possible that your woman is just a, well, um, skank.
Could be her house smells like that. Maybe she’s a “cat lady.”
“just a . . . skank”?
Good God! How reductionistic is that?
I’m considering adding a new question to the interview process…
“Okay, what do you think are your biggest weaknesses? Don’t worry about strengths; I’ve already listed ‘body stench.'”
Let Bob Ross say it for you:
http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/6097/96116453oc2.jpg
GOAT CRIME!!!1!one!!
Well, Dan, I’m all about the reduction.
Oh, wait, that was a sauce…
When the happy little trees can’t stand the way you stink, yeah, there’s a problem.
It’s very possible its a medical problem AND she can’t smell herself.
Some supervisor should tell her to get a medical checkup.
Phew, Craig!
I’m sure you have a point, but … you haven’t really smelled humans unless you’ve flown on a Pakistan Internatiional Airways from Jakarta to Dhahran.
Blend equal parts of stale cabbage, toe-cheese and fish-sauce sometime and then breath the potion in deeply to get a good idea. For the full experience, remain immersed for at least 6-hours, without a movie.
I’m not being racist, just observant.
Also, I remember my 5th year French teacher’s reek. The entire class crowded into the corners of the classroom every morning just to increase the “leave” between their noses and his arm-pits.
Cheers!
CraigC, CraigC, CraigC. Ask not how much harm having her offend clients can do to you, ask how much harm leaving a bar of Ivory on her desk can do to her.
You gotta spell some dead president adages out for everybody.
Diet may have as much to do with this unfortunate business, as hygiene.
A common derogatory nickname for westerners among the Japanese translates roughly “butter stinkers” – The higher proportion of animal fats, in particular stearic acid, in the western diet makes us smell funny to people who eat squid toes and seaweed.
Typical Persian and Paki diets are heavy on the spice, which flavors the sweat with a pungency a bland-apocrined American might find peculiar. And offensive.
Squids tapdance?
Squids tapdance?
That would make a good scene in a new edition of “Fantasia.”
They could have 8 little tap shoes on. It sounds so CUUUUTE!!!
Okay, it doesn’t.
Many people in Asian and ME countries don’t wear antiperspirant. Diet can be a factor in how much sweat stinks, as can cleanliness, as can non-natural fiber clothing.
Well, squids have 8 feet AND two tentacles, longer than their legs, with paddles at the end. And those giant eyes. Animators would have a lot to work with there.
My NG smells purty. So there’s that.
Maybe this is how the term “culture” jumped from bacteria to society.
Theirs is an ancient culture.
What’s up, my NG?
My NG smells purty
I know you’re there
Where the world goes by like the humid air
And it sticks like a broken record
How’s that new attitude on the job holding up, hf?
I do not like thee, Doctor Fell
The reason why, I cannot tell…
It’s ok. Sort of. If I don’t overthink it. Or think about it at all really.
That usually works. Smile. Pretend everything is okay. Go about your day without thinking about things too much.
It works best, though, when you have an escape route in place.
Sarah’s right. Diet, genetics, and overall health define our individual odors.
But, as with Global Warming, it’s gonna be tough to nail-down how much each factor contributes to any discernible demographic’s “Stank Foot-Print.” So, before we go selling “Stank-Credits”…
Just compare l’odeur dripping off of your average American metrosexual to the malodorous fog surrounding me right now (as I’m just coming in from cleaning the filter in my septic tank), and you’ll be forced to give-up on creating any new UN Global Stank Commissions.
It’s an enigma really. The people I encountered in my travels who haled from Somalia, northern Arabia and Lebanon were very clean in public, as though they took great pride in looking and smelling sweeter than the next. But, take a wrong turn in rural China and….oops!
I goofed on the /italics tag!
Boy, I stank!
I like the approach of the always-entertaining Strong Bad over at http://www.homestarrunner.com. Worth a watch.
As I predicted, they even produced the shirt here.
Enjoy!
At least she doesn’t smell as bad as the Patriots did on the field.
It’s as simple as something that nobody knows that she’d prolly smell better if she’d eat more squid toes I think.
Just get a group of co-workers to dress up like ninjas and ambush her with a soapy rag and a bottle of perfume a few times. She’s smart, she’ll figure it out eventually.
Or just issue gas masks to everyone else. That would be subtle enough.
I’ve often worked odd hours, I’ve been lucky to usually avoid “the normal early morning office smell” of people who dip themselves in 55-gallon drums of scent before they come to work.
On occasion, I have been been literally staggered by some of these people in their early-morning glory, and often have I wondered what primordial fetid horror they were trying to mask with that much acetone and plant oil.
Nothing is as bad as really rancid BO combined with cupsful of Old Spice.
Used to work with a guy from Canada (the frenchy part) who was very smart – had a PhD in something – but he only bathed on Sunday night. Monday, no problem. By the time you got to Friday this guy had a freaking gas cloud following him everywhere. He just plain stank. And don’t get me started on the imported Chinese workers who bring in their leftover fish heads from the previous night’s dinner and microwave the damn things in the lunchroom. Now THAT stunk!
Generally people *can’t* smell themselves. Our noses are smart that way. I worked at a plastics molding plant and it only took two days at work before the constant and near overwhelming smell of burning plastic got shunted off to some “ignore this” function in my brain. Perfume and other stuff does that too, but that’s not going to help *you*, it’s just pointing out that *she* most certainly is unaware.
If you’ve got a female co-worker with both tact and balls… I’d ask her to talk to the woman and suggest some solutions. (Diet, extra bathing even if she’s not dirty at all, deodorants or body powder or something.)
Be polite. Be professional. Have a plan to kill everyone you meet.
Wait until she starts smelling like open ass. Then confront her.
You bunch of twinkletoes, commie, cocksucker pussies! I’ll tell you how you deal with those smelly rag heads sons of bitches..You have a shower party just like back in The Corp, that’s how! When the slimy, scumbag, piece of shit is fast asleep in her bunk, the you get the whole office platoon to quietly surround her and pin her down with towels then you take turns beating her with bars of soap inside your socks… The next day she’ll not only smell better but run the obstacle course in 30 seconds flat, qualify Expert with her M-14 and have a perfectly straight, vertical gig-line…
Fuckin know-nothing civilian pogues!
Be polite. Be professional.
Exactly. What I would do: ask if you can smell her pussy, when she says no, say “Damn! It must be your fucking feet, then!”
My 9th grade Algebra tchr was Lebanese. His parents came to America straight out of a UN refugee camp after the joooooos kicked their ass in ’46 or ’48 or whenever. I’ve never smelled anything like him before or since. I don’t even have words to describe it. His whole damned room smelled like it, even out in the hall when you walked by his door. Needless to say my initial introduction to higher mathematics was sketchy.
I regularly encounter a woman at work who uses some kind of cologne or other that could blister paint at thirty paces. I can barely stand to be in the same lobby with her.
BECAUSE OF THE BATHOS!!!!!1!!!