I’ve had quite a few, especially at work. Someone told me that i smelled like an old woman’s foyer when i wore Grand Soir and that I smelled like a sour Poo-Pouri when wearing Initio Side Effect. What are the worst reactions you’ve ever had when wearing a fragrance?
Slightly long story but this is hilarious…
More than ten years ago, back as a college student, I was out with the bassist of my metal band. We were then both crazy, dysfunctional alcoholics (not we are both sober dads, lol)… But to get on with it…:
We had a Friday night practice then he just came up to my part of the city to drink all night long… We slept in my dingy apartment until about 2 PM, then both woke up to go to the nearby park by the university to meet our friend Dima and continue drinking, seamlessly, without ever feeling hungover - on the path to the divine 48 hour drinking session.
… By nightfall, our group had grown into the usual batch of metalheads and friends we had, and one of our mutual female friends was saying she knew we were in the park but not where we were, and as she was walking she began to think…
“God, who the fuck smells so bad, where are these guys…”
And when she approached our table of like half-a-dozen people, she realized it was chiefly my bassist and myself, and we were both super drunk and literally sweaty, baked men sitting in the sub-tropical humidity of the country we live in…
She told me this story several years later, laughing about it, but this is what I remember when I think about that time I smelt really bad in public.
(Of course it may have happened on other occasions due to marathon drinking in the summertime, but it was truly rare - I did not CHOOSE to smell bed; I just didn’t let hygiene get in the way of marathon drinking when I was younger & dumber.)
Love this lol 😆
Can’t say anything about fragrance, since I do not use any. But looking from the other side: how to tell someone that theirs is bad? Like too much or Granny-like or whatever?
Here is what you actually do - I have done it twice.
“Oh man, did you not dry your clothes all the way? I smell a little bit of mold or something, and it’s summer, and if they weren’t in the drier and they just dried in a confined space, they sometimes get a moldy smell…”
And then they’ll kind of deny it’s them and that’s fine, and you just naturally change the topic…
They’ll think about what was said and make the connection that
- I smelt bad
- It wasn’t my clothes…! Shit, it was me…!
It gives them an honorable exit because you provide them something that they can blame that does not indict them for poor hygiene.
Another way is to tell a story about ‘forgetting to wear deodorant on a hot day’ - this might work as well.
Politely I think
Obviously. But the question is: Should you do it at all? And then how exactly?
The same way if someone has a bad body odor for whatever reason. I have never told them about it.
💯
