Reeking to a range of 20 feet

[Dave1982]

Well, after going ages without any smelly customers, I seem to have suddenly hit the jackpot. In the past week, I've had another customer with that "stale sweat and old potato chip oil" smell, then these gemstone quality turds......


The first was a guy and his wife who just smelled like they hadn't bathed since the Eisenhower Administration, and the husband was just a complete dumbass on top of that. First of all, he hauled down a display desk from its riser and parked it right in the middle of an aisle, then engaged me in a protracted argument about the $7.99 chair assembly fee that was mentioned on the fact tag.

SC: So I buy this chair and get $7.99 rebate?

Me: No. That's the assembly fee. If you'd like us to build the chair for you, it's an extra $7.99.

SC: Oh, so you take $7.99 off the price of chair?

Me: No sir. If you want us to build the chair for you, we charge an extra $7.99.

SC:...........so there's a rebate of $7.99 if we have you build chair?

Me: NO! You PAY $7.99 MORE!

The argument wnt on a lot longer than that.....I had to explain it at least 6 ways from Sunday before I was able to hammer the concept through his head. Then he tried to get me to agree to an on-the-spot assembly, which I would not and could not do for him. I ended up having to flee and cash in a favor to have a CW finish with them.


Then, yesterday, while covering electronics, I dealt with two guys, one of which was a COMPLETE moron who thought he knew how to speak but didn't. I had to have him repeat every other sentence he uttered because he seemed to be suffering from some sort of aphasia. He seemed to want a printer with all the capabilities and features of a $400 all-in-one, but for under $100. Yeah....like that's going to happen. And it took seemingly forever to even get to that point because of his utter lack of communication skills besides blathering.

But the real problem was his traveling companion. I hesitate to even mention this, but it is relevant.....the guy was wheelchair bound, and obviously suffering from something that afforded him little control of his body. I'm not blaming him for this, but he smelled like he'd been pissing himself for days and his braindead-yet-walking companion hadn't bothered to get him cleaned up AT ALL. That was......saddening.....but also infuriating because it made the entire sale that much more difficult for me.


And finally, not long after the above Duo left, I was bringing a hand truck to the back room. I walked past one side of the furniture area and was suddenly struck right in the face with the horrid stench of rotting fish. Seriously.....if anyone here has had the misfortune of smelling canned mackerel fillets....just imagine what they'd smell like after going bad, and that's the foulness that was intruding upon my nostrils.

The source of the smell turned out to be a guy standing int he CENTER of the furniture area. I am NOT kidding when I say that his atrocious BO had enveloped the entire furniture bad, half the printer department, and extended partway down the aisles on both sides of furniture.....at least a 20 foot radius. It's good thing my turkey had gone bad, thus forcing me to go hungry on break, because otherwise I'd have puked it right back up.

SC: Excuse me!

Me:

I had to resort to covering my mouth and nose under a thinly veiled guise of being lost in thought while talking with him. Gross gross gross.

Thankfully, when he left he took his Stink Sphere with him, and the smell didn't linger behind.

[Retail Associate]

Thankfully, when he left he took his Stink Sphere with him, and the smell didn't linger behind.

There's an entire family who comes in to shop at the hellhole store who reek so bad that you can smell them before you see them and their stench lingers for an hour or two after they've left the premises.

[depechemodefan]

I was afraid the last story would be about a woman. sometimes at that time ofthe month, not a pleasant smell. That or someone stuffed a dead fish in one of the displays.

But the first two guys, gah, too stupid. I wish there were sabertooth tigers still around for them to walk behind of, pull their tales, and say, "hey, it's a big kitty!"

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Oh yes, we have us some reekers over at the swamp. Mostly of the co-worker variety.

Remember Numbnuts, everybody? He reeked.

One of the "ladies" in the cash office always seemed to smell like crotch and unwashed pantyhose. Although I hear she doesn't smell quite as bad anymore. Maybe she was given a talking-to?

And then we've got another cashier who's easily 350 pounds, has bad knees (gee I wonder why?) and stinks to high heaven of swamp crotch. And it lingers wherever she's been. She was working in electronics Black Friday, and she bent over, and that whole, ummm, "region" of her pants was soaking wet.

Oftentimes she covers it up with cheap perfume, so you get that mix of swamp crotch and Eau de Skank.

And people wonder why I hold my breath when I have to be around her.

[BreadZombie]

Uuugh. Sounds like a prize-winner I once had when I worked at Rite-Aid. Dude was coming up to my register and I could smell him from about ten feet away. I swear, he was just rotten with BO. I was trying so hard not to gag. And among his purchases, guess what wan't there...

Yep, you got it: soap.

[SorryIsGoodEnough]

I had a coworker who smelled really bad. I don't know if it was her weight or what but it got to the point where my ex-boyfriend knew if I had given her a ride to work that day because the smell lingered in the car.

Yikes.

And we had a guest at the hotel that for some reason was considered VIP and we always gave them a room and always accepted cash. They smelled so badly, that the pizza delivery guys around there would hand the front desk their pizza and tell us that they had adopted a policy not to deliver to that guest. Ever.

Gee, thanks.

[RedRoseSpiral]

So far I haven't had any coworkers who reek thankfully, but I have had customers who smelled so horribly when I worked at the chinese place. The worst offender is this woman.

Perfume Woman:
Thankfully this woman only came in once. The Chinese place was very small and completely open. You could see the back door from the front. There was no hiding anything. The front area had just enough room for two small tables and some chairs for people who were picking up food. There was maybe a 20ft space from the door to the counter. This older woman (probably late 50s to mid 60s) comes in and as soon as she opens the door I get hit with this horrible floral perfume. It's so bad my eyes start to water and I'm trying not to cough through the entire order. I could tell she was insulted too. Probably thought I was sick and working or something because I could barely get a word out without choking back a cough.

[Midorikawa]

It's threads like this that really make me glad I have little to no sense of smell. There's been many a time I've heard from people that something smelled bad...All I can do is shrug. :-D

[EvilEmpryss]

As rude as people with BO or overpowering perfume/cologne are, why is it rude to tell them they stink and need to get a bath? I know that people get accustomed to their own stink after a while, but why should they be allowed to inflict that stink on the people around them without suffering consequences? Some people can't help their circumstances and don't have frequent access to bathing facilities, but even the homeless can use a public restroom and a paper towel to take a whore's bath and keep the stink at bay.

[RestaurantDude]

Stinky

We've got a smelly customer. We call him "Stinky" (not to his face of course).


He comes into The Restaurant about once a month, and reeks the place up something awful. Picture this. Take all of your clothing, and dunk it in a tub full of cheap men's smelly stuff, and let it soak for a few days. Then pull it out, and stick it in a small closet with some crappy incense for about a week, and let it get good and incense-y. Now, light up a joint (or six) and hotbox the car on the way to The Restaurant.

That's what Stinky smells like. I have to hold my breath when i'm anywhere near his table, as it makes me fell physically ill.

[LillFilly]

I know I've read something somewhere about employees, if they knowingly wear a perfume/cologne that they know bothers people (illness or asthma), can be charged with some sort of assault or harassment under the ADA.

And ick, perfume is meant to enhance your natural scent, not mask your funk!

[Gravekeeper]

It's company policy in my office. No perfume/cologne. If you reek you'll be told not to reek by tomorrow. If you still reek, you'll get written up. Simple as that.

And yeah, the policy itself was triggered by one specific person who just marinated in the most horribly cheap perfumes. Your eyes would sting. Anyone with asthma or anything would have to stay on the opposite end of the building.

She no longer works here. -.-

[Mike Taylor]

I'm surprised no-one has yet mentioned the varieties of "cat piss men" that find their way into the comic shops and game stores of the world.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I'm surprised no-one has yet mentioned the varieties of "cat piss men" that find their way into the comic shops and game stores of the world.

That reminds me, one time a few months ago we had a woman reeking of cat piss tooling around on one of our motorized shopping carts.

The thing died someplace in the store and she was forced to walk.

The manager on duty tried to get me to drag the thing back to the charger. I refused, unless the scooter was disinfected and de-stinkified first.

[Sapphire Silk]

Stinky patients

I worked for years as an ER nurse. We regularly would get the homeless in for this, that or the other. Some of them really stunk.

We had one gal who came to the ER every single day wearing the same pajamas. She was part of a group of regular drug seekers we called the "Pain Train."

The worst were the homeless alcoholics who would be found by some good samaritan passed out drunk in an empty lot or parking lot. EMS would bring them in reeking of alcohol, vomit, sweat, piss and shit, all of which would be caked on them.

We would remove and throw away the clothing, bathe them as best we could, all the while trying not to vomit. Since they were pretty much somnolent, we didn't have to hide the revulsion.

The stink invariably made its way throughout the whole ER. We had a clever solution.

We'd take a hand held nebulizer kit, hook it up to the air flow meter, put 3 ml of saline in, and add a few drops of oil of peppermint and crank the flowmeter all the way up.

Ahh, sweet relief!