Office Odors

So you might be like me right now and you’re sitting in your air conditioned office with you carpeted walls around and below you. The faint hum of the lights and this weird dentist like office chair which you feel the same pain in as if you were at the dentist, except at the office no hot nurse/doctor is sticking their hands in your mouth. So if you find yourself in this world of pain and suffering then here’s a new thing I’ve noticed.

Office Odors

In a modern day office as opposed to a tire repair shop, Home Depot, and a first grade class. The element of a “smell” is all but, eliminated in our high tech world. This mainly has to do with the fact the computers hardly give off a smell as opposed to a first grader and everything else is just walls, pens, and paper and they don’t really smell like anything. So where do the odors come from? Well, your co-workers of course. I’ve discovered three distinctive odors that I smell on a regular basis and I just smelled one of these recently until the air filtration system whisked it away.

Smokey

This is a smell that is becoming harder and harder to experience in these days of healthy and organic lifestyles, but every once in a while you’ll have the opportunity to interact with it. “Smokey” occurs when one of your co-workers takes a smoke break and on the way back to their cube a distinctive smell of cigarette smoke passes by with them. This could only occur in two ways. 1. “Smokey” has just finished chain smoking three cigarette’s in twenty seconds and the chemical reaction that is induced by the raise of nicotine in their body actually causes them to emit a cigarette like smell. 2. They are walking back to their cubicle with a half lit cigarette that they are snubbing out which they put back in the pack and finish smoking later. In my experiences I believe number two is responsible for the “Smokey” smell.

What the fuck is that? Nuked barf?

You know you’ve experienced this one. Usually it hovers around the kitchen and is connected to something that was recently heated up in the microwave only rarely does “W.T.F.I.T.?N.B.?” make it’s way into the main office. Once this odor is detected in the regular office environment everyone usually has to get up and take their smoke breaks early or go out for lunch hoping that their appetite comes back. But, usually you just smell “W.T.F.I.T.?N.B.?” coming from the microwave and you feel discouraged to cook anything in it with fear of your own food becoming contaminated by the odor. One theory is that whatever was cooked in the microwave didn’t actually cause this order but, that every 100 times that something is nuked in a communal microwave it will spontaneously create this smell as the odor molecules are being mixed and heated to a million degrees once again. Think of all those different foods that have been heated up in the same oven: turkey pot pies, last night’s Chinese food, hot pockets, and cups of water for tea. Who heats water up in a microwave, gross?

Perfume Counter or Bleach Body Splash

When your eyes start burning or you get that itchy feeling in your nose and then in the back of your throat you know this odor has come along. I feel that it should be classified more as a chemical weapon but, odor will do. This smell is always found among the cubicles and can always be traced to its original creator. For some reason its unknown by the odor’s wearer that they have just doused themselves in a mix between pine smelling windex and baby lotion. At some point in this person’s life they felt compelled to routinely spray a mist of a fragrance chemical made primarily from alcohol and a mixture of colorizing ingredients all over their bodies. Sometimes it’s functional as in spray on suntan lotion or other times as a scented splash of watermelon and coconut for that bus ride home. Usually the later is what happens at a specific time and to ensure that they are fully coated they tend to spray enough that a “splash” floats over into your space and you’re wondering if second hand contact with body splash can cause you to begin smelling like an old woman’s handbag. One safety consideration I have is that isn’t our skin one of the most important and biggest organs on our body, I know some of you would beg to differ and have video proof, but, what I’m saying is that if our skin protects us from outside germs wouldn’t an airborne chemical that we can breathe in and have land on our bodies be deemed dangerous? I think we should put these people outside with the smokers but, that might be a problem when the alcohol mist comes in contact with an open flame. . .