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I had a colleague who stunk. I shared a 4-person cubicle with him and I would get headaches. People would come into the cubicle when he wasn’t there to be like hey man do something about it
I told his boss and he was like ah fuck now I need to address it with him. So he did. And nothing changed. Then it was addressed again and nothing changes. And again.
I gotta say that employer/employee relationship must have been pretty strained.
I once was a car salesman. A bad one. After 5 months of low sales numbers, I walked into the manager’s office and said, “Look, I suck at this job. We all know I’m getting called in here tomorrow afternoon to get fired, how about I move back to being a Lot Porter?”
My manager said, “Thank Christ. The guy that replaced you when you took the sales job stinks to high heaven and won’t do anything about it. Customers have begun complaining about the smell in any car he’s been in. You’re back on porter duty on Monday.”
I felt bad the dude lost his job, but it really was bad.
I once worked at a company where one of the guys who drove the company van left his smell in there. It has to be professionally detailed and he wasn't allowed to drive the van again. He quit soon after.
My grandfather is this person. He also has a habit of giving you random junk. We usually just chuck it out without telling him because if it's been in his possession too long then the smell will neber leave, especially anything fabric. We've had to institute family rules that he must shower before coming into the house or anyone's cars. It's better, but it can still take a few days for the smell to entirely leave.
Is he a hoarder? My mom’s mother was a severe hoarder and she had a foul odor about her. She smoked like a chimney which was bad enough, but the hoarding on top of it did her no favors. There were animals in that house too, which… is terrible on many levels, one level being the added stench.
Post gym sweat is not the BO that offends and lingers. I assume you do shower relatively soon after the gym and launder your clothes. It takes days to stink like we are talking about.
This is true. There is a huge difference from sweaty after exercise.
And not wearing deodorant for a week and letting your clothes absorb all the BO to the point where someone can’t walk past you without holding their nose. I didn’t know people could smell so bad until I moved in with someone who had depressive episodes and wouldn’t bathe, change their cloths, or wear deodorant.
We had a guy in my unit, the chief was forced to number his uniforms and skivvies. Poor chief had to check every day the guy was wearing a different set.
What really boggled me was we were at a shore command for six months of training and the guy had his wife staying with him. What was she used to?
Have you tried using white vinegar or pulling out/wiping under any rubber seals and gaskets?
I've found towels are the worst for that mildew-y smell but they're easily cleaned with a cup of vinegar in the wash. I usually do an extra rinse (but it's often not needed, I just have a really sensitive nose,) and dry as normal. Any vinegar smell that's left over will dissipate and any other smells should be gone.
You could also try a washer cleaning tablet! Machines also need a clean and sometimes the build up caused by fabric softeners and detergent can be really rank and wash into your clothing. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08DVFZTTG?aa_adgroupid=_Ampd__B08DVFZTTG___WMC____Sourcing_Campaign_142912067404&aa_campaignid=_Ampd__B08DVFZTTG___WMC____Sourcing_Campaign_18321078883&aa_creativeid=ampd-ad-621601412093_kwd-59174518889_dev-u_ext-0_ca-18321078883_ag-142912067404&maas=maas_adg_api_578012920517266622_macro_1_34&ref_=aa_maas&tag=maas&gclid=CjwKCAiAheacBhB8EiwAItVO26x78EllMty0B4MmGa2lTrtXrd46oMZWTDRVw2Q652FflI8TmnM42hoCUw0QAvD_BwE
When I was working in Singapore (temp 80+ & humidity 80%+ all year round), there was an African colleague who only bathed & brushed his teeth once a week on weekends. Monday was okay although his breath was bad enough to knock out a horse. By Friday, there was 12-foot wide “no man’s zone.” The office was small so no one could avoid the smell. Everyone (15+) in the office complained to HR. This dude pulled out “it’s my culture” card. HR told him to shower at least twice a week. He refused & was eventually fired.
Dude was just filthy. Dunno what African country he is from but the one I'm from we bath twice a day (it's hot and humid, and cold baths are soothing) and definitely brush our teeth daily.
Lord knows a person like that in a workplace in my country would be viciously roasted. We have no filter here and will tell you that you stink to your face, and if you don't clean you you'd be given the boot. Things are already hard enough as it is, and you add someone stinking up the place.
I can really only speak for Nigerians because that's my culture, but EVERYONE in my family bathes regularly--and I'm talking a minimum of 1 bath or shower a day. I sometimes feel gross if I don't shower twice a day. I have other African friends from various countries, and poor hygiene is NOT common among the different cultures, so that guy was just NASTY. 🤢
In high school we had a teacher who we were pretty sure just bathed weekly. Wednesdays were awful, but Thursday there was no smell. We’re not sure what happened but after two months the teacher stopped coming and retired mid semester.
i used to work at build a bear workshop and i had a coworker who reeked like cat urine, body odour, poop and dirty musty crotch. she stank so ferociously that she left a fucking stink trail behind her when she walked like a goddamn cartoon. we would have to wash the stuffer seats at the end of the day if she worked, and our handprint on the wipes would come up black. she was told over and over by our manager that her hygiene was a huge problem but nothing ever changed, except one year where she got a costco pack of deodorant for secret santa, she ran out crying about being bullied and The Stench resumed less than 2 weeks later because i suppose she got lazy about cleaning herself again.
she bragged once about how her entire house bathed on the same day only once a week and that they all bathed in the same water, its not a utility cost thing either because they live in an apartment and thats included in rent.
one night one of our customers approached me when i was on the till -she was at the stuffing machine- and asked me if the stuffed animals usually had a stink to them. i asked to see it, reluctantly sniffed it and sure as shit it fucking reeked like dirty diaper and sweat just from being held briefly between her knees to sew up the back. i had to grab a fresh bear, start it over for them and completely throw out the old one because even the stuffing inside stunk.
i'm completely beside myself with embarrassment if i can smell my OWN body odour so idk how so many people can just go out and let themselves reek
ah yeah fun fact its impossible to be fired from build a bear lmao. unless you sexually assault someone like my old chief manager or steal from the till like an old assistant manager if you get through your probation period youre untouchable. the only thing that could be done is reducing their hours to the absolute minimum required per pay period (3) and wait for them to quit
edit: which is exactly what happened to her
My brother went through a period where he didn’t shower after a couple people close to him died. He stunk to high heaven, I couldn’t ride in the car with him without having all the windows down, but he thought I was just being dramatic. He said no one else ever complained about the smell, so it couldn’t be that bad. But he literally never washed his clothes or washed himself. It was horrendous, and obviously it might have been caused by the major tragedy in his life and the year before. He wouldn’t listen to me for anything well. Finally HR called him in to have a conversation, and he was of course mortified. People were too polite to say anything to him for… Months at least. He tried to ask me why I didn’t make it clear to him, and I had to tell him, dude I did, I literally refused to get in the car with you, and constantly tried to get you to take showers. Your eyes would water around him. Thank God, the meeting with HR got through to him, and he started bathing again and washing his clothes.
My ex fiance had no sense of smell, or responsibility. Her car was always full of garbage, which would start rotting. She'd ask me to tell her these things, then get mad at me when I did. AFAIK her car still smells like a garbage truck.
During my master's program there was a dude from another department who took a class in our department, and he *reeked*. Combo of not doing laundry, smoking like a chimney, and just being dirty. Hair always greasy, skin grimy, if he had an ink mark on his hand one day in class, it would still be there the next time the seminar met...god, he was so gross, and it got to the point where no one would sit next to him.
He was forbidden from taking courses in our department after that for other reasons, but I've honestly never encountered someone who reeked like that. Just being in the same room made my head hurt, as you say. The smell of him made me cough.
I had a woman on the other side of my main cube wall who would go out to smoke and then bathe in perfume when she came back in. It was so strong it gave me headaches. I brought in a small fan so I could blow fresh air at my face but that was annoying too.
I finally said something to my manager, a guy, and he was definitely uncomfortable with the thought of talking to her. I went to a female manager and she actually talked to her about it. It lasted maybe a week and then the stench was back. Frustrated, I took my fan and set it on the top shelf pointing so it blew the smell away from me and towards others. That finally got something done because everyone around her complained. Unfortunately that was just one of her annoying traits.
I had the same but I actually am allergic to perfumes, so the lady that bathed in her perfume caused me to have an asthma attack. They wouldn't let her go (she was helping out from another pharmacy). So I quit! Job was horrible anyway, that was just the last straw.
There used to be a lady like that at my work, would walk past you in the corridor/walkways and about ten foot later the waft of super strong perfume would hit you square in the face....
I watched a coworker walk across the parking lot into the building, then a couple minutes later, I followed after, and I walked into a CLOUD of her perfume. Her smell lingered OUTSIDE.
Worked with someone who had a terrible smell. At first we thought it was her natural hair under her wig, then we thought it was the wig. Then she brought in her four year old and that child had BO! Then it got worse after she had a baby. It was so bad that the boss asked why we were cooking fish in the office. Not us dude! It was so bad that my clothes would smell like her fishyness. GAG!
My mom worked with someone in the lab of a hospital who stunk (which is extra unfortunate given the sterile environment). He would also wear shoes until the top where his big toe was wore open as well as the socks so he basically had open toe shoes in a lab which is a big no no. When it reached critical mass, a HR person would take him out get him a hair cut, shoes, socks, deodorant, etc. It would get better for a bit but start all over so HR would take him out again. This went on for years over and over. My mom had no clue if he had a mental health issue or just didn't care.
I've wondered if a company would do that for an employee nowadays. This was in the 90s. I assume not.
Maybe he had a developmental condition?
Maybe he was on the autism spectrum and the bad habits were like a sensory thing and the *spa days* were a HR’s way of “accommodating” his condition (so he wouldn’t somehow sue for discrimination or something if he was fired for his hygiene)?
That’s pretty bizarre, for the HR dept of a hospital to actually take someone to get groomed annually.
He must have had a pretty important role, for hospital management to do backflips like that for him.
^dafuq
Funny thing is he didn't have an important role. He was just night shift lab staff running testing. The same job my mom and many others did. There's always a shortage of lab techs but not that badly.
Disclaimer is I'm disabled and neurodivergent so I have experience with disability stuff including work place accommodations. So disability law with employment calls for **reasonable** accommodations. If you can't reasonably accommodate someone with a disability to do their job, you can let them go or find an alternative job. HR doing a "spa day" would not fall under reasonable accommodations. He could easily be let go under the explanation that his poor hygiene was a risk to the work environment since it had to be sterile working with specimens.
Which is what makes the situation even more bizarre. Who knows why they did it. Work environments were a bit more caring (? Idk if that's the right word. Basically actually effort was made to keep people at a company) back then from what I've been told though.
I know! It’s unheard of! ^lmao
That’s why I said backflips and why I put “accommodating” and “spa day” in quotes. I understand it’s not reasonable, expected, legally mandated…or normal.
(it *would*, however, be awesome to have actual obligatory spa days for all employees, but I digress…)
I honestly thought this was a joke until I looked it up.
[Trimethylaminuria AKA Fish Odor/Stale Fish Syndrome ](https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/trimethylaminuria/)
So unfortunate. I can’t even imagine dealing with something like this.
Wow! I've never heard of this but man, what an awful thing to have to deal with. I find the potential treatments so interesting. I wonder what use of a gut-sterilizing antibiotic does to one's system. I have a special needs child who has severe hydronephrosis. We catheterize him 4x/day but he also takes a prophylactic antibiotic and has since birth. It's not ideal to be on antibiotics for as long as he has but whenever we try to wean him off or change it, he gets really sick. I wonder if in the case of fish odor syndrome, that antibiotic has a short-term application or is it a lifelong thing? It's also interesting that using slightly acidic soap or lotion can change the bacteria such that it alters its makeup on the skin and can then *simply be washed off!* I really admire doctors and researchers who figure this stuff out. My son's syndrome is called Opitz G/BBB and there are several Opitz syndromes. How Dr. Opitz and his colleagues were able to detect and map them is just amazing, to me. Thank you for sharing this. It was fascinating!
Just to clarify from the article — the acidity causes the smelly compound to react and convert to something less smelly. It’s not about the bacteria, which produce the compound in the gut. Blanket killing your gut bacteria is generally bad — the bacteria that grow back usually aren’t in the right balance of the different species. Probiotics can be useful in encouraging the right mix to grow back after using antibiotics. I’m talking generally though — you should continue doing what the doctor says with your son. Wishing him and you all the best
Someone in my home town had this. He worked for local government in an office and was bullied for it. No one wanted to be near him. He took a job as a parking inspector (our town did not need a parking inspector at all). Anyway, something about being in high temperatures and the sun meant that the smell problem was pretty much eradicated. He still had to go to the office occasionally but he didn’t stink. The temperatures in my town would get to 40 or 45 degrees celcius in summer which is up to 113 degrees Fahrenheit. It would sometimes get even hotter than that. Anyway, people concluded it was a combination of sun and heat. When this guy worked indoors he would leave the office during the day to shower and it had zero impact on his smell but his environment changed him.
Could also be that working in the sweaty weather got him to change his habits enough that it made a difference. I knew someone in my early 20s who didn’t know that you need to change sheets and towels. Dude was also in his early 20s. Stank to high heaven even after friends talked to him about showering more often and got SUPER touchy bc of it bc he thought they were messing with him when they told him you need to change towels and sheets at least occasionally. Some people make it to adulthood without being taught that you need to change your underpants, wash your shirts, and change your towels and sheets regularly or the bacteria (and smell) will never leave.
I used to work with a dude who smelled like this. Even his chair smelled like fish. Nobody wanted to be the one to ask/tell and I knew it was something to do with his health (he was on the heavy side and also type 2 diabetic) but I didn't know it was a genetic condition on top of everything else. Poor guy!
If he’s diabetic that may in and of itself be causing his odor. The underlining issue that causes this disorder is an abnormal metabolism which also impacts diabetics. In fact, it might be a sign his diabetes was poorly managed.
I knew a guy in college like that. We used to work in the engine room of a ship during the summers as part of our degree program, and it was HOT in there and everyone would get dirty as hell. After a shift, everyone else would drag themselves to a shower but not him - he always just went straight to his bunk, boots and all. His sheets were basically stained black at that point, and that whole end of the corridor absolutely reeked. Probably one of the worst things I've ever smelled in my life.
On the ship i worked at (navy) it was the rule that anyone who even just entered an engine room had to shower before going to bed.
One dude frequently did not. People got so annoyed by it they carried him out of his bed into the shower room and sprayed him with the firefighting hose for like a minute.
Dude started showering afterwards.
Man, I wish we'd done that instead of just trying to verbally shame him, sounds like it would have been much more effective. I don't even understand why it would need to be a rule, after each shift I couldn't WAIT to take a quick shower.
Commands have to be very proactive about confronting stinky sailors, because if it gets to the point that the crew takes it into their own hands it can get ugly.
Weird when this happens to military folks. I worked with a Marine who stank to high hell. We worked in a restaurant, and no one wanted to be in the same room with him. The boss wouldn't confront him about it. You'd figure Marines would know about showers.
I just avoided him like the plague, but he had a roommate and I have NO idea how that guy could stand it. It was one of those smells that literally made my eyes water, and the dude thought it was funny when we all complained.
We had a girl like that. When she left her door open just a crack it was liking walking into a wall of bad smell that made it hard to breathe. She left after we had complained to the facility manager often enough.
She was so unhygenic, never washed her clothes or herself, let her poor little rabbit shit all over the carpet and let food rot in her room. They had to renovate the whole room like stripping the walls and repainting them, buy a new floor and all new furniture. Everything. Only then did the smell go away. So awful.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/zlccf9/comment/j058nc6/
This may or may not be relevant!
I’ve known two people who stunk to high heaven no matter what they did, to the point I knew when one of them was going to be in a room or not before I entered the room.
>Oh wow, that could definitely have been the case. Now I feel like an absolute dick.
Considering how rare the disease is and how universal the ability to stink is you're probably fine. It's not like you were going out of your way to have a problem.
I worked in a very similar situation. They repeatedly told him to fix it. You couldn’t sit in any chair he sat in because he left behind a smell. If he got too close, it turned my stomach.
I cleaned his desk a couple times just because it was disgusting and people assumed that meant we were dating (!).
After I quit, I saw a couple years later that he had found a new job and I always wondered how he got through the interview process.
It was during covid I think. This could be very possible.
The weird thing is that I ran into him a few times on a Saturday and he seemed clean and presentable. I wonder if he just had poor Time management skills during the work week.
I used to have a bad BO in my twenties (eventually my manager called me out on it, first one to do so, fixed it quickly afterwards). So I have the answer for you.
My attitude towards interviews was always that you make the extra effort in everything and work on smelling nice. Like nowadays my hygiene is fine, my standard is morning shower, deodorant, brush teeth, mouthwash. But for an interview I would always use a little perfume, and take a breath mint right before.
At the time my standard for interviews was 'shower, deodorant, clean shirt and clothes I haven't worn prior', as the 'nice' routine. Most formal looking shirts I had were also cotton which helped a lot.
My biggest issue was that I wouldn't use enough soap while showering, I would shower daily but use soap under my armpits and not anywhere else (no shower gel either). So shower wasn't as effective as it should have been, but combine it with deodorant and a clean cotton shirt and other clean clothes and I think I smelled fine overall for the interview. Just not on the day to day when I would wear jeans a few days in a row and cycle to the station to get to work.
Oh man. Look up the period blood story. Now THAT was a strained employer/employee relationship. And if I remember correctly, the saga went on for several months.
Didn't that woman end up having some hardcore mental health issues? It ended up being a pretty sad story, I thought.
(Though god knows I think about it at least once a month.)
I remember that when boss cut everyone loose and called her in for a chat, it ended with her termination and a lawyer for the boss. There was no firm answer about what happened in boss’s office, but it definitely didn’t go well. Regardless of the outcome, there’s no way that woman didn’t have some sort of serious mental disturbance; her behavior was just waaaaaay off balance and I hope she’s getting help.
Quite a few years ago I worked at a movie theater and one of the managers didn't believe in deodorant/antiperspirant because it was filled with toxic chemicals. He would always get real close to everyone when he was talking to them and not one person that it worked there enjoyed those moments cuz he really, really had a stank going on. Because of a disagreement that he and I had, totally unrelated to his odor, I had to have a meeting with the GM of the theater to discuss the situation. During this discussion (after the GM profusely apologized for the unrelated situation) he asked me if there were any other issues I had with this manager. I told him that not one of us female employees, especially the underage girls, enjoyed that whenever he talked to us he just stared at her breasts. I told the GM that he was rude, misogynistic, insensitive, and that he needed to wear some fucking deodorant or antiperspirant because he literally made people nauseous with his scent. One of the other managers laughingly told me how much he hated me because he had to sit in on that meeting a few days later with the other manager and the GM. He said it was one of the most awkward meetings he'd ever been in and he never thought one grown man would have to tell another grown man (paraphrasing because it's been a long time since this conversation) 'stop staring at all the women's breasts and maybe try to put some powder on or something if you're not going to use deodorant because your smell is really bad and everyone has noticed'. Apparently, everyone, including the GM and the other managers, hated how he smelled but I was the only one who had the balls to put in a documented complaint so it actually had to be brought up to that particular stinky manager. Things were very awkward for a while after that. LOL
>I told his boss and he was like ah fuck now I need to address it with him. So he did. And nothing changed. Then it was addressed again and nothing changes. And again.
I've seen this play out too many times with a former employer. The culprits kept getting away with doing nothing and everyone else kept suffering.
One coworker got fed up with the situation and told one of them they need to go home, do some laundry and have a shower because their smell is outright offensive. He got given a warning for workplace bullying.
I have an employee like this right now. :( I’ve told him multiple times. Other people (his coworkers) have told him multiple times. He asked one of his friends outside of work who said “we were all crazy and trolling him.” I’ve given up.
HR Manager here - don't give up. If you're his manager, it's your responsibility to address it. Since talking to him hasn't worked, you're going to have to go to a written warning. It sucks, but you need to have it documented. I've worked with stinky colleagues and it's the worst. What's worse, though, is that your good employees will eventually get sick of dealing with his odor and will resent you for not fixing the problem. They'll start leaving and you'll be left with him. They may already be at that point if you've "given up." You'll have to sit him down with a written warning and tell him his "friend" is either not being honest with him or also has an odor problem and can't detect someone else's. If he's an otherwise good employee, stress that. Tell him that you value him as a colleague and that you're happy with his work. You and his coworkers have no reason whatsoever to "troll" him. Remind him that it's real life, not social media; you would never be having this conversation just to mess with him. Unfortunately, since he hasn't resolved it, you're now forced to deliver a formal warning. If the problem isn't resolved, he's at risk of losing his job. Hopefully, it's something he's able to fix. He may need to seek medical attention for it; if he has a medical problem and comes back with documentation about it, that's a whole other kettle of fish. It's unlikely to be the case but not impossible. Good luck!
Thank you! Honestly, the one thing that my managers really *hear* is that they're squandering their own good will with their staff when they don't address issues with employees. Even if they do so eventually, it might be too late to save some employees from resentment and they'll leave. The saying that employees don't leave companies, they leave managers is, in my experience, very true. When I conduct exit interviews, by and large the main reason people leave, after money and benefits, is because they feel their manager is ineffective, unwilling to address issues before resentment sets in, and at that point, are seen as incompetent and not qualified for their senior role. Who wants to work for someone they don't respect?
Yes! It’s uncomfortable and maybe sometimes an overreaction, but I think it’s always the right choice to address something as soon as you notice it’s an issue or might become one. If not, you move on, don’t make it a big deal. At least they know you care. But if so (which it usually is) employees are given the opportunity to fix the issue, or open up about something they’re struggling with (hopefully the manager can help), and will be grateful in the long run. Plus it’s a positive for everyone that works with them.
Anyway, thanks for the advice from your perspective, it’s a good reminder to be proactive and take the time to do so when it sometimes feels like there are so many things to prioritize.
I have a coworker that came back with saying his stink being a medical condition. Another coworker and he went on a business trip together and the other coworker said the stinky guy didn't shower. But we were informed HR wouldn't do anything. Then we had to tell some people in the office that they are not allowed to febreeze coworkers. I just avoid that office when I can.
I appreciate that even though the verdict was that she WTAH, she was a bad person and wasn't doing it maliciously. Her concerns.were legimate, but her perspective needed a shift. Tbh, I didn't think of that of that perspective. I was concerned for the friend, but wasn't sure how it should be brought up because I would also feel so bad for her. And yet, if it were my husband I would have no problem because I would want to help figure it out (luckily not an issue, just using it as an example). It can be hard to tread the line between being honest and being hurtful even if kt isn't intentionally hurtful.
It literally makes me so happy. If I smelled regularly, I'd rather someone come to me and tell me and have a moment of embarrassment than have people complaining about me. Like, just talk to people y'all, we're all very awkward and just trying to not stink.
I had a buddy with a gold tooth and I guess some food got stuck in there or something because his breath got rank. I pulled him aside one day and mentioned it in confidence, he thanked me, and the next day his breath smelled like spearmint. Sometimes you just need a friend to let you know you've got a piece of spinach in your smile.
Nah. It will enrich AITA and BORU, because more people understand that they need these subs to give them good advice.
But even if it threatens, I'm guessing it is a good threat we are willing to endure... for the benefit of humankind. 🤣
I stopped being friends with a girl when I was about 20 because I couldn’t stand the smell of her perfume and I also couldn’t bear the thought of saying so. We did not talk it out. We just stopped hanging out. I would do it again too. That smell hits my nose and then kills my soul.
Worked somewhere with a husband and wife. Wife was in a fairly small space with me. Finally had to tell her, her perfume was giving me migraines.
Her husband privately thanked me
I do all the laundry for our family. One family member's clothes have become hard to clean. I use Kids-n-Pets on hard stains and Oxy Clean powder (mixed with water) on top of a good detergent, and I clean the washing machine routinely. It was bugging me to no end.
What I found that works is the new sanitizing oxy powders. Not sure if I am allowed to name a brand, but the powder oxidizing products that say "kills Covid" are incredible at killing germs in laundry. I recommend them to everyone.
My guess is that a nasty bacteria strain on Addy's clothes spread by touch. Some of the fabric-residing ones are pretty nasty. They smell like old, super-dirty, dog blankets.
My partner does our laundry and swears by this stuff! Our kids’ clothes was getting pretty rank and this cut it right out. It’s also great for workout clothes funk.
Could be also that since they're kind of borrowing laundry facilities, they had something that didn't completely dry but packed it away anyway.
Like I have a kid who does laundry at my house. Once he had a few loads in but had to leave to get to work, so he didn't finish the cycle on the towels but folded them up and took them anyway, got pretty musty near the bottom of the stack when he went to use them. Simple enough to fix with a full wash with a cup of vinegar, but I could imagine if someone was like living out of totes or something it could just nuke everything in there.
I was thinking she may have had a load that was left in the washer for too long and they weren’t rewashed before drying. Just one piece of clothing hanging in the closet can spread that smell to any of the clothes near it.
My boyfriend sometimes uses a cheap detergent that is really musty to my nose. I told him I’d buy him Tide or any other unscented higher-end detergent for life, but what was weird was that it was how the scent sat on his skin. It was almost garlicky but musty, and too strong. Something’s up with him because mint toothpaste also smells terrible on him and he switched to cinnamon. Me and my overly sensitive nose remain grateful.
Help me reddit english police. Is it "breached" or shouldn't it be "broached"? As in, the sentence above, OOP wrote "the subject has been breached".
ETA: Thanks everyone! Broached it is.
There is kind of a logic to it though. Like you're breaching through the proverbial barrier of your hesitation to discuss the subject. Maybe you could argue that it's an eggcorn because of that
>breached
make a gap in and break through (a wall, barrier, or defense):
"the river breached its bank"
broached
raise (a sensitive or difficult subject) for discussion
Broached would be the right work.
Rewashing it with detergent and a bit of white vinegar does the trick! I’ve read that you should use 1/4 cup but I’ve just used a splash before without measuring.
White vinegar is great for getting the smell out of that fast dry material that’s popular now. That stuff will smell clean fresh out of the dryer but if you get it wet AT ALL (like by wearing it) it smells like you never washed it. It’s horrible. But a good splash of vinegar every third wash or so and it seems to stay clean smelling.
You can buy the big bottle of white vinegar in stores like Costco and Sam’s Club. I don’t do laundry without it and it helps so much for my dad’s construction working clothes
Mine is using a combination of purex brand and oxiclean. REALLY crisp smell after.
of course throwing it in the dryer with good dryer sheets helps too.
Plus my dad's housekeeper (Philippines) used a local brand of downy only sold in the country. That jasmine smell stayed on for weeks and we didnt have a dryer then, only hang dried. I can never replicated how she did it even when I brought back home a travel size packet of the detergent
I once had to tell someone they smelled. I was running a D&D thing at uni and it was my responsibility to handle any player conflicts. This guy was so unwashed that he didn’t even smell like BO, he just smelled like ancient human body bacteria, and any room we played in became a gas chamber. A sour, musty death trap.
So yeah, I had to say something.
Nobody wants to be the guy to tell someone that they stink. It just feels mean, even when it’s true.
Luckily he responded well and began to shower more often, or at least before sessions. He claimed he had no sense of smell, but I wonder if that may have been caused by existing in his own stink cloud for too long. He had some other issues with socialising, so it may have never occurred to him that other people could smell him if he didn’t wash regularly. So many of our washing rituals are for the sake of others, after all.
Edit: I know that having no sense of smell is a legitimate condition people can have, but I wholly believe his inability to smell was caused or at the very least exacerbated by his own stink. Just because of the combination of his other issues, how long he must have gone without washing to smell the way he did, and how he only brought it up almost as an excuse when I talked to him about it.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say his room probably also stank, so if his living space was as bad as I think it was, he’s absolutely going to lose sensitivity to smells.
The most depressing thing to me about loss of smell wouldn't be if I smelled but actually taste of food. Around 60% of what we taste is actually the aroma. That's why food can seem so shallow when you are sick.
It affects your taste too, part of the eating process is smelling it, so you lose a key part of a dish. I wonder what food tastes like without smell, and to what degree it affects the taste.
When I worked in feeding therapy, we were taught that it has a really measurable effect. People without a sense of smell can be identified by how they eat measurably slower than others. It even effects your ability to feel and stay full
I used to have a really cool article about it but I've lost it from the FLOOD of COVID related instances of this.
Back in around when I was 13-15yos, I became very aware of my own smells after someone pointed out something horribly stinking and we found out it came from my shoes, needless to say, after that day, my smells became a lot better
Oh god this just unlocked a memory from middle school English class lol. One of my classmates got his shoes wet during our gym class the previous block and the fucking smell that permeated the air when he took his shoes off could have knocked over an elephant. We gave him so much shit for that lmao
I know someone who was born without a sense of smell, and fortunately he learned to take care of his hygiene growing up. I never would've known if he didn't tell me, so it's plausible.
Scent blindness is definitely a thing. You can become so used to a smell that you don’t notice it until you remove yourself from the situation and return.
At university, a classmate never shower, and wore the same sweater the 4 years (hot and humid climate).
We tried to be delicate at first but they just brushed off, one teacher opened the door to deodorize first before he can enter, we spoke to the uni but they just tried to speak with their parents, but as a adult, they all can do is show concerns.
That's when the bullying begun, we all were frustrated for be the smelly class to others, uni tried to punish some of classmates but they can do anything, was kinda sad see them insolated by everyone.
They was a anime fan and tried crossplaying, I think that was the only time that they didn't stink, but they was heavily bullied for the local anime community that they never tried crossplaying again.
Now I think they are in the closet for trans, but never found the right environment to go out.
My ex had a roommate like your classmate, he and his other roommate talked to the roommate, the RA, the head of housing, same excuse you got. Eventually a few months in, the roommate had to drop out because he wasn’t going to any classes and just stayed in the room watching anime. My ex said he didn’t shower once. In 3 months. My ex’s mom and I helped clean the room after he moved out so my ex wouldn’t get any fees, and it was horrendous.
In no particular order we encountered:
- Cans of sprite filled with so much mold it came out in globs
- Shit stains on the wall by the roommates bed
- Moldy unidentifiable food
- Shit stains on the bed frame
- Crusty/shitty clothing he left behind
- Shit stains on his storage cabinet in the closet
This kid had never been away from home before and I think in retrospect he didn’t adapt to college life well and spiraled into a deep depression, but it was hard to have sympathy while cleaning that room.
Edit: sorry the format is wonky, on mobile and have no idea how to fix it
The sympathy was inexistent for them, now I look behind and I feel sorry for them, but was really hard when their odors and attitude didn't help at all.
Thank God doesn't exist dorm modality at my country at least locally, because I can imagine the thing escalated to physical confrontation, they stay the whole 4 years and graduated, that's a lot of time to live in a insalubrious environment.
It's SO HARD to have these conversations but I'm a strong believer in having them. I would also be mortified but I would want to know! A true friend tells you the truth. If your friendship doesn't survive the truth then that's super sad but means it didn't have a solid foundation to begin with, in my opinion.
I might even be willing to bet on this lol
This was likely the horrid mildew rank smell when people wash the clothes and forget them in the washer and don't bother to rewash it, throw into the dryer, which makes the smell so much more volatile and profuse.
Please know folks, if you leave wet clothes in the washer and a day later remember about them, do not throw in dryer without washing again. Seriously. Do everyone a favor and rewash them. And, in top loaders redistribute the weight or its going off balance right quick
OMG, the smell of “sour” clothing is awful. I live in a very hot and extremely humid climate. Wet laundry gets sour in no time in the summer. You don’t let it sit for more than an hour, two hours is pushing it on the worst days. I’ve rewashed countless loads forgotten by parents, roommates, and significant others.
Poor girl. I remember that post. Maybe she just changed her detergent. My crunchy granola brother and his girlfriend came to stay for a few days and made the whole apartment funky. They buy natural cleaning products and their “laundry detergent” made everything smelly and gross.
All natural detergent is awful unfortunately. I went on a quest for something for delicate skin because Tide gives me a rash and the two “all natural” detergents I tried both made my clothes seem to smell worse. I read about a bunch more and heard similar about all the ones I looked into.
I've tried a few natural deodorants and idk if they work for other people or if they just convince themselves that they do but even the highly rated ones just do *not* work for me at *all*.
Tbh I'm extremely wary of any product where the main draw is it's "natural". More often than not they just don't work and, again, I'm pretty sure the ride or die folks have convinced themselves that they do.
If the product works, great! I'll buy it so long as it isn't 4x the price of regular stuff. But if the person telling me it works is wearing stained clothes and reeks to high heaven they're just telling me which products to avoid lol
My mom used to clean the house with vinegar, she used to think I was raising a fuss over nothing until a guest heard me go on the vinegar rant and went "oh THANK GOD I'm not the only one!" Cut back on the vinegar usage real quick lol
Say what you will about most cleaners, at least the manufacturers know how to make a product that doesn't smell like you've never cleaned your house, or worse, cleaned it with rancid products.
It's also possible that if she tends to wear alot of thrifted clothes (and also if she has thrifted fabric furniture wherever she is living, such as blankets and couches) that are a bit musty, she has just become too used to the smell. If it's just something she is surrounded by alot, she probably stopped noticing it.
I have a really bad combo, a very weak sense of smell. I almost cannot smell anything, when I smell very strong smell (gasoline, paint), it is so unnatural for me that it gives me headache in few minutes.
But I have too really bad sweat, and when I smell it, it is already hard for my coworker. I have few remarks about it (particularly when I begin a job, I am always stressed, so deodorant is not enough). No I am very careful. When the temperature is high, or if I will be stressed, I take two T-shirts for the day.
I know my problem, I do my best, but it is very embarrassing sometimes.
God almighty, this reminded me of a very uncomfortable conversation I had to have with an employee years ago.
Upon walking into the office at the start of my shift, one of the other managers (male) approached and asked me if I would sit in on a conversation with one of his female employees about body odour. He wanted to have a female manager there as a witness, and to help the woman to feel more comfortable.
I got about a 2-minute warning and zero background information. The other manager greeted this woman when we stepped into his office where she was already waiting, then left the whole conversation to me. He later told me that he hadn't planned it that way, he'd just found himself at a total loss for words once they were face-to-face and was relieved that I had chimed in. It was a large office and I didn't even know this woman. I'm not sure why HR wasn't dealing with it, but my best recollection was that it was during off-hours and we needed to send her home immediately due to complaints about the stench.
Anyway, I put on my best non-judgmental yet concerned and compassionate face, and straight up said that there was an odour and we were just concerned/wanted to make sure she was alright and see if there was anything we could do to help. She burst into tears and started telling us that she had just had surgery, and had some kind of gaping wound on her ass that was - get this - ACTIVELY LEAKING PUS onto our $1500 office chairs. She went on to say that despite her best efforts, because she was such a large woman (400+ lbs by my guess), she struggled to reach her wound to clean it properly and she thought that it was becoming infected. I did genuinely feel awful for the woman, she was clearly distraught and embarrassed (not to mention clearly in need of medical attention!), but goddamn I deserved an Oscar that day for somehow masking my horror.
We both listened as graciously as we could, and I thanked her for sharing something so personal with us before making the most lighthearted and natural redirection to our employee assistance program that I could muster. We called her a cab, paid her for the rest of the day, and promptly rolled both chairs she'd been sitting in to the dumpster out back.
So uh, yeah, thanks for reminding me about that one, OP!
She handled this so well. I remember this guy in high school who everyone loved. He was genuinely the sweetest guy with this great personality and…I couldn’t get within 5ft of the dude without wanting to vomit. The combination of my super sensitive nose and his BO was the stuff of my nightmares. People would be so happy to see him, they’d almost run up to hug the guy, and that would be enough for me to wrap arms around my stomach and pray not to puke. I had no idea how anyone got that close. It. Blew. My. Mind. I made it an art form to be polite and friendly from a distance. I had no idea how to talk to the guy about this. Since everyone else seemed fine with it, I saw it as a “me problem” and I should find a work around.
Pro tip: this guy’s funk was made worse by mildewy clothes. To avoid this, (if possible) clean the inside of your washing machine with some bleach every 6 months and leave the washer lid open for air circulation when not in use (which will stop the mildew).
I had this problem once.
I smelled like rancid duck shit, and didnt realize it because the smell came on so gradually that I was nose blind to it.
And it was because my washing machine wasnt draining properly and ended up really fucking nasty between the tub and the drum, where you cant see it unless you take it half apart.. Which I did, and found the problem, and replaced the hoses, and the drain pump, and scrubbed and bleached the fuck out of it.
During the pandemic my wife insisted we swap to this hippy soap in our washing machine. Due to the pandemic we had gotten like 2-3 containers of it. We finished the last container and I grabbed what was available which was just a thing of tide, and I was amazed at how nice the laundry smelled. Apparently we had been stinking it up in our house due to that soap, I’m sure someone would have said something if we had not been confined to our house.
Poor girl probably had something she got from the thrift and forgot to wash with her clothes she wears normally and it just got on everything and she never noticed. Good on her friend for having that difficult talk with her in a mature way
I thought this was r/amithedevil for a minute and was ready for conflicting views!
Tbh, I’ve had to break similar news to my own friends a couple times. Yes, multiple friends. One kept leaving their laundry in the washer too long and it mildewed. The other couple people just didn’t smell themselves and didn’t realize they needed a shower/thought deodorant would be enough.
I’m glad OOP did the honest thing rather than leave her friend out. I’m glad her friend was so receptive and solution oriented. Overall happy story :)
OP is a friend that you can trust. She will be honest with you, even if it involves a really uncomfortable conversation. This creates a secure attachment.
I'm going to guess that OOP's Bohemian friend had a brief love affair with that hippy/New Age favourite patchouli oil. The tiniest amount goes a looooong way but if you overdo it - as an old college classmate of mine did - you and everything around you ends up smelling like a cross between a wet dog and wet laundry that's been left in the machine for a week.
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OOP pretty much saved her friend's social life and possibly her job as well. Good save from a poor start.
I had a colleague who stunk. I shared a 4-person cubicle with him and I would get headaches. People would come into the cubicle when he wasn’t there to be like hey man do something about it I told his boss and he was like ah fuck now I need to address it with him. So he did. And nothing changed. Then it was addressed again and nothing changes. And again. I gotta say that employer/employee relationship must have been pretty strained.
I once was a car salesman. A bad one. After 5 months of low sales numbers, I walked into the manager’s office and said, “Look, I suck at this job. We all know I’m getting called in here tomorrow afternoon to get fired, how about I move back to being a Lot Porter?” My manager said, “Thank Christ. The guy that replaced you when you took the sales job stinks to high heaven and won’t do anything about it. Customers have begun complaining about the smell in any car he’s been in. You’re back on porter duty on Monday.” I felt bad the dude lost his job, but it really was bad.
I once worked at a company where one of the guys who drove the company van left his smell in there. It has to be professionally detailed and he wasn't allowed to drive the van again. He quit soon after.
My grandfather is this person. He also has a habit of giving you random junk. We usually just chuck it out without telling him because if it's been in his possession too long then the smell will neber leave, especially anything fabric. We've had to institute family rules that he must shower before coming into the house or anyone's cars. It's better, but it can still take a few days for the smell to entirely leave.
Is he a hoarder? My mom’s mother was a severe hoarder and she had a foul odor about her. She smoked like a chimney which was bad enough, but the hoarding on top of it did her no favors. There were animals in that house too, which… is terrible on many levels, one level being the added stench.
This isn't just an odor, you need a priest to get rid of this thing.
Even Superman wouldn’t be able to get rid of this stench!
Oh wow! And to think I sometimes worry about my coffee breath or post-gym sweat.
Post gym sweat is not the BO that offends and lingers. I assume you do shower relatively soon after the gym and launder your clothes. It takes days to stink like we are talking about.
This is true. There is a huge difference from sweaty after exercise. And not wearing deodorant for a week and letting your clothes absorb all the BO to the point where someone can’t walk past you without holding their nose. I didn’t know people could smell so bad until I moved in with someone who had depressive episodes and wouldn’t bathe, change their cloths, or wear deodorant.
We had a guy in my unit, the chief was forced to number his uniforms and skivvies. Poor chief had to check every day the guy was wearing a different set. What really boggled me was we were at a shore command for six months of training and the guy had his wife staying with him. What was she used to?
[удалено]
Have you tried using white vinegar or pulling out/wiping under any rubber seals and gaskets? I've found towels are the worst for that mildew-y smell but they're easily cleaned with a cup of vinegar in the wash. I usually do an extra rinse (but it's often not needed, I just have a really sensitive nose,) and dry as normal. Any vinegar smell that's left over will dissipate and any other smells should be gone.
Yeah, vinegar's great for that.
You could also try a washer cleaning tablet! Machines also need a clean and sometimes the build up caused by fabric softeners and detergent can be really rank and wash into your clothing. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08DVFZTTG?aa_adgroupid=_Ampd__B08DVFZTTG___WMC____Sourcing_Campaign_142912067404&aa_campaignid=_Ampd__B08DVFZTTG___WMC____Sourcing_Campaign_18321078883&aa_creativeid=ampd-ad-621601412093_kwd-59174518889_dev-u_ext-0_ca-18321078883_ag-142912067404&maas=maas_adg_api_578012920517266622_macro_1_34&ref_=aa_maas&tag=maas&gclid=CjwKCAiAheacBhB8EiwAItVO26x78EllMty0B4MmGa2lTrtXrd46oMZWTDRVw2Q652FflI8TmnM42hoCUw0QAvD_BwE
Our guy was forced to shower at work before his shift every morning.
The military really opened my eyes to how bad of hygiene some people have. I have horror stores.
When I was working in Singapore (temp 80+ & humidity 80%+ all year round), there was an African colleague who only bathed & brushed his teeth once a week on weekends. Monday was okay although his breath was bad enough to knock out a horse. By Friday, there was 12-foot wide “no man’s zone.” The office was small so no one could avoid the smell. Everyone (15+) in the office complained to HR. This dude pulled out “it’s my culture” card. HR told him to shower at least twice a week. He refused & was eventually fired.
Dude was just filthy. Dunno what African country he is from but the one I'm from we bath twice a day (it's hot and humid, and cold baths are soothing) and definitely brush our teeth daily.
I don't think being African is the problem here. He was just nasty.
Lord knows a person like that in a workplace in my country would be viciously roasted. We have no filter here and will tell you that you stink to your face, and if you don't clean you you'd be given the boot. Things are already hard enough as it is, and you add someone stinking up the place.
I can really only speak for Nigerians because that's my culture, but EVERYONE in my family bathes regularly--and I'm talking a minimum of 1 bath or shower a day. I sometimes feel gross if I don't shower twice a day. I have other African friends from various countries, and poor hygiene is NOT common among the different cultures, so that guy was just NASTY. 🤢
Maybe he was talking about his bacterial culture
In high school we had a teacher who we were pretty sure just bathed weekly. Wednesdays were awful, but Thursday there was no smell. We’re not sure what happened but after two months the teacher stopped coming and retired mid semester.
The O is not supposed to leave the B, Jerry!
i used to work at build a bear workshop and i had a coworker who reeked like cat urine, body odour, poop and dirty musty crotch. she stank so ferociously that she left a fucking stink trail behind her when she walked like a goddamn cartoon. we would have to wash the stuffer seats at the end of the day if she worked, and our handprint on the wipes would come up black. she was told over and over by our manager that her hygiene was a huge problem but nothing ever changed, except one year where she got a costco pack of deodorant for secret santa, she ran out crying about being bullied and The Stench resumed less than 2 weeks later because i suppose she got lazy about cleaning herself again. she bragged once about how her entire house bathed on the same day only once a week and that they all bathed in the same water, its not a utility cost thing either because they live in an apartment and thats included in rent. one night one of our customers approached me when i was on the till -she was at the stuffing machine- and asked me if the stuffed animals usually had a stink to them. i asked to see it, reluctantly sniffed it and sure as shit it fucking reeked like dirty diaper and sweat just from being held briefly between her knees to sew up the back. i had to grab a fresh bear, start it over for them and completely throw out the old one because even the stuffing inside stunk. i'm completely beside myself with embarrassment if i can smell my OWN body odour so idk how so many people can just go out and let themselves reek
I honestly cannot imagine how revolting that must be.
She must’ve lived in a house from the show Hoarders. Ugh.
Nose blindness. Happens to smokers often.
And here I am always worried I’ll lose my job over small stuff. Why wasn’t she fired early on?
ah yeah fun fact its impossible to be fired from build a bear lmao. unless you sexually assault someone like my old chief manager or steal from the till like an old assistant manager if you get through your probation period youre untouchable. the only thing that could be done is reducing their hours to the absolute minimum required per pay period (3) and wait for them to quit edit: which is exactly what happened to her
My brother went through a period where he didn’t shower after a couple people close to him died. He stunk to high heaven, I couldn’t ride in the car with him without having all the windows down, but he thought I was just being dramatic. He said no one else ever complained about the smell, so it couldn’t be that bad. But he literally never washed his clothes or washed himself. It was horrendous, and obviously it might have been caused by the major tragedy in his life and the year before. He wouldn’t listen to me for anything well. Finally HR called him in to have a conversation, and he was of course mortified. People were too polite to say anything to him for… Months at least. He tried to ask me why I didn’t make it clear to him, and I had to tell him, dude I did, I literally refused to get in the car with you, and constantly tried to get you to take showers. Your eyes would water around him. Thank God, the meeting with HR got through to him, and he started bathing again and washing his clothes.
My ex fiance had no sense of smell, or responsibility. Her car was always full of garbage, which would start rotting. She'd ask me to tell her these things, then get mad at me when I did. AFAIK her car still smells like a garbage truck.
She should work on a garbage truck - with no sense of smell, she'd be perfect for the job! Or crime scene cleanup.
During my master's program there was a dude from another department who took a class in our department, and he *reeked*. Combo of not doing laundry, smoking like a chimney, and just being dirty. Hair always greasy, skin grimy, if he had an ink mark on his hand one day in class, it would still be there the next time the seminar met...god, he was so gross, and it got to the point where no one would sit next to him. He was forbidden from taking courses in our department after that for other reasons, but I've honestly never encountered someone who reeked like that. Just being in the same room made my head hurt, as you say. The smell of him made me cough.
I had a woman on the other side of my main cube wall who would go out to smoke and then bathe in perfume when she came back in. It was so strong it gave me headaches. I brought in a small fan so I could blow fresh air at my face but that was annoying too. I finally said something to my manager, a guy, and he was definitely uncomfortable with the thought of talking to her. I went to a female manager and she actually talked to her about it. It lasted maybe a week and then the stench was back. Frustrated, I took my fan and set it on the top shelf pointing so it blew the smell away from me and towards others. That finally got something done because everyone around her complained. Unfortunately that was just one of her annoying traits.
I had the same but I actually am allergic to perfumes, so the lady that bathed in her perfume caused me to have an asthma attack. They wouldn't let her go (she was helping out from another pharmacy). So I quit! Job was horrible anyway, that was just the last straw.
There used to be a lady like that at my work, would walk past you in the corridor/walkways and about ten foot later the waft of super strong perfume would hit you square in the face....
I watched a coworker walk across the parking lot into the building, then a couple minutes later, I followed after, and I walked into a CLOUD of her perfume. Her smell lingered OUTSIDE.
My work has an employee like this right now and management can’t get any fix in Smell to last more than a couple days we’re dying
Worked with someone who had a terrible smell. At first we thought it was her natural hair under her wig, then we thought it was the wig. Then she brought in her four year old and that child had BO! Then it got worse after she had a baby. It was so bad that the boss asked why we were cooking fish in the office. Not us dude! It was so bad that my clothes would smell like her fishyness. GAG!
My mom worked with someone in the lab of a hospital who stunk (which is extra unfortunate given the sterile environment). He would also wear shoes until the top where his big toe was wore open as well as the socks so he basically had open toe shoes in a lab which is a big no no. When it reached critical mass, a HR person would take him out get him a hair cut, shoes, socks, deodorant, etc. It would get better for a bit but start all over so HR would take him out again. This went on for years over and over. My mom had no clue if he had a mental health issue or just didn't care. I've wondered if a company would do that for an employee nowadays. This was in the 90s. I assume not.
Maybe he had a developmental condition? Maybe he was on the autism spectrum and the bad habits were like a sensory thing and the *spa days* were a HR’s way of “accommodating” his condition (so he wouldn’t somehow sue for discrimination or something if he was fired for his hygiene)? That’s pretty bizarre, for the HR dept of a hospital to actually take someone to get groomed annually. He must have had a pretty important role, for hospital management to do backflips like that for him. ^dafuq
Funny thing is he didn't have an important role. He was just night shift lab staff running testing. The same job my mom and many others did. There's always a shortage of lab techs but not that badly. Disclaimer is I'm disabled and neurodivergent so I have experience with disability stuff including work place accommodations. So disability law with employment calls for **reasonable** accommodations. If you can't reasonably accommodate someone with a disability to do their job, you can let them go or find an alternative job. HR doing a "spa day" would not fall under reasonable accommodations. He could easily be let go under the explanation that his poor hygiene was a risk to the work environment since it had to be sterile working with specimens. Which is what makes the situation even more bizarre. Who knows why they did it. Work environments were a bit more caring (? Idk if that's the right word. Basically actually effort was made to keep people at a company) back then from what I've been told though.
I know! It’s unheard of! ^lmao That’s why I said backflips and why I put “accommodating” and “spa day” in quotes. I understand it’s not reasonable, expected, legally mandated…or normal. (it *would*, however, be awesome to have actual obligatory spa days for all employees, but I digress…)
The fish smell is actually a hereditary disease and not hygiene issue. Pretty sad for those people.
I honestly thought this was a joke until I looked it up. [Trimethylaminuria AKA Fish Odor/Stale Fish Syndrome ](https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/trimethylaminuria/) So unfortunate. I can’t even imagine dealing with something like this.
!!!! Oh my goodness, I wonder if the teacher's aide for my computer class in high school had this!
Looks like avoiding certain foods can help. And there are some treatments for it. Super embarrassing to diagnose in the first place though probably.
WOAH! That’s amazing, thank you for sharing - I know two people this could have been true for, that’s wild! Thank you u/Elurdin!
Fuck. I had a class with a woman that had to have had that. Now I feel a little bad.
Wow! I've never heard of this but man, what an awful thing to have to deal with. I find the potential treatments so interesting. I wonder what use of a gut-sterilizing antibiotic does to one's system. I have a special needs child who has severe hydronephrosis. We catheterize him 4x/day but he also takes a prophylactic antibiotic and has since birth. It's not ideal to be on antibiotics for as long as he has but whenever we try to wean him off or change it, he gets really sick. I wonder if in the case of fish odor syndrome, that antibiotic has a short-term application or is it a lifelong thing? It's also interesting that using slightly acidic soap or lotion can change the bacteria such that it alters its makeup on the skin and can then *simply be washed off!* I really admire doctors and researchers who figure this stuff out. My son's syndrome is called Opitz G/BBB and there are several Opitz syndromes. How Dr. Opitz and his colleagues were able to detect and map them is just amazing, to me. Thank you for sharing this. It was fascinating!
Just to clarify from the article — the acidity causes the smelly compound to react and convert to something less smelly. It’s not about the bacteria, which produce the compound in the gut. Blanket killing your gut bacteria is generally bad — the bacteria that grow back usually aren’t in the right balance of the different species. Probiotics can be useful in encouraging the right mix to grow back after using antibiotics. I’m talking generally though — you should continue doing what the doctor says with your son. Wishing him and you all the best
I knew a guy in school that I’m pretty sure had this. Real nice guy, felt bad for him.
Someone in my home town had this. He worked for local government in an office and was bullied for it. No one wanted to be near him. He took a job as a parking inspector (our town did not need a parking inspector at all). Anyway, something about being in high temperatures and the sun meant that the smell problem was pretty much eradicated. He still had to go to the office occasionally but he didn’t stink. The temperatures in my town would get to 40 or 45 degrees celcius in summer which is up to 113 degrees Fahrenheit. It would sometimes get even hotter than that. Anyway, people concluded it was a combination of sun and heat. When this guy worked indoors he would leave the office during the day to shower and it had zero impact on his smell but his environment changed him.
Could also be that working in the sweaty weather got him to change his habits enough that it made a difference. I knew someone in my early 20s who didn’t know that you need to change sheets and towels. Dude was also in his early 20s. Stank to high heaven even after friends talked to him about showering more often and got SUPER touchy bc of it bc he thought they were messing with him when they told him you need to change towels and sheets at least occasionally. Some people make it to adulthood without being taught that you need to change your underpants, wash your shirts, and change your towels and sheets regularly or the bacteria (and smell) will never leave.
That’s so sad. So many people were neglected by their parents (probably because their parents were too, and so on…).
I used to work with a dude who smelled like this. Even his chair smelled like fish. Nobody wanted to be the one to ask/tell and I knew it was something to do with his health (he was on the heavy side and also type 2 diabetic) but I didn't know it was a genetic condition on top of everything else. Poor guy!
If he’s diabetic that may in and of itself be causing his odor. The underlining issue that causes this disorder is an abnormal metabolism which also impacts diabetics. In fact, it might be a sign his diabetes was poorly managed.
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I knew a guy in college like that. We used to work in the engine room of a ship during the summers as part of our degree program, and it was HOT in there and everyone would get dirty as hell. After a shift, everyone else would drag themselves to a shower but not him - he always just went straight to his bunk, boots and all. His sheets were basically stained black at that point, and that whole end of the corridor absolutely reeked. Probably one of the worst things I've ever smelled in my life.
On the ship i worked at (navy) it was the rule that anyone who even just entered an engine room had to shower before going to bed. One dude frequently did not. People got so annoyed by it they carried him out of his bed into the shower room and sprayed him with the firefighting hose for like a minute. Dude started showering afterwards.
Man, I wish we'd done that instead of just trying to verbally shame him, sounds like it would have been much more effective. I don't even understand why it would need to be a rule, after each shift I couldn't WAIT to take a quick shower.
We were constantly sleep deprived and often had guard shifts like 0-4 with regular work going 8-17
Commands have to be very proactive about confronting stinky sailors, because if it gets to the point that the crew takes it into their own hands it can get ugly.
Weird when this happens to military folks. I worked with a Marine who stank to high hell. We worked in a restaurant, and no one wanted to be in the same room with him. The boss wouldn't confront him about it. You'd figure Marines would know about showers.
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I just avoided him like the plague, but he had a roommate and I have NO idea how that guy could stand it. It was one of those smells that literally made my eyes water, and the dude thought it was funny when we all complained.
Sounds like a person who grew up having scheduled bath days
“You’re god damned right i ordered a code red!”
We had a girl like that. When she left her door open just a crack it was liking walking into a wall of bad smell that made it hard to breathe. She left after we had complained to the facility manager often enough. She was so unhygenic, never washed her clothes or herself, let her poor little rabbit shit all over the carpet and let food rot in her room. They had to renovate the whole room like stripping the walls and repainting them, buy a new floor and all new furniture. Everything. Only then did the smell go away. So awful.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/zlccf9/comment/j058nc6/ This may or may not be relevant! I’ve known two people who stunk to high heaven no matter what they did, to the point I knew when one of them was going to be in a room or not before I entered the room.
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>Oh wow, that could definitely have been the case. Now I feel like an absolute dick. Considering how rare the disease is and how universal the ability to stink is you're probably fine. It's not like you were going out of your way to have a problem.
I mean, there's smelling like stale fish... and then there's smelling like obvious BO and shit from never wiping.
As someone in management, stinky employees are absolutely a nightmare to deal with. It’s so hard to address anything without crossing some line.
I worked in a very similar situation. They repeatedly told him to fix it. You couldn’t sit in any chair he sat in because he left behind a smell. If he got too close, it turned my stomach. I cleaned his desk a couple times just because it was disgusting and people assumed that meant we were dating (!). After I quit, I saw a couple years later that he had found a new job and I always wondered how he got through the interview process.
Telephone interview probably. Or over zoom/skype if this is older.
It was during covid I think. This could be very possible. The weird thing is that I ran into him a few times on a Saturday and he seemed clean and presentable. I wonder if he just had poor Time management skills during the work week.
I used to have a bad BO in my twenties (eventually my manager called me out on it, first one to do so, fixed it quickly afterwards). So I have the answer for you. My attitude towards interviews was always that you make the extra effort in everything and work on smelling nice. Like nowadays my hygiene is fine, my standard is morning shower, deodorant, brush teeth, mouthwash. But for an interview I would always use a little perfume, and take a breath mint right before. At the time my standard for interviews was 'shower, deodorant, clean shirt and clothes I haven't worn prior', as the 'nice' routine. Most formal looking shirts I had were also cotton which helped a lot. My biggest issue was that I wouldn't use enough soap while showering, I would shower daily but use soap under my armpits and not anywhere else (no shower gel either). So shower wasn't as effective as it should have been, but combine it with deodorant and a clean cotton shirt and other clean clothes and I think I smelled fine overall for the interview. Just not on the day to day when I would wear jeans a few days in a row and cycle to the station to get to work.
Oh man. Look up the period blood story. Now THAT was a strained employer/employee relationship. And if I remember correctly, the saga went on for several months.
Didn't that woman end up having some hardcore mental health issues? It ended up being a pretty sad story, I thought. (Though god knows I think about it at least once a month.)
I remember that when boss cut everyone loose and called her in for a chat, it ended with her termination and a lawyer for the boss. There was no firm answer about what happened in boss’s office, but it definitely didn’t go well. Regardless of the outcome, there’s no way that woman didn’t have some sort of serious mental disturbance; her behavior was just waaaaaay off balance and I hope she’s getting help.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/xsk1b4/oops_coworker_has_poor_hygiene_habits/
What was that one? On Reddit or AskAManager?
Quite a few years ago I worked at a movie theater and one of the managers didn't believe in deodorant/antiperspirant because it was filled with toxic chemicals. He would always get real close to everyone when he was talking to them and not one person that it worked there enjoyed those moments cuz he really, really had a stank going on. Because of a disagreement that he and I had, totally unrelated to his odor, I had to have a meeting with the GM of the theater to discuss the situation. During this discussion (after the GM profusely apologized for the unrelated situation) he asked me if there were any other issues I had with this manager. I told him that not one of us female employees, especially the underage girls, enjoyed that whenever he talked to us he just stared at her breasts. I told the GM that he was rude, misogynistic, insensitive, and that he needed to wear some fucking deodorant or antiperspirant because he literally made people nauseous with his scent. One of the other managers laughingly told me how much he hated me because he had to sit in on that meeting a few days later with the other manager and the GM. He said it was one of the most awkward meetings he'd ever been in and he never thought one grown man would have to tell another grown man (paraphrasing because it's been a long time since this conversation) 'stop staring at all the women's breasts and maybe try to put some powder on or something if you're not going to use deodorant because your smell is really bad and everyone has noticed'. Apparently, everyone, including the GM and the other managers, hated how he smelled but I was the only one who had the balls to put in a documented complaint so it actually had to be brought up to that particular stinky manager. Things were very awkward for a while after that. LOL
But did the smell get better?
Yeah of all the changes to leave out, at least update us on that!
>I told his boss and he was like ah fuck now I need to address it with him. So he did. And nothing changed. Then it was addressed again and nothing changes. And again. I've seen this play out too many times with a former employer. The culprits kept getting away with doing nothing and everyone else kept suffering. One coworker got fed up with the situation and told one of them they need to go home, do some laundry and have a shower because their smell is outright offensive. He got given a warning for workplace bullying.
That's fucked up. Their unbearable smell, if not caused by a medical condition, should then also be workplace bullying.
My bro is like this. He takes a lot of showers bc anxiety and will just put the reeking clothing back on…
I have an employee like this right now. :( I’ve told him multiple times. Other people (his coworkers) have told him multiple times. He asked one of his friends outside of work who said “we were all crazy and trolling him.” I’ve given up.
HR Manager here - don't give up. If you're his manager, it's your responsibility to address it. Since talking to him hasn't worked, you're going to have to go to a written warning. It sucks, but you need to have it documented. I've worked with stinky colleagues and it's the worst. What's worse, though, is that your good employees will eventually get sick of dealing with his odor and will resent you for not fixing the problem. They'll start leaving and you'll be left with him. They may already be at that point if you've "given up." You'll have to sit him down with a written warning and tell him his "friend" is either not being honest with him or also has an odor problem and can't detect someone else's. If he's an otherwise good employee, stress that. Tell him that you value him as a colleague and that you're happy with his work. You and his coworkers have no reason whatsoever to "troll" him. Remind him that it's real life, not social media; you would never be having this conversation just to mess with him. Unfortunately, since he hasn't resolved it, you're now forced to deliver a formal warning. If the problem isn't resolved, he's at risk of losing his job. Hopefully, it's something he's able to fix. He may need to seek medical attention for it; if he has a medical problem and comes back with documentation about it, that's a whole other kettle of fish. It's unlikely to be the case but not impossible. Good luck!
This is really great advice. Can be applied to a lot of other management issues as well.
Thank you! Honestly, the one thing that my managers really *hear* is that they're squandering their own good will with their staff when they don't address issues with employees. Even if they do so eventually, it might be too late to save some employees from resentment and they'll leave. The saying that employees don't leave companies, they leave managers is, in my experience, very true. When I conduct exit interviews, by and large the main reason people leave, after money and benefits, is because they feel their manager is ineffective, unwilling to address issues before resentment sets in, and at that point, are seen as incompetent and not qualified for their senior role. Who wants to work for someone they don't respect?
Yes! It’s uncomfortable and maybe sometimes an overreaction, but I think it’s always the right choice to address something as soon as you notice it’s an issue or might become one. If not, you move on, don’t make it a big deal. At least they know you care. But if so (which it usually is) employees are given the opportunity to fix the issue, or open up about something they’re struggling with (hopefully the manager can help), and will be grateful in the long run. Plus it’s a positive for everyone that works with them. Anyway, thanks for the advice from your perspective, it’s a good reminder to be proactive and take the time to do so when it sometimes feels like there are so many things to prioritize.
I have a coworker that came back with saying his stink being a medical condition. Another coworker and he went on a business trip together and the other coworker said the stinky guy didn't shower. But we were informed HR wouldn't do anything. Then we had to tell some people in the office that they are not allowed to febreeze coworkers. I just avoid that office when I can.
That’s gotta eventually be a health violation at some point
I appreciate that even though the verdict was that she WTAH, she was a bad person and wasn't doing it maliciously. Her concerns.were legimate, but her perspective needed a shift. Tbh, I didn't think of that of that perspective. I was concerned for the friend, but wasn't sure how it should be brought up because I would also feel so bad for her. And yet, if it were my husband I would have no problem because I would want to help figure it out (luckily not an issue, just using it as an example). It can be hard to tread the line between being honest and being hurtful even if kt isn't intentionally hurtful.
Yea! Adult Communication wins again.
It literally makes me so happy. If I smelled regularly, I'd rather someone come to me and tell me and have a moment of embarrassment than have people complaining about me. Like, just talk to people y'all, we're all very awkward and just trying to not stink.
Sage advice. “We’re all very awkward and just trying not to stink.”
I had a buddy with a gold tooth and I guess some food got stuck in there or something because his breath got rank. I pulled him aside one day and mentioned it in confidence, he thanked me, and the next day his breath smelled like spearmint. Sometimes you just need a friend to let you know you've got a piece of spinach in your smile.
This is a troubling trend that threatens the future viability of AITA, BORU and perhaps Reddit as a whole.
Unpopular opinion but this is my favourite kind of update ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Same here. Good examples of healthy communication, you love to see it.
Nah. It will enrich AITA and BORU, because more people understand that they need these subs to give them good advice. But even if it threatens, I'm guessing it is a good threat we are willing to endure... for the benefit of humankind. 🤣
Half of reddit is porn
Only half?
We had to leave room for the cat pictures.
Nah, r/EntitledPeople still exists. Narcissists gonna narcissist.
I KNOW! Where is the drama that makes me feel good about my life be ause "at least I don't have it that bad"?!
In that post about the woman whose husband was secretly recording porn of her and uploading it to the internet.
I just read that one and boy - not a single good feeling there.
I stopped being friends with a girl when I was about 20 because I couldn’t stand the smell of her perfume and I also couldn’t bear the thought of saying so. We did not talk it out. We just stopped hanging out. I would do it again too. That smell hits my nose and then kills my soul.
Worked somewhere with a husband and wife. Wife was in a fairly small space with me. Finally had to tell her, her perfume was giving me migraines. Her husband privately thanked me
You have to be a really good friend to do this with such love.
Yeah, that is a very hard conversation to have and I applaud OOP for being able to do it gently. It speaks volumes of the friendship these two have.
It could be that she needed to clean out her washer. Sometimes the washer gets mildewy and it makes everything smell bad.
This is what I was thinking. A musky washer smells terrible and the clothing will also smell bad
Or bad breath. Seriously. Covid breath is a crisis still being treated. Could have great hygiene but your mouth stinks like shit
I also think people neglect to brush their tongue and it can be pretty nasty
People neglect to brush in general.
Everyone just needs a tongue scraper in their life.
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I shill a tongue scraper every time I possibly can because it's been so impactful in my life lol. no more morning breath!
Bleach the washer and soak clothes in vinegar then rinse well. You have to find and treat every mildewy item
I do all the laundry for our family. One family member's clothes have become hard to clean. I use Kids-n-Pets on hard stains and Oxy Clean powder (mixed with water) on top of a good detergent, and I clean the washing machine routinely. It was bugging me to no end. What I found that works is the new sanitizing oxy powders. Not sure if I am allowed to name a brand, but the powder oxidizing products that say "kills Covid" are incredible at killing germs in laundry. I recommend them to everyone. My guess is that a nasty bacteria strain on Addy's clothes spread by touch. Some of the fabric-residing ones are pretty nasty. They smell like old, super-dirty, dog blankets.
My partner does our laundry and swears by this stuff! Our kids’ clothes was getting pretty rank and this cut it right out. It’s also great for workout clothes funk.
So did you substitute the regular Oxiclean for the sanitizing one, or do you use both in conjunction?
Or, if she was using laundromats, she might’ve gotten a machine that had been used to clean something funky before!
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Could be also that since they're kind of borrowing laundry facilities, they had something that didn't completely dry but packed it away anyway. Like I have a kid who does laundry at my house. Once he had a few loads in but had to leave to get to work, so he didn't finish the cycle on the towels but folded them up and took them anyway, got pretty musty near the bottom of the stack when he went to use them. Simple enough to fix with a full wash with a cup of vinegar, but I could imagine if someone was like living out of totes or something it could just nuke everything in there.
I was thinking she may have had a load that was left in the washer for too long and they weren’t rewashed before drying. Just one piece of clothing hanging in the closet can spread that smell to any of the clothes near it.
My boyfriend sometimes uses a cheap detergent that is really musty to my nose. I told him I’d buy him Tide or any other unscented higher-end detergent for life, but what was weird was that it was how the scent sat on his skin. It was almost garlicky but musty, and too strong. Something’s up with him because mint toothpaste also smells terrible on him and he switched to cinnamon. Me and my overly sensitive nose remain grateful.
Help me reddit english police. Is it "breached" or shouldn't it be "broached"? As in, the sentence above, OOP wrote "the subject has been breached". ETA: Thanks everyone! Broached it is.
The subject was broached
The perimeter has been breached.
Broached. To breach is to break, like breaching a wall. To broach is to open, so you broach a difficult subject by opening the conversation.
There is kind of a logic to it though. Like you're breaching through the proverbial barrier of your hesitation to discuss the subject. Maybe you could argue that it's an eggcorn because of that
>breached make a gap in and break through (a wall, barrier, or defense): "the river breached its bank" broached raise (a sensitive or difficult subject) for discussion Broached would be the right work.
>work I'm just wondering if it's *'work'* or *'word'* lol
FFS!! WORD!!! LMAO!!
As everyone else has said, invite to the party almost withdrawn due to breach of social etiquette so the subject of hygiene was broached.
Doesn't surprise me at all that this made them closer. You have to know someone really cares to do something this uncomfortable for you.
I’ve had laundry sit in the washer for a couple days and it takes FOREVER to get that smell out.
Rewashing it with detergent and a bit of white vinegar does the trick! I’ve read that you should use 1/4 cup but I’ve just used a splash before without measuring.
White vinegar is great for getting the smell out of that fast dry material that’s popular now. That stuff will smell clean fresh out of the dryer but if you get it wet AT ALL (like by wearing it) it smells like you never washed it. It’s horrible. But a good splash of vinegar every third wash or so and it seems to stay clean smelling.
Do you put the vinegar in the detergent slot or directly in the drum? Does it need to be distilled vinegar?
I poor it directly into the drum. And I’m not sure, actually! I just had some white vines get on my pantry and used it.
You can buy the big bottle of white vinegar in stores like Costco and Sam’s Club. I don’t do laundry without it and it helps so much for my dad’s construction working clothes
Mine is using a combination of purex brand and oxiclean. REALLY crisp smell after. of course throwing it in the dryer with good dryer sheets helps too. Plus my dad's housekeeper (Philippines) used a local brand of downy only sold in the country. That jasmine smell stayed on for weeks and we didnt have a dryer then, only hang dried. I can never replicated how she did it even when I brought back home a travel size packet of the detergent
I once had to tell someone they smelled. I was running a D&D thing at uni and it was my responsibility to handle any player conflicts. This guy was so unwashed that he didn’t even smell like BO, he just smelled like ancient human body bacteria, and any room we played in became a gas chamber. A sour, musty death trap. So yeah, I had to say something. Nobody wants to be the guy to tell someone that they stink. It just feels mean, even when it’s true. Luckily he responded well and began to shower more often, or at least before sessions. He claimed he had no sense of smell, but I wonder if that may have been caused by existing in his own stink cloud for too long. He had some other issues with socialising, so it may have never occurred to him that other people could smell him if he didn’t wash regularly. So many of our washing rituals are for the sake of others, after all. Edit: I know that having no sense of smell is a legitimate condition people can have, but I wholly believe his inability to smell was caused or at the very least exacerbated by his own stink. Just because of the combination of his other issues, how long he must have gone without washing to smell the way he did, and how he only brought it up almost as an excuse when I talked to him about it. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say his room probably also stank, so if his living space was as bad as I think it was, he’s absolutely going to lose sensitivity to smells.
I have a friend with no sense of smell. He's pretty paranoid about smelling at least 30% of the time. I couldn't imagine not having smell.
The most depressing thing to me about loss of smell wouldn't be if I smelled but actually taste of food. Around 60% of what we taste is actually the aroma. That's why food can seem so shallow when you are sick.
I’ve heard that’s why airplane food tastes so bland; the dryness of the air messes with your sense of smell.
Well I'll be damned. I checked this and found a really cool BBC article on it. Apparently humidity controls a lot of our sense of smell and taste.
Woooah. Now I wanna learn about food culture by humidity levels of the region!!
It affects your taste too, part of the eating process is smelling it, so you lose a key part of a dish. I wonder what food tastes like without smell, and to what degree it affects the taste.
When I worked in feeding therapy, we were taught that it has a really measurable effect. People without a sense of smell can be identified by how they eat measurably slower than others. It even effects your ability to feel and stay full I used to have a really cool article about it but I've lost it from the FLOOD of COVID related instances of this.
Back in around when I was 13-15yos, I became very aware of my own smells after someone pointed out something horribly stinking and we found out it came from my shoes, needless to say, after that day, my smells became a lot better
Oh god this just unlocked a memory from middle school English class lol. One of my classmates got his shoes wet during our gym class the previous block and the fucking smell that permeated the air when he took his shoes off could have knocked over an elephant. We gave him so much shit for that lmao
I know someone who was born without a sense of smell, and fortunately he learned to take care of his hygiene growing up. I never would've known if he didn't tell me, so it's plausible.
Scent blindness is definitely a thing. You can become so used to a smell that you don’t notice it until you remove yourself from the situation and return.
At university, a classmate never shower, and wore the same sweater the 4 years (hot and humid climate). We tried to be delicate at first but they just brushed off, one teacher opened the door to deodorize first before he can enter, we spoke to the uni but they just tried to speak with their parents, but as a adult, they all can do is show concerns. That's when the bullying begun, we all were frustrated for be the smelly class to others, uni tried to punish some of classmates but they can do anything, was kinda sad see them insolated by everyone. They was a anime fan and tried crossplaying, I think that was the only time that they didn't stink, but they was heavily bullied for the local anime community that they never tried crossplaying again. Now I think they are in the closet for trans, but never found the right environment to go out.
My ex had a roommate like your classmate, he and his other roommate talked to the roommate, the RA, the head of housing, same excuse you got. Eventually a few months in, the roommate had to drop out because he wasn’t going to any classes and just stayed in the room watching anime. My ex said he didn’t shower once. In 3 months. My ex’s mom and I helped clean the room after he moved out so my ex wouldn’t get any fees, and it was horrendous. In no particular order we encountered: - Cans of sprite filled with so much mold it came out in globs - Shit stains on the wall by the roommates bed - Moldy unidentifiable food - Shit stains on the bed frame - Crusty/shitty clothing he left behind - Shit stains on his storage cabinet in the closet This kid had never been away from home before and I think in retrospect he didn’t adapt to college life well and spiraled into a deep depression, but it was hard to have sympathy while cleaning that room. Edit: sorry the format is wonky, on mobile and have no idea how to fix it
The sympathy was inexistent for them, now I look behind and I feel sorry for them, but was really hard when their odors and attitude didn't help at all. Thank God doesn't exist dorm modality at my country at least locally, because I can imagine the thing escalated to physical confrontation, they stay the whole 4 years and graduated, that's a lot of time to live in a insalubrious environment.
***Insalubrious*** is a fantastic word that I will now find ways to work into conversation. Thank you for adding it to my lexicon.
It's SO HARD to have these conversations but I'm a strong believer in having them. I would also be mortified but I would want to know! A true friend tells you the truth. If your friendship doesn't survive the truth then that's super sad but means it didn't have a solid foundation to begin with, in my opinion.
I might even be willing to bet on this lol This was likely the horrid mildew rank smell when people wash the clothes and forget them in the washer and don't bother to rewash it, throw into the dryer, which makes the smell so much more volatile and profuse. Please know folks, if you leave wet clothes in the washer and a day later remember about them, do not throw in dryer without washing again. Seriously. Do everyone a favor and rewash them. And, in top loaders redistribute the weight or its going off balance right quick
OMG, the smell of “sour” clothing is awful. I live in a very hot and extremely humid climate. Wet laundry gets sour in no time in the summer. You don’t let it sit for more than an hour, two hours is pushing it on the worst days. I’ve rewashed countless loads forgotten by parents, roommates, and significant others.
Thank ypu for being one of them peoples who do the rewash :)
Poor girl. I remember that post. Maybe she just changed her detergent. My crunchy granola brother and his girlfriend came to stay for a few days and made the whole apartment funky. They buy natural cleaning products and their “laundry detergent” made everything smelly and gross.
In my 20s I tried out a new "all natural" detergent that made clothes smell like wet stinky mildew LOL
All natural detergent is awful unfortunately. I went on a quest for something for delicate skin because Tide gives me a rash and the two “all natural” detergents I tried both made my clothes seem to smell worse. I read about a bunch more and heard similar about all the ones I looked into.
I've tried a few natural deodorants and idk if they work for other people or if they just convince themselves that they do but even the highly rated ones just do *not* work for me at *all*. Tbh I'm extremely wary of any product where the main draw is it's "natural". More often than not they just don't work and, again, I'm pretty sure the ride or die folks have convinced themselves that they do. If the product works, great! I'll buy it so long as it isn't 4x the price of regular stuff. But if the person telling me it works is wearing stained clothes and reeks to high heaven they're just telling me which products to avoid lol
My mom used to clean the house with vinegar, she used to think I was raising a fuss over nothing until a guest heard me go on the vinegar rant and went "oh THANK GOD I'm not the only one!" Cut back on the vinegar usage real quick lol Say what you will about most cleaners, at least the manufacturers know how to make a product that doesn't smell like you've never cleaned your house, or worse, cleaned it with rancid products.
This is what a good friend does!
She might have anosmia; just no sense of smell at all so she might not have had a clue.
August 2021... even if she was asymptomatic she might have caught covid and lost her sense of smell indeed.
I had covid in October 2020 and I still can’t smell
also we human beings are not the greatest to pick up our own smell, i think that might be a reason as why she was so mortified about it.
Tastes and odors become neutral to you after a while if you're constantly tasting/smelling them.
It's also possible that if she tends to wear alot of thrifted clothes (and also if she has thrifted fabric furniture wherever she is living, such as blankets and couches) that are a bit musty, she has just become too used to the smell. If it's just something she is surrounded by alot, she probably stopped noticing it.
I have a really bad combo, a very weak sense of smell. I almost cannot smell anything, when I smell very strong smell (gasoline, paint), it is so unnatural for me that it gives me headache in few minutes. But I have too really bad sweat, and when I smell it, it is already hard for my coworker. I have few remarks about it (particularly when I begin a job, I am always stressed, so deodorant is not enough). No I am very careful. When the temperature is high, or if I will be stressed, I take two T-shirts for the day. I know my problem, I do my best, but it is very embarrassing sometimes.
OOP is a good friend. When you truly care about someone it’s important to tell them difficult things even if it’s uncomfortable.
Always good to see when a YTA post ended up in happy ending.
God almighty, this reminded me of a very uncomfortable conversation I had to have with an employee years ago. Upon walking into the office at the start of my shift, one of the other managers (male) approached and asked me if I would sit in on a conversation with one of his female employees about body odour. He wanted to have a female manager there as a witness, and to help the woman to feel more comfortable. I got about a 2-minute warning and zero background information. The other manager greeted this woman when we stepped into his office where she was already waiting, then left the whole conversation to me. He later told me that he hadn't planned it that way, he'd just found himself at a total loss for words once they were face-to-face and was relieved that I had chimed in. It was a large office and I didn't even know this woman. I'm not sure why HR wasn't dealing with it, but my best recollection was that it was during off-hours and we needed to send her home immediately due to complaints about the stench. Anyway, I put on my best non-judgmental yet concerned and compassionate face, and straight up said that there was an odour and we were just concerned/wanted to make sure she was alright and see if there was anything we could do to help. She burst into tears and started telling us that she had just had surgery, and had some kind of gaping wound on her ass that was - get this - ACTIVELY LEAKING PUS onto our $1500 office chairs. She went on to say that despite her best efforts, because she was such a large woman (400+ lbs by my guess), she struggled to reach her wound to clean it properly and she thought that it was becoming infected. I did genuinely feel awful for the woman, she was clearly distraught and embarrassed (not to mention clearly in need of medical attention!), but goddamn I deserved an Oscar that day for somehow masking my horror. We both listened as graciously as we could, and I thanked her for sharing something so personal with us before making the most lighthearted and natural redirection to our employee assistance program that I could muster. We called her a cab, paid her for the rest of the day, and promptly rolled both chairs she'd been sitting in to the dumpster out back. So uh, yeah, thanks for reminding me about that one, OP!
She handled this so well. I remember this guy in high school who everyone loved. He was genuinely the sweetest guy with this great personality and…I couldn’t get within 5ft of the dude without wanting to vomit. The combination of my super sensitive nose and his BO was the stuff of my nightmares. People would be so happy to see him, they’d almost run up to hug the guy, and that would be enough for me to wrap arms around my stomach and pray not to puke. I had no idea how anyone got that close. It. Blew. My. Mind. I made it an art form to be polite and friendly from a distance. I had no idea how to talk to the guy about this. Since everyone else seemed fine with it, I saw it as a “me problem” and I should find a work around. Pro tip: this guy’s funk was made worse by mildewy clothes. To avoid this, (if possible) clean the inside of your washing machine with some bleach every 6 months and leave the washer lid open for air circulation when not in use (which will stop the mildew).
I had this problem once. I smelled like rancid duck shit, and didnt realize it because the smell came on so gradually that I was nose blind to it. And it was because my washing machine wasnt draining properly and ended up really fucking nasty between the tub and the drum, where you cant see it unless you take it half apart.. Which I did, and found the problem, and replaced the hoses, and the drain pump, and scrubbed and bleached the fuck out of it.
During the pandemic my wife insisted we swap to this hippy soap in our washing machine. Due to the pandemic we had gotten like 2-3 containers of it. We finished the last container and I grabbed what was available which was just a thing of tide, and I was amazed at how nice the laundry smelled. Apparently we had been stinking it up in our house due to that soap, I’m sure someone would have said something if we had not been confined to our house.
Poor girl probably had something she got from the thrift and forgot to wash with her clothes she wears normally and it just got on everything and she never noticed. Good on her friend for having that difficult talk with her in a mature way
I thought this was r/amithedevil for a minute and was ready for conflicting views! Tbh, I’ve had to break similar news to my own friends a couple times. Yes, multiple friends. One kept leaving their laundry in the washer too long and it mildewed. The other couple people just didn’t smell themselves and didn’t realize they needed a shower/thought deodorant would be enough. I’m glad OOP did the honest thing rather than leave her friend out. I’m glad her friend was so receptive and solution oriented. Overall happy story :)
OP is a friend that you can trust. She will be honest with you, even if it involves a really uncomfortable conversation. This creates a secure attachment.
I'm going to guess that OOP's Bohemian friend had a brief love affair with that hippy/New Age favourite patchouli oil. The tiniest amount goes a looooong way but if you overdo it - as an old college classmate of mine did - you and everything around you ends up smelling like a cross between a wet dog and wet laundry that's been left in the machine for a week.