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Our noses can be amazing things, crucial to our understanding of the world and in fact an organ that provides us with one of the most critical senses to our survival.
They can lead us to love and amour and to babies that need to be changed; they can also warn of us danger and set in motion our flight or fight response.
But they can also detect odors that are almost enough to make us vomit.
And when this happens at your place of employment -- as it did at mine yesterday -- it's enough to make your face turn green.
This, for the uninformed, is a red snapper. In this form, and on its own, it's a beautiful fish, although I have never eaten one before. No, the offender yesterday was this.
Red snapper, apparently microwaved in the cafeteria downstairs, and brought up somehow unnoticed to our third-floor office by a wanker of an employee who likes to eat at his desk.
Almost immediately, the unbelievably rank odor of this animal started wafting its way through the entire newsroom and into the olefactory sensory thingies of about 100 noses.
At first, we all laughed. Then somebody found a reference on the Web to how a chemical called arsene (I'm assuming it's where arsenic comes from) can smell like cooked or fried fish.
The smell was so bad, people could not work. Passing supervisors were asked what the smell was. Someone, only half-jokingly, wondered if the office should be evacuated and the HazMat unit called.
Eventually, someone tracked this guy down. He sits in a little cubbyhole behind some screens where no one can see him.
And when the entire office converged on him to express their displeasure (in a joking way) and tease him about polluting us all, his thing was, "What did I do?"
There's enough putrid smells at work as it is, on occasion, with people kissing bosses' asses at times and with the stinky stench of people talking behind others' backs.
He has the right to eat whatever he wants, of course. But did he have to bring into the office and make everybody else smell it? I don't think so. Or maybe our Health and Safety committee needs to provide noseplugs.
What are some of the dunderhead, inconsiderate, me-first things you've seen fellow employees do at your place of work? Or do you think this guy was fully within his rights to do what he did?
The goofy little twit obviously forgot to put butter and lemon on it. The lemon's not just there to add piquancy - it's there to kill the smell.
ReplyDeleteSentence him to culinary school
Insist on having Jo Malone fragrances pumped through the air-con.
ReplyDeleteI used to work in an open plan office and we were never allowed to eat anything with an odour stronger than cucumber
I was working in an office that banned people from wearing perfume. I don't know this as fact but I think it was because I used to spray myself with L'Eau d'Issey when I was out at lunchtime and passed the perfume counter... because I was too cheap to buy an actual bottle of the scent. I've mended my ways since then. Though I still long to douse myself in the stuff.
ReplyDeleteFronty the Fish Connoisseur:
ReplyDeleteHe's our art director, so you might have an inkling about him. Flighty, funny, flaky.
I'll pass judgment on him Monday. And I'll pass on your great suggestion.
CP:
Good notion about the fragrances, but our company's too cheap.
And it was only a couple of months ago that somebody came down with a severe reaction to someone's makeup or cologne or somesuch.
MJ:
ReplyDelete"L'Eau D'Issey?"
Is that like "L'Eau de Toilette," only cheaper?
MR SMELLS
ReplyDeleteI have never met anyone who is so completely obsessed with bodily functions.
Ok, 1st of all he is obviously a societally retarded person who has somehow, despite all odds, escaped decades of the political correctness indoctrination that has permeated every angstrom of our daily lives....
so even if you had pepper sprayed him for being so
'outotfrickinlunch'
he will probably do it again next week anyway because of his personal decision to abstain from common sense and eschew the basic tenets of office etiquette..
L'Eau D'Issey is overpriced scent from fashion designer Issey Miyake
ReplyDeleteHomo Esmelliens:
ReplyDeleteI think you're obsessed by what you wrongly perceive to be my obsessions with bodily functions.
A few mentions of farts, and you're blowing it all out ur arse in verbal diarrhea.
PHHHHHTTTTTTT!!!!!!
I think I'll do an inventory of my posts and yours for subject matter, then we'll have a little Blogging Arm Wrestle.
Cat pee -- that's the worst. If I smell it I immediately get anxious because it reminds me of a cat I used to have.
ReplyDeleteI once got bawled out by a secretary at a school where I taught who hated it when I put my banana peel in her garbage can.
I'm not philosophically opposed to eating at one's desk, especially given the nature of WW's and my job, but even I choose my food carefully and downwind of my staff.
ReplyDeleteAn art director, eh? I normally gove them a bit of leeway as long as they make my stuff look good, but still, buy the guy some lemons and show him how to use them. It'll be the best lecture he or she got since the sex talk.
Andrea:
ReplyDeleteI've always been a dog person except for the one cat I DID get at the insistence of my daughter.
Gorgeous little thing...it wrecked my furniture, kept me awake nights sleeping on my face and purring in my ear.
But I don't remember it peeing in anything other than litter, so never smelled it.
That bad?
As far as the Bad Banana, you could have inadvertently placed the peel on the floor so she could slip on it...
Fronty:
I eat at my desk too on occasion, but boring stuff like tuna sandwiches, subs, carrots, etc.
I'll buy the guy some lemons all right...but my biggest payback will be just not letting him forget.
Much ado about nothing. You should have sat down with him and shared his meal....er...fish.
ReplyDeleteGautami:
ReplyDeleteI realize Indians and other Eastern and Far Eastern cultures like their food heavily spiced and with strong odours.
Or at least when we here catch a whiff of some of the food you eat, it's foreign and can be strange and overpowering.
That's the beauty of different cultures. I'm guessing there may be dishes that we here take for granted (smell included) that might turn you off. True?
How did your olefactory senses react the first time you smelled a Big Mac? Or French Fries?
I'm not making a value judgment on the food from any culture or for that matter any individual.
All I can tell you is that this red snapper was overwhelmingly putrid to the great majority in the office that day.
Bon appetit!
I don't think the issue was cultural at all - the guy just needs a basic cooking lesson.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, tell him red snapper goes great with black beans and yellow rice. I learned that cooking one July 4th with a fellow dorm neighbor of Cuban descent. And yes, we oven broiled it with butter and lemon slices.
It seems I should have got on with my first thought. To endorse the lemon thing of frontier editor. But me being me, I jump right into controversy.
ReplyDeleteMy flippant comment got me a rap in my knuckles!
*sobered up now*
Gautami
BTW, I hate the smell of fish of any kind.
I'm not rapping your delightful knuckles at all Gautami. The snapper guy just can't cook, that's all. >B^D>
ReplyDelete'Snapper' means something else in Canadian slang! I think that everyone is missing the needle with this thread.
ReplyDeleteOh, HE, I've heard Carlin's discourse on the word 'snapper' all right ;^D>
ReplyDeleteGautami:
ReplyDeleteThat wasn't a rap on your knuckles...and what are you sobered up from?
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteI consider it as a rap on my knuckles if anyone addresses me as GT..
ReplyDeleteAnd you did ...:(
Doh! What's wrong with using your initials? And why would you consider that a rap?
ReplyDeletePeople call me WW, I call HE HE...huh?