A Stinky Situation

Yesterday I served a smelly person.  Now I've got nothing against smelly people - my nose would disagree - but it's always an awkward situation when a person's BO starts to clog up the atmosphere.  The smelly person had very bad BO.  So bad in fact that I had to breathe through my mouth rather than my nose and hope that I didn't sound weird.  I'm pretty sure the plants were drooping.  If we'd been in a cartoon there would have been green waves of smell radiating from the smelly persons person.  It was rather unpleasant.  And I don't think I was the only one suffering.  The clue being that when refreshing lavender scents hit my nose, I realised one of the other girls had gone around with the air freshener.  She wasn't being rude; she didn't realise what the smell was.  It was a welcome scent.  When the guest had gone and the office was empty the others remarked on the horrid smell and I filled them in on the smelly person.  I had to wonder whether the smelly person knew they were smelly.  Surely if you knew that you smelt like that you would have gone to some effort to rectify the situation.  Deodorant for example.  Or a couple of car deodorisers cunningly disguised as earrings.  Maybe you'd hire a skunk to follow you around so that you could redirect the blame in it's direction.  I don't know.  Maybe the smelly person was fully aware of the smell and either liked the smell, didn't care about the smell or was purposefully inflicting the smell on others out of spite.  That's pretty evil.  If I ever smelt, or rather if I do smell, if I'm smelling right now, I'd want someone to tell me.  You wouldn't have to shout it out or anything.  Maybe just a nudge.  Oh, Little Stalky, you're a bit ripe.  Something along those lines.  I'd hate to think I was stinking up the place.  The same goes for bad breath, lipstick on the teeth, rogue bogey and toilet paper stuck to the shoe.  I'd rather know about these things so I could do something about them.  Take action.  Accept a minor embarrassment in place of a major embarrassment.  Honesty is the way forward.  Though I suppose I can hardly advise a guest that they smell bad.  I guess we just have to put up with that kind of thing and be sure to have plenty of air freshener to hand.  Or pegs.