There are some experiences that I wish that I did not have at all. One of those being a foul smelling co-worker. When I worked at a software company in the NorthWest a few years ago as a contractor, I had the unfortunate experience of working with a guy, I’ll call him “Don”, who never showered. Don smelled REALLY REALLY bad. If I ran a marathon a day for the next month and wore the same socks each day, the socks would smell like Don. He wore a black trench coat all Summer long and the funk his body produced was unrelenting. On of my co-workers sat next to him and he literally removed the fan from his PC and set it pointing towards the guy who, to quote one of the best movies of all time, “smells like a dirty diaper covered in indian food”. I put 2 odor busters under his desk one day. By the end of the week, they were completely dead. They had soaked up all the odor they could. Anyway, one of my co-workers went to our manager, who had to talk to him about it. When asked how long it had been since he showered, Don replied “about a month”. Now, I know damn well that was a lie. To the best of my abilities, I figure that he must have been ebarrassed a bit and decided that “a month” sounded somewhat normal. It had to have been at least 3. To kick it off, he had a wife who was very large who was the same way. They sat down to eat with a friend and I once at lunch and we had to pretend we had alerts on our cell phones. Imagine what their bed sheets must have been like….. The cherry on top of it all though, I was telling my good friend Josh about Don one day. He was like…”Is his last name ‘Smith?’” Yes. Well it turns out that “Don” had also worked with Josh and exhibited the same lack of cleanliness when they worked together. When you have a reputation as being the foulest smelling person several people have ever known, that is not a good thing.
Some advice for Don..
My friends at work and I decided that if we win Powerball, one of the first people we hire will be this man… The Techno Viking. He would be our doorman/bodyguard/dance instructor.
