PUNGENT ODORS

You know what’s funny? The Corporate world. For the past year and a half now, I’ve been a part of Corporate America; waking up at 6 am, wearing business suits, sitting in traffic, living in a cube, surviving through Outlook email and counting down the hours till lunch and 5 o’clock. I’ve gotten used to it although, I’d still rather be in college…working sucks!

Anyways, I’ve noticed a lot of weird things about working in a corporate office. The smells. There are so many distinct smells in this building, its crazy! I usually get in the office around 8 am. Upon walking in the building, I’m asphyxiated immediately by a mixture of potent perfume and cologne lingering off the 50 million other people in the elevator. Thank God I only work on the 3rd floor! These people definitely like to smell nice…but when you cram in a small space like that, the fumes are overpowering!

When I get to my desk, (btw, I work on the other side of the community kitchen) the coffee aroma is in the air. This smell is actually nice, it’s warm and welcoming in the morning. Not at 3 o’clock in the afternoon after a full pot has been there all day cooking on the heater! This smell makes me wanna throw up! Then around 10 am, it’s leftover pizza. Who’s eating pizza at 10 am? It’s the corporate thing to do I guess.

There’s other unpleasant smells like burnt popcorn. I’m convinced that no one on this floor went to college. If you went to college, you know how to make microwave popcorn! Why is it so hard?! Thats the one thing you shouldn’t be able to screw up. It’s probably some cool corporate thing that everyone knows about that I haven’t jumped on the bandwagon yet. (I’m still a rookie! Don’t kick me outta the group!)

The worst smell ever was a couple weeks ago. It was around 2:30 or 3 in the afternoon. All the sudden, the halls are inundated with a terrible fish smell. We all know seafood has a particular smell, but whatever this person was eating definitely smelled like it had been caught LAST year and been sitting in a trash can ever since. It was so bad! It started in the kitchen and lingered down the hallway back to their office. People started coming out of their offices with their noses turned up. One of the other employees felt nauseous and made me call security! The facilities guys were sent to take care of this awful scent filling the hallways. We were surrounded by it, they thought it was coming out of the vents! So they follow the trail down the hallway to where the infested office was and told him all these safety precautions to use when disposing of his grotesque lunch and went on their way, warning us to walk the hallways at our own risk and letting us know to “stay away from THAT room…” So when they leave, I look down the hallway at the quarantined office…

Yeah, definitely my boss’. Hmmm.