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This has been my third summer in my office, and for reference, we’ve never had interns before. But this summer, for some reason, my team went out and plucked an intern from the grad student heap. Initially when I heard the news, I was pretty stoked. The prospect of getting a female to join my predominantly male team had me at an excitement level somewhere rivaling Vince Vaughn in the “It’s wedding season!” scene in Wedding Crashers.
Well, we ended up getting a male business school student. He was well-qualified, but also connected somehow to a senior member of our team. Nepotism at its finest rearing its head. My interactions with him started pleasantly enough. He seemed to have an enthusiasm for the job, and a strong background knowledge of excel. Initially I thought he’d be a boon to the team, and maybe someone who would get a job offer at the end of the summer. But within a few days, I needed him gone.
Our intern smells. And he smells BAD.
Picture a Pakistani bazar on a sweltering 110 degree July day. Then picture someone left a rotting goat in one of those hemp baskets in said bazar. Then picture that stench wafting through the outdoor market packed ear to ear. It’s some can’t even breath type shit.
Is he not showering? Not wearing deodorant? Rotting on the inside? I may never find out. What I do know is that he does have some hint of an idea that people have olfactory nerves. He comes in smelling like what I can only venture to guess is a heavy amount of Axe body spray. It’s like he hasn’t matured from that stage of life when we were all 12 years old and would empty cans of that stuff onto ourselves after gym class and you’d need a gas mask to even traverse the locker room. It was like a WWI battle field with all the chemical warfare going on in those locker rooms. Our intern has not developed passed the Axe body spray shower stage of his life.
But by lunch time, the body spray has worn off, and we’re left with a smell that – similar to Sex Panther – is a formidable scent; it stings the nostrils. It’s crazy how magical his smell is. I’m not exaggerating when I say that his smell clings to things. He could leave a room and it’d still smell bad in there an hour later. Once he borrowed my chair and it smelled bad for three days afterwards. It’s almost exactly like the episode of Seinfeld when the valet Jerry uses smells so bad he ruins the car. I’ve never seen anything like this.
His smell affects how I interact with him. I’m never in a chipper mood when we speak. I’m always blunt and quick to get the fuck away from him. When he comes to my cube to ask me a question I even have a hard time spinning in my chair to face him out of fear of putting my nose in a direct path to his body. It sucks for him, too, because next spring when he graduates B-school, if he wants a job here, I may fight like Leonidas for him not to work for us. Or I’ll quit; that’s also a strong possibility.
I’m usually not even much of a stickler about weird smells in the office. Day-old Indian food? Fine with it. Tuna? Eat up, bro. I’m even an offender. My boat shoes smell like a week-old towel after repeatedly drying a damp dog. And that’s even with the Sperry socks. But that shit’s contained and under my desk. As long as my feet stay in the shoe, the smell doesn’t rip through the office like a heat seeking smell missile.
And look, I’m sympathetic to health issues. The office can get hot, it’s the summer, and people sweat. If the dude was suffering from hyperhidrosis, I’d maybe be less worked up about it. But he’s not, because he doesn’t sweat through his shirts. Does he not shower? His hair looks like it’s been freshly showered in the morning. I’m spinning my brain into a pretzel just trying to solve this mystery.
I want his manager to say something to him. But it’s July and he probably only has six weeks left of the internship. I’m sure we could survive. But at the same time it’s not even just about the team. Part of me doesn’t want this guy going back to business school smelling like hair burning in a gym bag. It’s not fair to his classmates. Something must be done. It’s lewd, lascivious, salacious, outrageous.
Anyone else have smelly interns or colleagues? What’s the plan of action here?!.
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Boston Max
Spending my retirement fund at Trader Joe's and trying to remember to check my mailbox semi-regularly
@BostonMaxG
@boston_maxg
He might be having an allergic reaction to the aluminum found in deodorant or the scented chemicals in the body spray that omits an odor. It might be a metabolic disorder where his body can’t break down certain things and then these things begin to smell due to them not being broken down in the body and flushed out. Anyways, you should get him on the terror watch list and reference biological weapons as the main concern and then see if he gets carpet bombed one day but while you wait for that to happen (intelligence moves slow), spray him with Febreeze relentlessly until he smells like hope.
That escalated quickly
You’ve clearly not been introduced. This is Nived_Neirbo. That’s kind of what he does here.
You must be new here.
Come in early and leave a deodorant stick anonymously on his desk, that should send a clear enough message
This, and so much more. Leave soap on his desk, call him Soap, buy him a coupon for the car wash.
If anyone gives you grief, tell them “soap” is slang for new guy.
I’m going to get called out on this one-especially from my handle. Don’t do the passive aggressive deodorant on the desk notification. Talk to him man to man (or have HR do it). He could be a slob, but he could have some health issue. Either way- the convo sucks but it’s a lot better than the “hey-everyone thinks you stink-put this on” message. Good luck.
We had one in my old Hill Office. We had him do tours, office supply runs, and go to hearings live to keep him out of the office
So basically he smells like haji?
You’re SOL. If he could figure out how to fix the problem he would have done it by now. You’re just looking at a big old HR mess and an intern who continues to give off visible cartoon stink lines. I suggest an occasional surreptitious febreezing of his cube whenever he leaves it.
According to coworkers, we had this problem before and had to have HR talk to him.
“They’ve done studies you know. 60 percent of the time, it work’s everytime” Brian Fantana