Reeking of desperation.

What is it about hygiene that modern man does not understand? I vow that if not for the efficacy of modern medicine, those historical companions of urban life such as typhoid and bubonic plague would scour the streets in a matter of weeks. Most of the time I am securely isolated from the unwashing masses of humanity within my own residence or behind the mild buttress of a counter at work.

Ah but there is nothing like the compulsion to fumigate proffered cash and coin with Lysol, if not the shambling mass of compost presenting it to close a transaction. As a matter of fact, should you be curious about it, I have indeed had customers lay their money down on the counter for me to treat with industrial disinfectant.

Most of the time I don't have to deal with people quite so filthy since the store by and large does not take kindly to loitering. The homeless prefer more amenable venues to annoy and abuse. Instead I am treated to otherwise unsoiled people who possess a tainted air-space capable of immolating pigeons at twenty paces.

It's incredibly hard to look and act professional when the miasma issuing forth from their person is literally bring tears to the eyes and gags with each breath. I've been around putrefying cow corpses in the desert less repellant to the nose than some of these people. I watch them browsing the shelves, noting how the other customers discretely maintain their distance. I observe how the areas of the store near the air-freshening units become suddenly very popular, store patrons lingering long over their choices as if choreographed.

I do attempt to exercise some tact. Some people come in to rent or pick a couple things up on their way after work. One can't realistically expect a guy who's been welding for eight hours in cramped quarters to step off the job smelling like Jovan musk magazine insert for example. By the same token, especially during the summer months, some folks are just going to outlast their deodorant. In many cases, one just does what one must to get through it smoothly. They know they're a bit ripe and once they've gotten their errands run have a shower and cold beer high on their list of priorities.

Yet, there are the repeat offenders. Those who've come in before. Those damned that regardless of what they wear or time of day, proclaim to the olfactory organs they are cunningly smuggling rancid camel bile under their skin. Many of this sort will crowd the counter to talk to me. They attempt to insinuate themselves well under my comfort radius for strangers, even without their insidious miasma.

I am staunchly unapologetic in telling those types to take a step back prior to talking to me, for liberally spraying air freshener as soon as they leave the counter, or in a few extreme cases following in their wake with said can of air-freshener.

On the other end of the spectrum are those who simply wouldn't dream of leaving the house with less than half a bottle of perfume or cologne. I hate these bastards with even more howling loathing than I do the aggressively putrescent. For these are those who not only chose to rape bystanders' noses, but have attempted to justify it in the name of smelling good to their fellow man. By the time that you've applied enough scent to your skin that I can no longer smell anything else, but also taste it like a greasy film upon my tongue, "pleasant" is the last thing I would term the odor saturating your being.

Thank the gods I have a fan to banish the cloying stench of your passing.

When you think that the sense of smell is the strongest tied to the irrational, primal part of the brain, is it any wonder that the routine offenders are rarely in the company of others?