back to article Vendor rep 'Stinky Sam' told to wash and brush teeth or lose job

Welcome again to On-Call, our foetid Friday feature in which readers share their stinkiest memories of being asked to fix stuff at unpleasant times of day and night. This week, reader “Curt” tells us that until recently he worked for “a large subway system” in North America. Curt knew the subway network's SCADA-based route- …

  1. AndyS

    Well, that was a let down.

    1. TonyJ

      "...Well, that was a let down..."

      Hard not agree... the story just fizzled and faded.

      1. frank ly

        At least it wasn't a train wreck of a story.

        1. Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge

          Kind of went off the rails a bit

      2. Known Hero

        I found it hard to follow, and just read till the end for the conclusion.

        Maybe its because its still before 12

  2. James 51

    It is a good warning that sometimes it's not enough to be right.

  3. chivo243 Silver badge

    Stinky Sam Partners

    Smelly Shirley the woman who bathes in perfume before coming to the office, or Reeking Rico who wears way too much manly cologne... like he's going to the disco.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Stinky Sam Partners

      I think that the phrase you're looking for is "Nice perfume|cologne, but must you bathe in it?"

      1. chivo243 Silver badge

        Re: Stinky Sam Partners

        The problem is Shirley's perfume is more fume than anything else, not really nice IMHO.

    2. Niall Mac Caughey

      Fragrant colleagues

      In days gone by we took on a new hire who seemed to have all the technical qualifications required, but had some ... personal hygiene issues. Eventually the office staff approached me to get it resolved. I wasn't his boss, but perhaps that's why they went to me, because I wan''t his boss.

      Subtle hints failed to work; suggestions failed to work. Eventually I went to the stores, got a bar of soap, put him in my car; presented him with the soap and told him that I was taking him home and he wasn't to come back until he had learned how to use it. I then drove him the eight miles back to his house.

      This wasn't martyrdom on my part, it was a sunny day, and I had a convertible.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Fragrant colleagues

        I used to work in the same office as a guy who rode a motorbike to work. Even in the middle of a hot summer he'd wear full leathers and he fecking stank when he came back from changing after he'd arrived (no shower there but I doubt he'd have used it even if there was tbh). I was on the other side of a fairly large room from him but the aircon blew the smell around everywhere. I felt really sorry for the people who had to sit next to him though.

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

    3. Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge

      Re: Stinky Sam Partners

      Somebody here was making a very heavy-handed and completely redundant application of perfume, prompting a comment from someone on a nearby desk "Oh, sorry, I didn't realise you had a cold - would you like some of my decongestants?"

  4. Yag

    Hey!

    I never worked on subway systems!

  5. jake Silver badge

    A billion years ago ... in Internet time ... say 1995 ...

    ... I landed a contract to update an office's computers/network/connectivity.

    The owner insisted on breathing over my shoulder.

    I seriously don't think the guy had bathed in over a month.

    I bowed out of the contract ... Alas, the IRS informed me my time was valueless.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Another stinky story

    A decade ago, I was "promoted" boss of a totally worthless bloke, who happened to probably never wash more than once per month, nor change underwears for the same period.

    End of the month, it was so bad you could smell him in the stairway 10 minutes after he'd gone through it.

    While working in the computer room, I once made a tragic mistake: walking behind him while he was standing at the back of an IBM blade center, the ones with the turbin-grade rear fan. I nearly collapsed due to the stench, and never walked in the computer room with no caution after that !

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Another stinky story

      I worked with one just like that as well. The fan was not the problem but having to share a rackmount console with him. The confrontation over smell always amounted to him showering once every other day for about two weeks and then just giving up and going back to making our workplace miserable.

      He did not even have other qualities that compensated for his smell. He was dour, rude, a bit of a misogynist who read books on "Seduction Techniques" and our least talented admin. We even banded together to ask that he be fired after multiple "talks" with him failed to lead to long term improvement of his hygiene, but the boss had the kind of pity for him that one only has when you do not truly know a horrible person.

      So we all left eventually and then his job was even more secured as a "Senior Admin".

      Did your stinky bloke keep his job or even perhaps use it unconsciously to be promoted?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Another stinky story

        "Did your stinky bloke keep his job or even perhaps use it unconsciously to be promoted?"

        We managed with my boss, to move him to another site of the company. Sure, that reduced a team of 2 to only 1, but I was very happy anyway.

        In his new team of 4, where he's probably still, he has plenty of chances to enjoy doing nothing while the 3 others are doing the job.

        Couldn't fire him as he had a french work contract.

  7. SoaG

    Vendors?

    I always found our own sales and marketing types caused far more problems than vendors.

  8. OzBob

    We had a perpetually scruffy coder in the 80s

    who always looked like he was dipped in glue and thrown through a op shop window. Until he got made redundant and had to re-apply for his job, then miraculously he found a barber, and a razor and a suit. One of the guys walked up and said "who are you and what have you done with Richard?". He didn't get rehired.

    Not quite a smell story, but I was chatting up an attractive vendor rep who was onsite and when she mentioned where she was staying, I said "Oh yeah, that hotel is where most of the local hookers work out of". Next time she came through, she stayed at a different hotel. And avoided talking with me in the social area after that (It's a gift, what I can say?)

  9. BurnT'offering

    I would have complained to the vendor

    Olfactory harassment - defined as unsolicited aromatic penetration of the nasal passages.

  10. paulf
    Boffin

    Stinky and the rest

    There's a guy in my office that, when he started, stank out the whole office with a smell that can be best described as "Diesel" (as in DERV not the fashion brand). At the time there was only four of us, but as the team expanded and we moved to a larger office of 8 he rose to the challenge and his BO kept up. The only thing more pungent than his BO was the "deodorant" he used to cover it up.

    He's still here, the smell has, thankfully, faded but the eating with his mouth open continues throughout the day, among other things. I can only assume he's either completely oblivious to his impact on the surrounding office environment or a sociopath of the highest order who's clearly missed his calling into Manglement.

    Icon -> Gas mask for use around stinky colleagues who don't realise others have to work in the same office...

  11. Mike 16

    Weren't there stories

    About a certain hygenically challenged worker at Atari back in the day? Moved to the night shift which allowed him to bring in his friend of the same first name?

    1. jake Silver badge

      Re: Weren't there stories

      Yes. Steve(RIP) stank back in the day. Fact. I know, I was there.

      But it's not a factor when it comes to where his company is today.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You want stinky? Then you need a junior programmer at a certain national press agency. He never washed, looked like he wore the same clothes 24 hours a day for weeks on end, and stank so badly I once retched when a draught blew his miasma in my direction on a hot Summer afternoon. My boss was determined to get him sacked, but reached retirement without managing it since HR were the other end of the country and couldn't be arsed to come to perform a disciplinary. He wasn't even a good programmer, introducing SQL injection vulnerabilities despite being shown how not to repeatedly. That's when he was actually working, and not either playing a console based online game or (I kid you not) asleep since he'd spent all night playing computer games at home. My boss was even forced to take him to a customer to be "technical advisor" when everyone else was unavailable. The guy got anxious since he knew bugger all, his stench became even more acrid from stress sweat, and the customer (MSN if memory serves) went elsewhere.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Seems to be a pattern. Stinky, incompetent, drives away customers, drives away talent = invulnerable.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    some smells more equal than others

    Way long ago I was asked to have "a talk" with a new hire about a bodily aroma problem, since I had already put in my notice and if the new hire was offended I'd be gone and everyone else could seem like good guys. Thing is, she was fragrant but not overly so, and certainly no more than Mr. Cologne or the chain-smokers who, to me, were way more offensive. And then there's the stuff people were heating up in the break room microwave. Not to give a pass to "Stinky Sam" and his odorous cohort, but sometimes I think some perspective is necessary. We're meat sacks, after all.

  14. Tony S

    As a junior manager in the 70s, it was sometimes left to me to do some of the less attractive jobs; and on a couple of occasions, I did have to talk to staff about personal hygiene and appearance.

    Not always the easiest thing to do; but my view is that there is no point dancing around, you have to come right out and state the obvious. This sometimes doesn't go down too well with the individual concerned. The first time was the hardest; so embarrassing. But after that, it did get easier.

  15. Corinne

    A few years ago I was recruiting for a PMO trainee. We had one candidate in his early 20's with exactly the right skills on his CV and had a decent telephone interview.

    Come the day of the Face to Face, it's mid-summer with no aircon and we're in a small meeting room. This guy STANK of BO, very stale smelling and definitely not just fresh sweat from the hot day, and we ended up cutting the interview as short as we could politely. He also had so much ear wax that it was literally poking out of his ears, which is a more vomit inducing sight than you'd think unless you'd seen it.

    When the agency called an hour later to see how it had gone, she was also a bit shocked. She said with school leaver candidates they tended to mention hygiene as part of the interview prep, but this guy had had 3 other jobs and been in his current role for over 2 years.

  16. Unicornpiss
    Alert

    Funk

    Executive assistants are the worst. For every young, attractive, personable one, there are 4 dour, backstabbing witches that wear perfume (in copious amounts) that will make your eyes water. Always a harsh, nose-burning scent too, or maybe just their corrupted flesh alters it. There is one woman in the building where I work that I realized I could actually track her progress not just through the building, but from her car to the building on a windy day.

    Second only to that are a few of the more obnoxious (and noxious) middle-managers that wear entirely too much cologne. The worst is when you enter a rest room and one of them is taking a dump, so the air is redolent of someone shitting on the Polo display at the local department store.

    Then we had the young intern that practised good hygiene, but would enter your personal space and let out long, squeaky farts that smelled like they came from hell's bilge pump. He was apparently oblivious to this habit of his and found nothing wrong with it. He would also occasionally burp like a seal barking.

    On the other side of the coin is a lovely woman that wears a chocolate-vanilla scent that smells like fresh cupcakes. I would never offend her by mentioning it, but I'd love to roll in it like a cat with catnip.

  17. Dr Scrum Master

    Why?

    How is it that these people are still employed when they are clearly unfit to work in the company of humans in an enclosed space or upwind of you?

  18. Just Enough

    Smelly people I've worked with

    The one who wore an ancient sheepskin coat. Imagine spending the day in a small room with a mouldy, dead sheep.

    The one who must have had a 50 a day habit. When they weren't out having a fag, they were in smelling like they had quite literally been smoke-cured. His clothing and skin had the properties of a pub ceiling in the 1970s; 20 coats of nicotine and tar that repealed water.

    1. regadpellagru

      Re: Smelly people I've worked with

      "The one who must have had a 50 a day habit. When they weren't out having a fag, they were in smelling like they had quite literally been smoke-cured. His clothing and skin had the properties of a pub ceiling in the 1970s; 20 coats of nicotine and tar that repealed water."

      That reminds me of a certain closed office, where I was trying to stick labels on a PC, for asset management.

      Turned out I couldn't: bloke was smoking like a complete madman, and the PC was literally yellow due to the amount of nicotin on the case ! Probably licking it would have killed me ! I washed my hands toroughly after this office :-)

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Sam" is famous for his smell

    There is only one one subway system in North America that is to be considered large. I worked for another passenger railway system under the same umbrella organization as this large North American subway system until very recently and we heard stories of horror about "Sam". Smell was one issue. Breath another. Rudeness another one as was protruding ear-wax.

    The dark humour was two fold being that his reputation was always a consideration of future projects. After a notorious derailment we needed to upgrade our equipment for safety. We looked to vendors for PTC systems. Our hidden requirement was "Sam" not be on the PTC team, This became a requirement when Local Transit Workers Union filed a complaint for "hazardous work environment" because a pregnant woman had thrown up while in an elevator with him and another union member became ill because of the smell and reported throwing up upon viewing a similar ear wax condition as was mentioned earlier by another post.

    Sam's smell is a burden to US Railway development. I am only exaggerating a little with that statement.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I had an uncle who was management for an offshore drilling boat, and he has run across this a a few times. Hygiene is damned important as one can get truly dirty working in the oil industry. Once one of the workers were so poor that they didn't have running water and actually had to be shown how to shower, which fixed the problem (poor guy had been lathering up with degreaser and wiping it off). Other times its with people who very strangely take discomfort in bathing. Its damned near impossible to fix, and most of them know how to play the game in order to keep employed while stinking. My uncle has said that he usually has success in getting rid of them by having HR call them into headquarters for some reason and after then gas up the place normally a replacement is more easily found.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ummm, no.

    I'm sorry but this situation sounds awfully familiar. If this is the "Ed" that I know of, he had it coming. There's two sides to every story. Unless Ed was in HR he had no place counseling an employee on their personal hygiene. Perhaps he was fired for being an arrogant prick who liked to boss people around and Sam still has a job because he's a competent employee.

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