A rant on scents and public spaces
Some of y'all really have no fucking clue how bad you are at being able to evaluate your own scent-scape. This started well before the pandemic--Axe-brand products and Bath n Body Works being exhibits A and B--but ever since? Holy shit. If you think you don't have long covid but you also think things have lost their scent? I beg you to reconsider what you're doing when it comes to wearing scented anything.
I just had to thoroughly scrub my hands three times to get all the scent off them, from whatever it was that a previous shopper left on the cart handle, and then take a rescue allergy medication. The sweatshirt i wore to the store is now in the laundry because the cuffs had the scent all over them. Same for the fingerless gloves that i put back on as i left the store. Luckily i hadn't started the load earlier and also luckily, the scent didn't transfer onto my groceries.
Part of the problem is, of course, the formulas used for fixing scents and the amount of scent that manufacturers are putting into their products. Scents stick to things in a way they didn't used to. I've been scent-bombed by door handles at work, books from the public library, and my own groceries when i went through a regular checkout line instead of a self-check. And that's not even taking into account the laundry detergent aisles at stores. Pre-pandemic, i could usually smell them from a couple aisles away; i'm deeply glad that my masks keep me from that exposure, at least.
But the other part of the problem is y'all who actually buy and use that shit because you can't accurately evaluate how strong a scent is. At a soccer game last month, i had to move up-wind from someone who was wearing so much cologne that my eyes were watering. Outdoors! One of my colleagues used to barely wear perfume; now she wears so much that it's still quite strong in the late afternoon. How can i tell? If i open my office door when she's in the hallway, the smell gets into my office and i have to open the window to air it out.
This is part of why i continue to mask in public--to reduce exposure to these scents, which wreak havoc with my sinuses and, sometimes, can cause me to gag far worse than any skunk ever did.
But y'all? You've got to stop pretending that nothing's changed with your nose. Please, stop polluting the air around you with colognes and perfumes that can be smelled from 3+ feet away. Stop wearing hand lotions that cause other people to have allergic reactions to things you touched a day (or more) ago. If you've got anyone in your life with allergies, switch to unscented products entirely. Because if you've ever sniffed a Yankee Candle product and thought it barely smelled like anything? You're the problem.