Juice Vs. The Stench Volcano

I wasn't scheduled to come to work last Friday. However, due to a bit of a scheduling conflict involving a press conference, a doctor's appointment and a vacation day for Mrs. A, the library was going to be devoid of all employees except for Mrs. J for an hour. This is not a good thing. For the record, while Mrs. J is a very sweet lady and a capable library worker, she's not precisely a whiz with computers and can only execute the most rudimentary functions of the new circulation software. She also has a tendency to answer the phone by saying, "Yeah?!" so we try to keep her as far away from both the computer and the phones as possible. At Mrs. C's request I came in.

I'd only been in for around half an hour when the loathsome Mr. Stanky wafted through the door. He's been visiting us far more regularly than we care for as of late and is responsible for putting us way over-budget in the Canned Air-Freshener department. Naturally, he wanted to use a computer.

All three computers were free, but I put him on the little computer by the stairs. It's the only one that has a wooden chair instead of a padded cloth chair. It's therefore less comfortable, hopefully prompting early departure, and less likely to hang on to offensive odors.

If anything, Mr. Stanky has become stankier and his clothing filthier since the first time I encountered him. I don't know the full story on this guy, but he's got some definite mental and cleanliness issues. From what I'm told--and this may be a local urban legend--a house that he had once occupied had to be condemned by the city and torn down after he moved out because he had rendered it impossible to de-stankify. And if the massive black stain on the back of his shorts Friday was any example, I can see how this might be true.

I would love to know what Mr. Stanky surfs for on the web, but frankly I couldn't get near enough to snoop even if I was of a mind to. He has a force field of stench that is overpowering. In an arm-wrestling match between Mr. Stanky's funk and that of the Sweatiest/Uriniest Woman in All The Land, Mr. Stanky's would SO go "Over the Top" and plow Sweaty's odor through the table several times over. In fact, she would be a refreshing pallet-cleanser by comparison.

Mr. Stanky stayed his half hour and then left. After he was safely gone, I took our new can of Febreeze Air Essentials, waded into the DMZ and started firing.

Normally Febreeze Air Essentials is a good product. I highly recommend it, due to its patented "clean & pleasant" smell. It does a good job of fighting and destroying odors instead of just covering them up. Until Friday, I had never known the odor that could withstand it.

I emptied half the can into the computer hallway, at Stanky ground zero. The stench ate every last particle of Febreeze, digested it and shat out something almost exactly as foul as before. I then retreated to our cubby-hole restroom under the stairs, where the air wasn't quite as eye-hemorrhagingly foul, and snatched up our big ol' can of Air Wick. I practically emptied it into the computer hall. Now the place smelled like rot and flowers. Great.

In the end, I gave up and fled the building, Amityville-style. Mrs. C and Mrs. B had just returned from their respective diversions, so my services were no longer needed.

I asked Mrs. C if she would clock me out cause I "forgot" and wasn't about to brave the stairwell to do so.

"You smell like Febreeze," she said.

At least that's all I smelled like.