‘No one's allowed to wear deodorant, let alone perfume’: Coworker claims they are ‘sensitive’ to smells and calls out employee for washing their hands with the scented office hand soap

Author image for Lana DeGaetano
Lana DeGaetano • "Show me to me please."
Oct 8, 2025 6:00 PM EDT

Usually, whoever smelt it, dealt it. In this story's case, a sensitive-nosed colleague sniffs out each of her coworkers like a dog at the airport, all to find out that the custodial staff changed the unscented office hand soap to a scented version… Meaning she hasn't washed her hands in a few weeks.

Our bodies are wild things we sometimes cannot control. There are cat lovers with severe feline allergies, Snickers lovers who would risk it all for a bite of the chocolaty goodness (with an EpiPen on hand, of course), and those who are sensitive to sound and smell. You can argue that it's nobody else's problem but those who have these sensitivities or allergies, but at the end of the day, some accommodations aren't that hard to meet. The accommodations this colleague is expecting are a little far-fetched.

No perfume in the office? No problem, it's offensive sometimes. No deodorant, nice try, I'll opt for unscented and call it a day. But chewing out a coworker for using the office-supplied scented hand soap? Not only is that low, but it also suggests they have not used hand soap since the custodial staff switched out unscented for a sun-drenched linen scent… Scroll to see how the targeted employee deals with this colleague.

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  • person using a public soap dispenser to wash their hands in the sink pictured
    via Claudio Schwarz for Unsplash

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • "AITH for refusing to stop washing my hands just because my co worker is ‘sensitive’ to smells?"

    I have this coworker who always says she's sensitive to smells. No one's allowed to wear deodorant let alone perfume in the office because she throws a mini tantrum if she smells anything except clean undiluted oxygen.
    via Educational-Jello486
  • Usually she just complains to the boss, then everyone gets a generic company wide email saying we're a scent free zone and blah blah blah. Eye roll. Everyone back to work.
    via Educational-Jello486
  • Now, she's been extra annoying these last few weeks. She keeps saying she smells perfume. No one will admit to wearing any. We
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  • get emails about office smells almost daily now and nothing changes. So she's decided to take the law into her own hands so to speak.
    via Educational-Jello486
  • Like 2 to 3 times a week she starts walking up and down the aisles, sticks her head into each person's desk, takes a big whiff, and moves on to the next desk. All to try to find the culprit.
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  • On Friday, she did this again. I had just come back from the bathroom when she got to my desk. She did her smell test on me and immediately lost it.
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  • Apparently the perfume she's been smelling the last few weeks was coming off me. After she made a scene in front of everyone, we determined what she was smelling was hand soap I used in the bathroom.
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  • She wasted enough time of my day by that point so I professionally told her to f off and I'm not going to stop washing my hands because she's a hypercondriac. The way I
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  • phrased it was like "hand washing with soap is a non negotiable hygiene practice and i will not stop doing it. You can't reasonably expect me to avoid that?"
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  • This was Friday and now I'm dreading being back tomorrow. Our boss was off Friday as well, so I expect I'm going to get pulled in to a meeting. AITH or are these just the Sunday scaries?
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  • I saw a few people asking for updates, so here it is! It's not too exciting though lol
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  • As I suspected, I got called into a meeting with my boss and the coworker today. I work at a small company so we don't have a dedicated HR department and our boss handles these kinds of issues.
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  • We ended up figuring out what happened. The maintenance guy for the building put new soap in the bathroom a couple of weeks ago. That lines up with when the coworker started smelling "perfume" in the office. So every
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  • time someone used the bathroom and washed their hands, she thought the smell was perfume. Probably by the time she noticed the smell and did her investigation, the smell would
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  • mostly be gone (it's only hand soap and honestly doesn't smell strong) so she could never pin point the source. On Friday, she
    via Educational-Jello486
  • happened to do her smell test on me right as I came back from the bathroom so it just happened the smell was still strong.
    via Educational-Jello486
  • a woman holding a tissue to her nose and wincing like she smells something unpleasant
    via Curated Lifestyle For Unsplash+

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • My boss ended up just buying new hand soap, I think to smooth things over, and placed the bottles in the bathrooms. He asked everyone to please use the new unscented soaps until they can get the ones in the bathroom changed.
    via Educational-Jello486
  • The coworker was making a bit of a scene during the meeting. She kept thrusting her finger at me and saying things like "YOU don't respect me! YOU don't take my issues seriously". Which is
    via Educational-Jello486
  • honestly true. I don't take her issues seriously. There's times she smells something no one else can smell and she'll get angry at people using scents. Then I've seen her walk in the bathroom right after someone sprayed perfume and not notice anything.
    via Educational-Jello486
  • Last year she also demanded everyone stop using scented detergents at home. No one I talk to has stopped, including myself, but she thinks everyone has and so doesn't smell scented detergent anymore coincidentally.
    via Educational-Jello486
  • Anyways I'm professional at work. So while I don't actually take her seriously, I don't express that. I feel like she was just projecting her issues with other coworkers at me. We're not friends but I don't treat her any differently. I
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  • don't even join in when people are talking sh about her, which is a lot lol. The only reason I sit near her is because everyone else has asked to move within a few weeks because she's so difficult. I can tolerate her so it's been my desk for a while.
    via Educational-Jello486
  • Anyways, I asked her to explain what I did that makes her feel like I don't respect her. She couldn't come up with an answer (because there isn't one) and kind of just stumbled on her
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  • words. Then I asked when I can expect an apology for embarrassing me on Friday and accusing me of not respecting her today.
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  • She ended up just walking out and when I got back to my desk, her purse was gone so I guess she just left for the day.
    via Educational-Jello486
  • Also, this didn't click until I was reading some comments on my original post, but I guess this whole situation means she doesn't wash her hands otherwise she would have smelled the soap right away. Glad I never had any of her stuff at the potlucks! Anyways, that's the update
    via Educational-Jello486
  • Sea-Ad9057 next time she starts on one of her rampages ask her how she didnt realise the hand soap had a smell on it in the bathroom
    via Sea-Ad9057
  • littlescreechyowl "Gasp, do you not wash your hands after using the bathroom?"
    via littlescreechyowl

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