All of which is the absolute truth. This illustrates yet again how the ADA is actually counterproductive.

Hiring, or even interviewing, a person with any sort of mental or physical problem is a huge risk. If they want to, they will be able to find a reason to sue you. Hence, any business too small to handle the risk avoids the disabled like the plague, without giving any evidence that that's what they're doing.

I sweat, a lot, ridiculously a lot. So I keep a few extra undershirts and dress shirts if I need to change thriught the day, I drink up to 2 or three gallons of water a day and keep ice packs and hand towels in a insulated lunch box.

Looping this back around to another topic you like to talk about, I found that my own b.o. has almost disappeared since switching to a low-ish carb paleo diet. The acne is also gone.

I was about to comment that what you eat can have a major impact on how you smell.

Just wish at times that people could just be blunt.

If I have spinach in my teeth, I smell, zipper is down, or I look bad in a shirt. Tell me, just be polite. I can take it.

I work in an office here in Seoul, South Korea.

The Korean nationals I work with obviously take care of themselves. Nobody's clothes are filthy or coated in sweat. There are no obvious signs that they avoid soap and water.

But many of them stink to high heaven!

Why?

Because things like Kimche, you eat that in large quantities, you are going to start smelling a certain way, a very aweful, powerful way.

My only hope to avoid gagging when some of them stand to close to me, is to go outside, smoke the strongest cigar that I can get my hands on, and hope the tobacco smell cancels it out.

My boss went a step further and got a long lasting, not sure what you'd call it, but it melts wax that smells like various scents and it permeates the office pretty well.

If somebody smells to high heaven, somebody needs to tell them so.

It shouldn't be the stranger interviewing them.

My wife works with a woman who has a horrendous dental problem. To be accurate, her breath smells like she is rotting. She was "let go" from a gas station convenience store job and is still employed at her (unionized) grocery store job.

So, what's the consensus? Fire, tell, or what? How much revulsion is the public supposed to tolerate for some totally lame political rectitude? You can hire stinky,I'll shop elsewhere.

For someone in her case, if a discreet word is to embarassing or difficult, then leave a tube of toothpaste and a new toothbrush on her desk, along with a miniature thing of mouth wash and a single pack of dental floss.

If she takes the hint, then the $6.50 spent on that "starter kit" if you will, was 6.50 well spent.

If she promptly trashes it because she thinks flossing is the government's way to control her mind, then draw straws to see who gets to tell her why nobody stands within 2 feet of her when she speaks.

If she still refuses to change...well if stinking like a rotting corpse doesn't create a difficult and hostile work environment, what the hell does?

I work in an office here in Seoul, South Korea. ... -- Robert at July 1, 2012 2:43 PM

I was stationed at Osan (USAF base about an hour south of Seoul). If you watch people stepping off the Freedom Bird the first time in August you see their noses wrinkle and the "What's that smell?" look cross their face.

I was living downtown with a Korean lady and pretty much eating a Korean diet for about two months. (Lost a lot of weight.)

I also worked in a well ventilated secure building. Part of the area was strictly Americans because of classified documents. I stepped into the area one day and a mildly racist co-worker said, without looking up, "Who left the Korean in here?"

I didn't even realize my body odor had changed.

Eating somewhere around two cloves of garlic, plus other spices, a day will build up in your system.

Wow more people in ROK. Well Koreans tend to be a bit more fastidious, more willing to point out faults and errors. They also sweat less. I remember years ago getting deodorant was hard.

The smell is the surprising bit. Well smoking, diet of cabbage and hot pepper, and lack of deodorant. Mix in with the soju and long drinking get together, some hangooks get pretty stinky.

Robert, cigars? Have we met at SCAS?

Someone I know got dragged to the HR office and reprimanded for "picking on" a guy he worked with who believes that "hygiene" consists of waving "hi" to a guy named Gene.

Keep in mind: Not only did the offended party not beleive in running water (let alone soap), toothpaste, or clothes laundering, but both worked in the live-processing department of a poultry slaughter plant at the time. There's a problem when you can recognize the same blood splatter (or worse) on someone's ear that they got during processing the week before.

What, pray tell, was done to so deeply offend this young man?

He was given a gift basket containing body wash, shampoo, deodorant, and fresh socks. HR considered this an "aggressive" insult, even though the company handbook describes employee responsibilities to include proper hygiene, and even though it was quite obvious that this gentleman was not exercising it.

Years later, the guy's working in another department handling fully cooked product(!), still stinking, and apparently still offended easily. Someone else kindly bought him a gift bag of toiletries - which prompted another trip to the "Better Never, Ever Do That Again" speech room. The reprimand was dropped with the chiding of, "Well, you could have been nicer about it." I'm not sure of a less hurtful way to give someone a hint than to give em free stuff. I guess they wanted something more along the lines of "DUDE, it's called deodorant! It's not that expensive!"