Ever heard of soap and water, hippie?
 

Who here works/goes to school/lives with someone that is unfamiliar with the concept of bathing? I'm not talking about a person that has a legitimate reason to smell (works outdoors, for example). What I'm refering to is a person that by all outward appearances is normal member of society, but they overwhelm anyone who comes close with a putrid stench.

I've worked with two such individuals. At my last job, there was a very outgoing fellow that I came to refer to as "smelly guy", because whenever he stood over my shoulder or sat next to him, I nearly gagged. He was worse in the winter time, and I wonder if it had something to do with the sweaters he wore. He kept a horse, and would stop before work to care for it, so perhaps he worked up a sweat there, but he must not have noticed how bad he stunk.

At my current job, there's another fellow with the same problem, though I've yet to figure out why he has such an odor. Most days he's fine, but some days, wow. Other than that, he's a really nice person, so of course I'd never say anything.

I interact with a lot of Indians on the job.

I mostly have problems with people at the Arcade I go to. One smokes pot and the other just refuses to brush his teeth.

At least the one who doesn't brush is actually good in DDR.

I always liked the Army’s method of dealing with those who refused to bath… it involved dragging them outside making them strip, scrubbing them with the roughest scrub pad you can imagine being used on a person on the end of a stick and then blasting them with ice cold water from a fire hose.

My roommate senior year would shower pretty much once in a blue moon. He never seemed outwardly unkempt, but occasionally he'd walk by and your nose would get a quick punch of bodily disease and you knew it was him.

I was told that obese people can bathe daily and still possess a horrible reek. This is because a lot of the soap and lather that they build up in a shower isn't always washed away; the water has difficulty reaching the crevasses of their fat folds. So when the soap dries, it mixes with the heat and sweat, then breaks down into its base components, glycerin, oils and fatty acids. None of these ingredients are particularly fragrant on their own, and the perfumes in most soaps are too transient to mask the odor once the ingredients have seperated. And the whole combination with human sweat is far worse than typical body odor.

So if a smelly fat person insists that they bathe daily, they're probably being truthful. Tell them to spend more time rinsing. They should probably have a seperate washcloth or sponge for that purpose if the problem has grown to offend others.

Wow, I'd never thought about that before Crash, but that sounds like a very plausible explanation (it might explain the grossly obese kid I knew in middle school that smelled awful). Unfortunately, the two guys I mentioned were average size, not overweight.

So far I've never been with someone who doesn't take a bath. The temperature here forces you to take a bath since you sweat a lot and it's very uncomfortable if you don't take a bath/shower. But I met a few people who have a constant bad breath, but that's a story for some other time.

Huh, despite the temperatures here, some people refuse to bathe. Mostly the uber geeks from school and some people from work as well. It's fucking horrible and disgusting.

It's even worse when you step into someone's dorm room and realize the reason they smell. It's their lifestyle. Bad breath is just as bad but easily rectifiable.

There's a teacher at ITT who's notorious for his stench, despite being well groomed. The reason is pretty obvious - he has halitosis that could kill a yak. On top of being a pipe smoker, it's pretty obvious that he's never touched a toothbrush in his life.

The worst part is his habit of getting very, very close to you when he's giving personal instruction. He has to get right up next to you when helping with your computer, and there's just no way to escape the death breath.

If we're talking halitosis, my childhood orthodontist had the worst breath ever, which is ironic given his profession. I used to pray that my appointments would be in the morning, because he got worse after lunch.