I got busted for smelling good in our scent-free workplace. Quite mortifying to be told you smell…….good. Not allowed anymore.

It’s a shame.  With the holiday season upon us the perfume and aftershave ads are enticing us with beauty (no cellulite) and a lifestyle that can be ours if we only smell a certain way.  Enticing it is.

The picture is of my vintage Tiffany perfume bottle.  The perfume long ago used up but the bottle kept for the memories. That’s what perfume does for us; evokes memories and moments.

When I was in high school the “neat guys” were swathed in the smell of English Leather or Brut.  It was a cacophony of competing scent as they headed down the locker-lined school hallways.  About that time too, the fancy ladies at the perfume counters lunged as you walked by and squirted you with the cologne of the day as you walked by.  Now they spray it on a little piece of paper and swish it back and forth in the air before they grace you with a sniff.

I’ve been trapped in the workplace elevator with the woman so drenched in perfume that my eyes watered as well as walked through a cubicle world with smells like a perfume sampler box.

But still, green tea hand lotion? Really?  We have become so scent oriented that we burn scented candles, and have warmers to keep our home smelling like applies, peaches, pumpkin pie ( that’s from a song for those of you of my high school vintage years). We launder our clothes with products to produce artificial smell for weeks.

But we can’t smell at work.

So on Saturday as I pull on my well-worn yoga pants and my stretched-out sweatshirt, I place perfume on my pulse points and smell good all day.