Because we're a gov't contract, if people aren't doing their timesheets, the feds come after us with the dread audit and that makes payroll's life miserable, to say the least. So they cheerfully nag, beg, plead and cajole. The consequence for the employee are much less dire than for payroll.

ION, people are insane, I'm in denial and procrastinating.

So there's a discussion at this other board about how bad smokers smell and how sick it makes some people to be anywhere in the vicinity of a smoker because the reek is unbearable.

Now I feel like ass. Is it really that bad? Like when I'm just sitting next to someone? Should I carry barf bags?

I don't care for that smell, especially, Allyson, but that shit's just rude.

Is it really that bad? Like when I'm just sitting next to someone?

My grandmother was a pack-a-day smoker, and, well, the smell was distinctive in all her clothes and her person. Sometimes, at the library where I used to work, you could tell whether the person who had last checked out a book was a smoker just by sniffing the book's spine.

But not barfworthy.

A lit cigarette smells like somethign burning, which isn't particularly obnox for me; I do find the leftover smell of cigarettes obnox, because it stays for hours, and it gets into everything. Sometimes when I'm at a smoke-friendly bar, and come home, I take off my clothes and realize my bra smells like cigarettes. Which is annoying.

But not barfworthy.

It can be bad, Allyson. More if a person is in an enclosed space and smokes, as my parents used to do all Winter. They ALWAYS smelled like stale smoke and it was not a pleasing scent. If you smoke outside, it shouldn't be that noticable.

Every so often, like on the train, I notice myself smelling smokey, but I firmly believe it varies by what I'm wearing and the weather, since I usually smoke outside.

What Nutty said about it clinging to your effects. But it stinks way less than say, bodily functions, which we all have.

I had a colleague in graduate school who was a very heavy smoker, had standards of oral hygiene that I can only hope were not normal for her home country in Eastern Europe, and who wore very strong rose-scented essential oil. When I had to sit next to her in class it was really torture. She sort of smelled like a charnel house. It didn't help that I hated her for reasons completely independent of her smell.

When I go out to a bar or a smoky party (which is never, anymore) I always come home and strip completely naked before falling into bed. Usually I'm too tired/drunk to wash my hair, but I would if I could, because if I don't I have to wash the sheets the next day because of the stale smoke smell.

Our timekeeper sends us a reminder about our time sheets every pay period. Which really comes in handy since we switched from a paper-based system (where getting the physical timesheet was a good reminder) to an electronic system.

Which reminds me, my timesheet is due today.

Stale smoke smells icky but I've known a lot of smokers and only one smelled obnoxious. Nothing that opening a window, stepping outside, washing her hands or any of a zillion other things wouldn't have fixed.

It wasn't the smoke, per se. It was the smoker.

In the same way I don't think cats smell but lock 'em in a closed house without changing the litter box and there is stank.