If you know someone with bad body odor or bad breath, you might find yourself caught between feeling the need to talk to the individual and not knowing how to bring up the subject. Whether this is because you care about the person or are simply uncomfortable with having to smell the odor, body odors and bad breath are sensitive subjects for many people and should be addressed delicately.
Most of the time, you just try to deal with it until the person is no longer around you then you can breath a sigh of relief. But, what if that person giving off the pungent aroma happens to be your friend, then what do you do?
The goal is not to embarrass the person, but to inform and offer advice or insight that might help correct the personal hygiene habits and put an end to the body odor.
The fact that it may be someone you know makes it not only more difficult to tell them, but you also run the risk of ruining the friendship if for no other reason than embarrassment. As you try to work up the courage to tell the person, you also realize that you’re not the onlyperson who smells their “foulness”.
No one wants to be in closed quarters, like an elevator or car, with someone with bad breath or a body odor. 64% of those surveyed by the American Dental Association say they don’t say a word when confronted by someone with bad breath.
A new survey from CareerBuilder.com, says bad breath is one of the top personal reasons employers say would make them less likely to promote a current employee.
And if the person who smells is on your job, telling them becomes more difficult, because there can be a legal backlash. When an employee has a problem with body odor, it usually falls to HR to address the situation with tact – and a firm grasp of the potential legal pitfalls.
A female employee of a Washington, D.C., publishing company worked in the marketing department … and she smelled.
“Her body odor was detectable from two feet away”, recalls Chris Schrader, who worked in Human Resources at the time. “As the complaints came to me, I realized I had to deal with this myself.”
A rare situation? Hardly. Some career HR managers deal with offensive body odor as often as six to ten times per year. It happens in all sorts of settings, from factories to offices, and in various industries.
