10. Smells Like Teen Spirit

Well, there were no exciting stories to tell from the passengers tonight. Mostly, I drove people home from their jobs, or I drove them to their late night jobs. So, in lieu of telling you an exciting story, I thought I would tell you about another exciting aspect of driving people around.

And that is all the exciting smells I get to experience.

 

There are four common ones:

 

1. Body odor. Now Tucson is a hot city, so I understand that people will sweat. Even that people will sweat out their deodorant, especially if they work jobs that are outside. But some people don’t believe in deodorant (or even soap) and those people tend to give off an even more distinct odor. And perhaps others don’t have any sense of smell, and do not realize what others must endure especially in the close quarters of a car. At least that is how I rationalize the worst offenders.

 

2. Smoke. Whether it is cigarette smoke, or that from the marijuana plant, it feels like these folks that get into my car just walked through a very thick cloud of whatever they smoke so that they could store it in their clothes, track it into the backseat, and maybe survive the trip by inhaling their odors. I have, on occasion, gotten the contact high, and will crank the A/C to blow the smell to the back. The worst offender of this to me is the one who tracks patchouli smell into my car, thinking they are masking, whatever they were smoking. They aren’t.

 

3. Food. There are people that tend to bring whatever food they were eating and didn’t finish into the car so they can finish it in the backseat. Unfortunately, none of these people are eating high quality meals. Mostly it is of a fast food nature, lots of fake Mexican or deep fried and thus smells utterly repellent. It is even more repellent when they decide to leave their wrappers in the backseat for me to clean up. I always want to give these passengers lower stars for this but I never do. As long as they are polite to me, they can eat whatever.

 

4. Cologne. This is mostly left by men who feel they’re going out on the town to impress the ladies. They overdose themselves in whatever cologne they think is trendy, or even worse, have covered themselves in Axe body spray making my car smell like what I imagine an episode of Jersey Shore smells like. I don’t tend to open the windows on these folks because I think that would feel like an insult to them… although I suspect nothing could really insult them.

 

I decided to talk about smell because today somebody brought very new smell into my car. It took me a minute to figure out what the noxious scent was, but I figured it out. It was the smell of cat litter. It seems like this person either just emptied several cat boxes in their apartment or rolled around in kitty litter before making the call to have me pick them up. The smell was so strong it burned my nose hairs clean out and this was a fifteen minute ride. I don’t know what they put in cat litter but cats must have tough buttholes to take a dump in that chemical nightmare.

 

These things are why I am happy I have leather seats and not cloth ones that would absorb the odors. I also always carry a can of Lysol with me. While it professes to eliminate 99.9% of germs from the air (and while I want the germs to be gone), it also helps eliminate 100% of the smells. I tend to spray after each passenger, and while driving to my next passenger, will open the windows to air it out a bit. It helps makes the journey a little bit more pleasant, hopefully for the next passenger as well as myself.

 

I truly believe in Lysol.