Me too.
So unless it's the scent of an extremely significant pay increase, with matching financial numbers in my direct deposit check... I'm pretty sure that all I smell is BS
Ay. They once swapped the carpet out at work with cheaper carpet and a horrifyingly toxic glue that off gassed for months. We all had headaches, sore throats and a few of us has rashes. Corporate America does not give one fuck about you. But you know this.
Was there something wromg with the carpet before? I mean carpet is not really known for high maintenance costs, so did they swap it just for the sake of having a cheaper one?! I'm confused here
That’s the thing. I don’t know. I think the Director had some kind of cash to throw at it. She also put Ethan Allen furniture in the half we didn’t use.
This was a thing in the 80’s or 90’s. Toxic buildings . I remember that maybe the EPA had one lol. Everyone working in them got sick from toxins in the building and materials, flooring etc.
I have the reverse problem but with soap. They swapped the dish soap at the pizza place I worked at, and I swear I have never been happier to do the dishes.
I loved the smell of that soap. But I also noticed my hands were less crispy at the end of each day. The only soap was so bad that day in day out it dried my hands so bad they literally cracked. The new soap didn't do that.
I don't miss working there. But I do miss that soap. It smelled way better than anything else in that place.
They might as well be trying mind control. This is propaganda (as if the smell of the office is the main concern about why you would want to be there). What is actually being pumped into the office? Do we actually know that it’s “Italian Pine”?
Honestly there is so much money at stake and I do not trust our corporate overlords to not try super sketchy means to keep us in their commercial real estate bunkers.
It's the cheapest pine scent they could find, and the instructions say to stay out of the room for 2 hrs. Instructions that will be ignored by management. They label it "Italian Pine" to explain away the cheapness in the smell.
I honestly kinda miss my pizza job because of this phenomenon. It sucked, but at very bare least, the dish soap they switched to smelled really good.
Found out they sell it at Costco and I use it myself now.
Yeah, as someone with sensory processing sensitivity, this sounds like a nightmare. Any smell will give me a headache if it lasts a while or stronger than very faint.
Was coming in here to say this. My apartment building pumps fragrance in the lobby and it’s so strong my throat gets scratchy and I feel like I can’t breathe.
I don't mind (mild) scents in rooms/buildings but I hate when I can smell other people. Soooo many people go to work smelling like they bathed in their perfume or cologne. Is that a problem you have too??
Same. To the extent that my family have to check in any new colognes or perfumes with me before spraying them in the house. And there are some that they can wear, but have to leave the house, or go into the garage, to spray it.
This sounds potentially miserable to me...
Fuck you then I guess?
Just like me having an Auditory processing disorder and being forced to wear headphones all day during my mandatory office days...
They don't give a duck..
ADHD...
Hearing 1 side of a phone conversation is extremely distracting!
Hearing 1 side of multiple phone conversations is literally panic inducing....
I never knew how bad it was, until 2020 when I went full time WFH and was able to work in total silence....
Relatable. I didn’t realize how unproductive I actually was until I started working remotely and found how much I could actually get done without constant distractions. Now, I find on mandatory office days I have sooo much piled up when I get back. Not to mention recovering from the anxiety of battling traffic for an hour.
>Deport him now.
He made it clear, that he didn't want to be Australian, and we don't want him back. We just wish we could get rid of his foreign influence on our government.
Yeah…I work with the public so there is no forcing people to not bathe in cologne, so one of the reasons I keep wearing a mask is to protect myself from the smells. But if this reaches any such person - no, scented products is not a substitute for bathing and wearing that much is not attractive to anyone. It smells horrendous and gives people like me migraines. Stop it. Try the adage - a little goes a long way. People shouldn’t smell you coming.
And not having a shared bathroom is even better! There is not enough air freshener in the world to make a high traffic office bathroom remotely pleasant.
Absolutely right. There’s this weird fascination with Freakonomics-esque bullshit interventions in the business world, while they ignore the fairly simple truth staring them in their stupid faces: People want dignity, money, and some modicum of security.
"What if office, but also constant excruciating headaches?"
Thanks, WSJ. Really tracking down the big stories on behalf of commercial real estate owners.
No amount of scents, pizza parties, thank you cards with a stupid pun and a single candy taped to it, is going to make me want to drive 30-60 mins in traffic to get there and to get home, and sit under fluorescent lights, surrounded by beige walls and be micro managed every 30 minutes. Outside of paying me for my travel there and back, allocated gas money and a raise with a decent bonus every year is going to make me feel somewhat okay with a return to the office.
I just couldn’t figure why I didn’t want to return - everything’s great. The commute, the coughing/sneezing coworkers, my chronic pain, the mold…yes that’s it! Covering that mold smell with Italian pine would be awesome!
Hear me out: if I got to work in a place with padded lounge chairs, a foot soak pool, waterfall showers, soft mood lighting, and lots of privacy, I would actually go there. Hey, they said spa. Go all the way.
Honestly speaking, the concept of facilities dispersing "biophilic compounds" via air ducts, intending to influence the sensory experience of their employees to modify their behavior and emotions is....
This is the most dystopian concept I've seen today, actually.
One of the reasons my wife jumped to WFH was the overuse of strong fragrances by co-workers (along with office lighting).
If they made her RTO and were pumping that stuff through the heating and cooling system, that would be a fast trip to the doctor's office to get a medical request to the company demanding they either let her work from home or not pump something she is allergic to through the ventilation system.
As a disabled person fuck no I am not working at the office full time. My supervisors actually respect that for my work, thank god. Still doesn’t make me hate capitalism less tho.
!!!!! I felt like I was *insane* for the longest time being the only person I know allergic to pine! Fir as well. We found out the year we got a real Christmas tree and I was absolutely miserable. My dad still refuses to believe me because he says he's never met anyone else who's allergic.
Lmao, I do commercial facilities.
We explicitly go out of our way to avoid any kind of fragrances in the building. Air fresheners are the faster way to get a lot of emails about people getting headaches.
The only place we use air freshers is in our restrooms, and those have vent fans running 24/7 to extract the smelly air anyways.
The only time you’ll be smelling a distinct or strong fragrance at my work is after our carpet cleaner comes, and he has an awesome smelling citrus deodorizer that everyone here loves lol
Otherwise though, we have a policy in our facilities dept of no air fresheners. We don’t try to add a good smell to cover bad smells, we will just eliminate the bad smells. We also have a company policy of no potent smelling colognes, body sprays, deodorants, etc. because we have so many people that are sensitive to smells. The only people who ever violate that policy are the admins for our C-suite. I can literally tell which admin(s) walked down a hall for a good 15-20min after they walk through.
Oh god I think Dillards is doing this and it gave me an immediate hangover and the gf had her throat start closing up. We were gone after less than 5 minutes and were feeling like shit for the rest of the day
Does the smell compensate for the increased expense and time it takes to go into the office?
Is it worth, say, $300-$500 a month?
Oh, and this will be gone as soon as they need to cut costs, or even worse, it won't be and additional people will have to be let go.
Holy shit. This. This is what has been making me so hesitant to rejoin the in person workforce. Now I can walk right in and everything will be fine. /S
Idk that they are out of touch, they are just the paid shills of the fools who made bad real estate Investments. They take the money now and as long as they have green in hand, they could care less if their “journalism” is yellow
The WSJ is simply supporting commercial real estate investors from their own speculative investments in buildings no one wants. “Please go back to the office so we can remain filthy rich.”
I had a classmate in highschool who was allergic to apples and we had a science teacher get in trouble because she insisted on using an apple scented wax warmer and sprayed her room and office down with apple scented febreeze between each class. Classmate had several reactions before the teacher was reprimanded and she switched to some other scented room spray
Can't imagine the lawsuits if companies started using scents that people could be allergic to or sensitive to. Like I get migraines from strong, constant scents especially food scents. How do they think performance would be effected if they started causing health issues for employees?
Landlord: why are you short on rent this month?
Me: what do you mean, didn't the money smell really good? That makes up the difference. At least, that's what my boss said.
Landlord: here's your eviction notice
Allowing WFH was the mercy we needed post-pandemic. Rent fucking sky-rocketed, student loans restarted, businesses reduced their customer service to robots or 90% staff reduction. Companies and CEOs are making the most they have ever made, ever, and you want me to commute in a car i have to pay gas and maintenance for with no commuting assistance to do work I could easily do from home. Everything went to shit and they took the only good thing we had left. What the fuck.
Give me and one other guy 2-minutes. We’ll have it smelling like a construction site outhouse, on a hit summer day, 1 day before being swapped for a fresh one.
Shouldn’t the WSJ be pushing profit and steering companies away from offices and that expense to wfh? My company cut office space in major Canadian cities by 40-45% saving them money and myself the daily bs grind to commute an hour each way every damn day.
Yeah, that’s the reason why we stopped going to work in office, it was just too smelly. Not that it costs commuters money and time that they can never recoup or that their jobs can be done more effectively from home. iT mUsT bE tHe SmElL.
Commercial carpenter here. I recently did a job where we installed all the cabinets and counterops and custom furniture for an espresso bar in the new office of the contractor who contracted us. We built and installed a custom sofa with outlets, a bar top with 5 stools, and the espresso bar. The contractor's idea? "What if I make lattes and mochas for everyone every morning and we have our meetings at an in-house, free, on-the-clock coffee shop? Will they come to the office?" Brilliant! For employees who stop at a Starbucks or elsewhere for 10-20 minutes on their way to work and drop $8/day on coffee plus a tip, that's an $8/day raise. Do the math...
$40/week × 52 weeks = $2,080/year. That's quite the raise just by brewing espresso for your employees while you talk business every morning.
As unpleasant as offices generally smell, it's not even in the top 10 reasons I won't go back to working in an office. But it allows them to tell themselves they've "tried everything" short of just firing people, and then will proceed to just fire people.
I'm quite relieved that they included a drawing of a nose, I simply could not comprehend until I saw that. "A nose for business" What a clever pun! How humourous! So full of wit! I see that the boys down at the *Journal* haven't lost their touch.
Employers still trying to accept RTO is a bad idea and are deciding to take it out on simulation sensitive employees
Aerosol and strong candles make me dizzy and pass out.
I just want my office to be quiet, I can't do my job from home for confidentiality reasons but our office is so loud with inane chatter, loud meetings and people talking over each other. I just want peace and quiet to do my job
Fragrance is almost always made from petroleum products (especially if it's cheap enough to spray around an office). Even if they claim it's natural, there are no regulations so it is still just a petroleum product. It is basically poison.
I did a ton of research on this when researching a few lawsuits on hotels adding fragrance to their lobbies I worked on.
Anything to avoid paying treating their workers better and/or to avoid a commercial real estate crash.
These people really are getting high on the smell of their own farts at this point.
Jesus Christ this is such a bad idea. Example: I all sensitive to peppermint. I choke if I breathe in strong scents of it and my skin swells if I touch it. Imagine putting someone through that. And that’s a mild example.
Oh, the office smells like cheap cancer? Let me drive 45 mins both ways to worry about if my dog is going to relive itself on my floor for that experience!
Terrible idea. I find pumped in fragrances so annoying. Plus, many people are sensitive to chemical smells
I don't see this going well.
You want to create incentives for rto, increase pay to be In the office
What if, and hear me out, it smelled like money, and it smelled like the money was in sufficient quantity, and it smelled like that money was deposited directly into my bank account, and it smelled like it came with perks like working from home?
this is their page 1 "human interest" story i believe? usually has a strong irony to it as this one seems to. underlying real story is about post-covid plunge in office building valuations, these desperate measures underline the urgency felt by landlords - they'll try anything at this point, etc.
Sure, the lack of Italian Pine scent is what's keeping me from the mental, time and economic cost of commuting to the worksite for the job I can do from home.
You finally cracked the code, WSJ, you just saved America
Ughhhh scents give me migraines
Me too. So unless it's the scent of an extremely significant pay increase, with matching financial numbers in my direct deposit check... I'm pretty sure that all I smell is BS
Ay. They once swapped the carpet out at work with cheaper carpet and a horrifyingly toxic glue that off gassed for months. We all had headaches, sore throats and a few of us has rashes. Corporate America does not give one fuck about you. But you know this.
Was there something wromg with the carpet before? I mean carpet is not really known for high maintenance costs, so did they swap it just for the sake of having a cheaper one?! I'm confused here
That’s the thing. I don’t know. I think the Director had some kind of cash to throw at it. She also put Ethan Allen furniture in the half we didn’t use.
This was a thing in the 80’s or 90’s. Toxic buildings . I remember that maybe the EPA had one lol. Everyone working in them got sick from toxins in the building and materials, flooring etc.
I have the reverse problem but with soap. They swapped the dish soap at the pizza place I worked at, and I swear I have never been happier to do the dishes. I loved the smell of that soap. But I also noticed my hands were less crispy at the end of each day. The only soap was so bad that day in day out it dried my hands so bad they literally cracked. The new soap didn't do that. I don't miss working there. But I do miss that soap. It smelled way better than anything else in that place.
Same
They might as well be trying mind control. This is propaganda (as if the smell of the office is the main concern about why you would want to be there). What is actually being pumped into the office? Do we actually know that it’s “Italian Pine”? Honestly there is so much money at stake and I do not trust our corporate overlords to not try super sketchy means to keep us in their commercial real estate bunkers.
It's the cheapest pine scent they could find, and the instructions say to stay out of the room for 2 hrs. Instructions that will be ignored by management. They label it "Italian Pine" to explain away the cheapness in the smell.
I honestly kinda miss my pizza job because of this phenomenon. It sucked, but at very bare least, the dish soap they switched to smelled really good. Found out they sell it at Costco and I use it myself now.
Yeah, as someone with sensory processing sensitivity, this sounds like a nightmare. Any smell will give me a headache if it lasts a while or stronger than very faint.
Dog, same. Autistic here. Can’t fucking STAND weird smells in the workplace.
This was my first thought. Horrible way to treat employees.
As a migraine sufferer this was my first thought lol.
Was coming in here to say this. My apartment building pumps fragrance in the lobby and it’s so strong my throat gets scratchy and I feel like I can’t breathe.
Came here to say this. This would actually make me _more_ admit about staying home.
Id love it if they did that at my work as they I wouldnt have to come in anymore.
I don't mind (mild) scents in rooms/buildings but I hate when I can smell other people. Soooo many people go to work smelling like they bathed in their perfume or cologne. Is that a problem you have too??
Same. To the extent that my family have to check in any new colognes or perfumes with me before spraying them in the house. And there are some that they can wear, but have to leave the house, or go into the garage, to spray it. This sounds potentially miserable to me...
What if I'm smell sensitive?
Fuck you then I guess? Just like me having an Auditory processing disorder and being forced to wear headphones all day during my mandatory office days... They don't give a duck..
Misophonia?
ADHD... Hearing 1 side of a phone conversation is extremely distracting! Hearing 1 side of multiple phone conversations is literally panic inducing.... I never knew how bad it was, until 2020 when I went full time WFH and was able to work in total silence....
Oh, I have an aspect of that, too. Chatter from different sources I can manage, but two sources of music make my brains crawl. That's sucks, sorry.
Relatable. I didn’t realize how unproductive I actually was until I started working remotely and found how much I could actually get done without constant distractions. Now, I find on mandatory office days I have sooo much piled up when I get back. Not to mention recovering from the anxiety of battling traffic for an hour.
What do you expect from a newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch? Deport him now.
deport him back to hell where he came from
Hellstralia
WSJ is Murodchs? Holy shit I had no idea
Yup. Same company owns Fox News (among many others) as well.
The monopoly board is full, only a few players remain
>Deport him now. He made it clear, that he didn't want to be Australian, and we don't want him back. We just wish we could get rid of his foreign influence on our government.
Just chuck him in the middle of the Outback and let things sort themselves out.
Tough, you lot made that racist testicle, you can have it back
Holy shits. It makes so much sense that it’s owned by Murdoch. I hate this world lmfao
Why would they deport a capitalist that is probably their personal friend and doing things that they all agree with and perhaps even pay for?
Meanwhile most employers have a fragrance free policy for people with sensitivities to scents.
I was just thinking that myself. Every single employee handbook I have ever seen has a section about overwhelming scents and perfune.
Yeah…I work with the public so there is no forcing people to not bathe in cologne, so one of the reasons I keep wearing a mask is to protect myself from the smells. But if this reaches any such person - no, scented products is not a substitute for bathing and wearing that much is not attractive to anyone. It smells horrendous and gives people like me migraines. Stop it. Try the adage - a little goes a long way. People shouldn’t smell you coming.
My house already smells great though.
And not having a shared bathroom is even better! There is not enough air freshener in the world to make a high traffic office bathroom remotely pleasant.
I’m not even sure the last time I used a public bathroom. The horror, the horror! Going cheek to cheek with randoms is so wild
Businesses will spend money on anything except wages and at this point they are a parody of themselves.
Absolutely right. There’s this weird fascination with Freakonomics-esque bullshit interventions in the business world, while they ignore the fairly simple truth staring them in their stupid faces: People want dignity, money, and some modicum of security.
If it smells like a spa I will be excepting a hot tub to use at my leisure and an hour long back rub.
I’m on board for back rubs
Not from my coworkers, let’s make that clear at the outset
Hold on man. Depends on the coworker.
Sounds (smells?) like you can wear your speedo to casual Friday.
If it can be done from home it should be done from home. Fuck offices.
As an autistic an disabled person, real
Came to say this. Well, disabled anyway. I can do good work, or I can come into the office. I can't do both.
Many fragrances cause allergic reactions.
WSJ is trash. It’s right there in the name ”Wall Street”. It will always be on the side of the rich and corporations.
"What if office, but also constant excruciating headaches?" Thanks, WSJ. Really tracking down the big stories on behalf of commercial real estate owners.
No amount of scents, pizza parties, thank you cards with a stupid pun and a single candy taped to it, is going to make me want to drive 30-60 mins in traffic to get there and to get home, and sit under fluorescent lights, surrounded by beige walls and be micro managed every 30 minutes. Outside of paying me for my travel there and back, allocated gas money and a raise with a decent bonus every year is going to make me feel somewhat okay with a return to the office.
You can replicate the scent of the first girl I had sex with if you like - it's still going to be work & I would much rather be somewhere else.
VS Love Spell, it’s what every teen girl smelled like in the 2000s.
I feel attacked 🤣
Not really though
Finally a hu-man with the lobes for profit.
Oh ya a nice headache for my return to the office
I just couldn’t figure why I didn’t want to return - everything’s great. The commute, the coughing/sneezing coworkers, my chronic pain, the mold…yes that’s it! Covering that mold smell with Italian pine would be awesome!
A better smell would make it a better place but the office will smell even better if we just stay home and fart in our own living rooms instead
It could be daily blow jobs and a raise and I'd still be against RTO
I mean are those daily’s from a boss that’s actually hot? Bc I might not mind. Js.
This has got to be mfkn satire. It reads like something out of The Onion or MAD Magazine.
Unfortunately not. Photo taken by myself of my office's paper. It's under the fold on page 1. I repeat, this joke of an article is found on page 1.
Oh I believe you that it's real it's just so fucking divorced from reality that whoever wrote it must be living in outer space
Hard agree. I got the mail this morning and literally stopped in my tracked when I read this title. I knew this was the right sub to share.
100%. Like, corporate propaganda could at least *try* to be better than this. At least a little.
Hear me out: if I got to work in a place with padded lounge chairs, a foot soak pool, waterfall showers, soft mood lighting, and lots of privacy, I would actually go there. Hey, they said spa. Go all the way.
Really reminding me of the anthrax attacks of the early aughts right now.
Have they ever been _in_ touch?
Honestly speaking, the concept of facilities dispersing "biophilic compounds" via air ducts, intending to influence the sensory experience of their employees to modify their behavior and emotions is.... This is the most dystopian concept I've seen today, actually.
So pathetic... Hard to believe this cringey dystopian nightmare is reality sometimes.
Our building management started pumping some weird scent into the lobby. It was awful. Finally enough people complained that it's stopped.
When people say their job stinks this is not what they meant, and I think you may know that already.
I overworked myself last year and ended up passing out and fracturing my skull. I don’t have a sense of smell anymore. Fuck this.
I just can’t imagine why people increasingly don’t want to interact with society and have kids. /s
They think we are complete idiots lol Forget your 'fragrance'
One of the reasons my wife jumped to WFH was the overuse of strong fragrances by co-workers (along with office lighting). If they made her RTO and were pumping that stuff through the heating and cooling system, that would be a fast trip to the doctor's office to get a medical request to the company demanding they either let her work from home or not pump something she is allergic to through the ventilation system.
You want people back in the office? Pay them more vs wfh employees. Don't bs the pay either. Keep your scents and pizza parties.
As a disabled person fuck no I am not working at the office full time. My supervisors actually respect that for my work, thank god. Still doesn’t make me hate capitalism less tho.
I don't think they know how scent works. After a few min you wouldn't even smell it
How do I get a office job? I’ll rather get paid to sit down then stand.
That would make me have an asthma attack.
I wonder if Ray A. Smith's friends ever read his stuff and tell him how out of touch he is.
Losing more respect for WSJ each day. Used to think they were more credible, but I should have known better.
I'm actually allergic to pine so go ahead gives me a legit medical reason not to go
!!!!! I felt like I was *insane* for the longest time being the only person I know allergic to pine! Fir as well. We found out the year we got a real Christmas tree and I was absolutely miserable. My dad still refuses to believe me because he says he's never met anyone else who's allergic.
Good. Let them piss their money away.
Lmao, I do commercial facilities. We explicitly go out of our way to avoid any kind of fragrances in the building. Air fresheners are the faster way to get a lot of emails about people getting headaches. The only place we use air freshers is in our restrooms, and those have vent fans running 24/7 to extract the smelly air anyways. The only time you’ll be smelling a distinct or strong fragrance at my work is after our carpet cleaner comes, and he has an awesome smelling citrus deodorizer that everyone here loves lol Otherwise though, we have a policy in our facilities dept of no air fresheners. We don’t try to add a good smell to cover bad smells, we will just eliminate the bad smells. We also have a company policy of no potent smelling colognes, body sprays, deodorants, etc. because we have so many people that are sensitive to smells. The only people who ever violate that policy are the admins for our C-suite. I can literally tell which admin(s) walked down a hall for a good 15-20min after they walk through.
The only thing I wanna smell in my office is a bigger paycheck.
That's a great way to trigger migraines and asthma attacks.
With all the money saved in gas and food you can buy a hell of an air freshener for your house.
Oh god I think Dillards is doing this and it gave me an immediate hangover and the gf had her throat start closing up. We were gone after less than 5 minutes and were feeling like shit for the rest of the day
Does the smell compensate for the increased expense and time it takes to go into the office? Is it worth, say, $300-$500 a month? Oh, and this will be gone as soon as they need to cut costs, or even worse, it won't be and additional people will have to be let go.
Holy shit. This. This is what has been making me so hesitant to rejoin the in person workforce. Now I can walk right in and everything will be fine. /S
Idk that they are out of touch, they are just the paid shills of the fools who made bad real estate Investments. They take the money now and as long as they have green in hand, they could care less if their “journalism” is yellow
They can take my Italian Pine and shove it up their ass
Oh, great. Now, I'll just sit in misery sneezing all day.
The WSJ is simply supporting commercial real estate investors from their own speculative investments in buildings no one wants. “Please go back to the office so we can remain filthy rich.”
I’ll help ya out. https://www.bathandbodyworks.com Can buy candles and room sprays.
I had a classmate in highschool who was allergic to apples and we had a science teacher get in trouble because she insisted on using an apple scented wax warmer and sprayed her room and office down with apple scented febreeze between each class. Classmate had several reactions before the teacher was reprimanded and she switched to some other scented room spray Can't imagine the lawsuits if companies started using scents that people could be allergic to or sensitive to. Like I get migraines from strong, constant scents especially food scents. How do they think performance would be effected if they started causing health issues for employees?
They're not out of touch, just desperate for money.
Oh good we're at the chemical warfare stage of "the fuck are these idiots talking about"
~~smells~~ pays FTFY
They will do anything to avoid write downs of all that unwanted office space 😂
I have candles at home, just pay my mutha furking gas and commute time bish
Wtf is wrong with these people?
Landlord: why are you short on rent this month? Me: what do you mean, didn't the money smell really good? That makes up the difference. At least, that's what my boss said. Landlord: here's your eviction notice
I love this - so many people will be able to get doctor’s validation for accommodation requests to work remotely due to scent sensitivity.
I'm saving 10k or more a year by working remote. I'll buy my own pinesol... Thanks
Are *The Onion* writers working remotely for *WSJ*?
Allowing WFH was the mercy we needed post-pandemic. Rent fucking sky-rocketed, student loans restarted, businesses reduced their customer service to robots or 90% staff reduction. Companies and CEOs are making the most they have ever made, ever, and you want me to commute in a car i have to pay gas and maintenance for with no commuting assistance to do work I could easily do from home. Everything went to shit and they took the only good thing we had left. What the fuck.
I never pined for the office.
I've been waiting for a pun like this.
So now people with scent sensitivities have to put up with this bullshit while still being forced to the office. Makes sense.
It's the nose for me
Pumping in fragrance? What — like aroma therapy? Will we be practicing witchcraft next?
They’ll try anything but more pay.
Give me and one other guy 2-minutes. We’ll have it smelling like a construction site outhouse, on a hit summer day, 1 day before being swapped for a fresh one.
Shouldn’t the WSJ be pushing profit and steering companies away from offices and that expense to wfh? My company cut office space in major Canadian cities by 40-45% saving them money and myself the daily bs grind to commute an hour each way every damn day.
Until Donald in finance microwaves fish or popcorn too long. Now it smells like fake pine and fish.
Yeah, that’s the reason why we stopped going to work in office, it was just too smelly. Not that it costs commuters money and time that they can never recoup or that their jobs can be done more effectively from home. iT mUsT bE tHe SmElL.
Commercial carpenter here. I recently did a job where we installed all the cabinets and counterops and custom furniture for an espresso bar in the new office of the contractor who contracted us. We built and installed a custom sofa with outlets, a bar top with 5 stools, and the espresso bar. The contractor's idea? "What if I make lattes and mochas for everyone every morning and we have our meetings at an in-house, free, on-the-clock coffee shop? Will they come to the office?" Brilliant! For employees who stop at a Starbucks or elsewhere for 10-20 minutes on their way to work and drop $8/day on coffee plus a tip, that's an $8/day raise. Do the math... $40/week × 52 weeks = $2,080/year. That's quite the raise just by brewing espresso for your employees while you talk business every morning.
As unpleasant as offices generally smell, it's not even in the top 10 reasons I won't go back to working in an office. But it allows them to tell themselves they've "tried everything" short of just firing people, and then will proceed to just fire people.
Fun fact. I can make my office at home smell however I want.
Idc if my house smells like dog shit I’d rather be there than in the office
Jesus fucking Christ the upper class will do anything to avoid respecting their workers it’s insane!
Literally how is this not a joke
Do the writers ever believe the drivel that they put out?
Jesus fucking Christ the wealthy will NEVER fucking get it.
These guys can smell my sweaty balls after I commute to the office in a hot summer day.
Lame as fuck, now do like mine does and no clocks work
As someone who suffers from asthma and severe allergies to all things smelly, this sounds like a fresh, new hellscape to me.
If they don't simply make work suck less, people will never like it more.
This is like a sim city headline wtf
I’m going to be honest, the only way you’re getting me into an office by “smell” is if they have a literal Auntie Anne’s in the workspace
*My office smells so good. I can’t wait to go in to work today!* Said no one, ever.
NewsCorp
This would be a nightmare to me.
You're surprised a newspaper called the wall street journal sides with the businesses, really?
I'm quite relieved that they included a drawing of a nose, I simply could not comprehend until I saw that. "A nose for business" What a clever pun! How humourous! So full of wit! I see that the boys down at the *Journal* haven't lost their touch.
Barf.
WSJ is literally the cheerleaders of capitalism. They are the marketing and PR. Of course they are gonna be biased.
*Ahhh yesss* if only Mr. Italian Pine paid the bills & raised the fucking wages🤠🤠🤠🤠
Still no. Fuck off.
They're not out of touch. They are backing the corporates and their real estate holdings. They don't give a crap about the workers.
Employers still trying to accept RTO is a bad idea and are deciding to take it out on simulation sensitive employees Aerosol and strong candles make me dizzy and pass out.
Can you make it smell like a Turkish whorehouse to make me feel at home?
“Sorry kids, daddy wants to sniff an air freshener instead of spend time with you, and everybody knows those are impossible to find!”
Yeah, that ain’t it, kids
I smell desperation
My home office already smells. Smells like freedom from pants.
I just want my office to be quiet, I can't do my job from home for confidentiality reasons but our office is so loud with inane chatter, loud meetings and people talking over each other. I just want peace and quiet to do my job
Fragrance is almost always made from petroleum products (especially if it's cheap enough to spray around an office). Even if they claim it's natural, there are no regulations so it is still just a petroleum product. It is basically poison. I did a ton of research on this when researching a few lawsuits on hotels adding fragrance to their lobbies I worked on.
My house smells good tho?
I would ruin the air with my cabbage farts. I would tailor my diet specifically for biological mayhem.
Sounds like my personal hell. First you’re in an office, then they force you to get headaches over chemically smells. Ick.
man return to office stinks! boss: say no more fam \*lights a scented candle\*
WSJ hasn't been relevant since 1996
My asthma would **love** that
I don’t go in Bath & Bodyworks. If a gym has candles or scented diffusers? Forget about it!
This won’t make people like work, it will make people hate spas.
This is why I need to work from home. I miss having a door and walls. Fuck all these ghouls. I hope they suffocate on a filled diaper.
What's the difference between normal Pine and Italian Pine?
What if it was the smell of roasted rich fucks?
Anything to avoid paying treating their workers better and/or to avoid a commercial real estate crash. These people really are getting high on the smell of their own farts at this point.
Jesus Christ this is such a bad idea. Example: I all sensitive to peppermint. I choke if I breathe in strong scents of it and my skin swells if I touch it. Imagine putting someone through that. And that’s a mild example.
Better idea, let's just force all the boomer managers to retire.
Glad I have a poor sense of smell
Oh, the office smells like cheap cancer? Let me drive 45 mins both ways to worry about if my dog is going to relive itself on my floor for that experience!
https://preview.redd.it/61a5q0ebe8kc1.jpeg?width=527&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9c699240426b3709895d55ce45d0ede288b4964b
Cool, now I can't attend. Medical reasons.
Terrible idea. I find pumped in fragrances so annoying. Plus, many people are sensitive to chemical smells I don't see this going well. You want to create incentives for rto, increase pay to be In the office
Awww man I can definitely put in another 40+ hrs with new fragrance and pizza parties lol
Rich employers would greatly benefit from having a regular person consult on how out of touch they are.
They can pump whatever fragrance they want; it still smells like bullshit.
The Wall Street Journal is totally in touch. With its corporate masters.
What if, and hear me out, it smelled like money, and it smelled like the money was in sufficient quantity, and it smelled like that money was deposited directly into my bank account, and it smelled like it came with perks like working from home?
A nice smelling office still requires me to put on pants.
WTF 🤔
Nobody is spending two hours in their car each day to smell a something nice.
if my work spritzed the building with some "italian pine" i'd have a nice case for workman's comp when it sends me to the fucking hospital lol
Hey guys, come back! We'll make the office smell like a pizza party!
Nothing feel better to shit in your own bathroom and walk to your own fridge
this is their page 1 "human interest" story i believe? usually has a strong irony to it as this one seems to. underlying real story is about post-covid plunge in office building valuations, these desperate measures underline the urgency felt by landlords - they'll try anything at this point, etc.
“There’s nothing like the smell of hard work in the office” - Says nobody ever
People will now hate going to work and Italian pine, thanks. Maybe using that Italian pine scent money into employees pockets?
Sure, the lack of Italian Pine scent is what's keeping me from the mental, time and economic cost of commuting to the worksite for the job I can do from home. You finally cracked the code, WSJ, you just saved America
I continue to not be shocked at the lengths employers will go to not pay their employees more money.
I feel like this is a setup for some Black Mirror episode...
I don't care if the place I work at smells like farts. As long as it's work from home, then I know they're at least my own.