Dear Thing, Vol. I.

Dear Economy SeBreeze® 5137 Aerosol Odor Neutralizing Unit,

Firstly, I’d like to tell you how much I appreciate your odor-abatement efforts. Overall, I find the “Orchard Harvest” scent you spritz about the men’s room stall to be quite pleasant. Without the services you provide my colleagues and I, the aforementioned stall would be an olfactory nightmare. It can’t be an easy task, all the spritzing. So again, thanks for your hard work.

I’d also like to mention that we’ve had our pleasant moments, you and I. Like the week in 2005 when your Orchard Harvest scent was abruptly replaced by an alluring mélange of tropical bouquets. Notes of coconut, papaya and what I can only guess was breadfruit danced through the restroom all week long. At times you could almost hear calypso music. Though this brash move was in all likelihood due to an ordering snafu or mix up in your home plant’s 5137-compatible fragrance aerosol canister shipping department, I secretly attributed this variation to you. Perhaps you felt a taste of tropics would bolster the spirits of the 2nd floor. I like to think so. Good times.

Unfortunately, all the fondly smelled fragrances and sweet-smelling memories in all the restrooms of the world can’t overcome the way I’ve started feeling about you. My admiration for you has dissipated. No, I did not write this solely to laud your efforts and sing your praises. I must get to the heart of the matter. I don’t wish to be at all confrontational, but still I must ask, so here goes: Why do you judge me? You know exactly what I’m referring to. It’s the spritzing.

Do I smell bad? Apparently, I do to you. It seems your better-smelling-than-thou freshening efforts have become a cruel “rating system” upon which you evaluate the foulness of all the 2nd-floor employees. You have become the Simon Cowell of the restroom; a cruel episode of “Defending Your Scent.” See, you almost invariably spritz when I’m in on or near the toilet, sometimes more than once. Last week it was three times in one interval. According to your manufacturer’s website, you require no programming and release a mist of fragrance every fifteen minutes. That’s a lie and you and Rubbermaid® know it! You see me as surely as I see you, your unblinking nozzle-eye looking and sensory nodes sensing and waiting, waiting, waiting…

I remember when Orchard Harvest smelled of camaraderie; when I knew that no matter what the department chose for lunch, a certain someone would have our sensory interests at heart. Now it now reeks of shallow, hasty appraisal. I think it was God himself, in a book called The Bible, who said “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” Well, you stink.

I hope you are proud of yourself.

M. Glarner