Suppose you worked with a colleague whose perfume or cologne were heavy enough to be offensive. What would be the appropriate response?
First you might discreetly mention it to the co-worker in hopes that he or she would use less of the fragrance. If that failed, and if the odor were truly overpowering, you might approach a supervisor for assistance. Very likely, some sort of compromise would be reached, and work would continue as usual.
But most of us probably would not file a federal lawsuit under the Americans with Disabilities Act, claiming that the smell prevented us from doing our jobs.
A Detroit woman who worked for city government took that route, though. She was bothered by a fellow worker’s perfume. And although the city argued that there had never been any diagnosis of a medical problem and the plaintiff had never been declared “disabled,” she won a $100,000 judgment!
But what followed is equally alarming: Detroit officials established new fragrance rules for city employees.
The rules say workers should refrain from “wearing scented products, including … colognes, aftershave lotions, perfumes, deodorants, body/face lotions … (and) the use of scented candles, perfume samples from magazines, spray or solid air fresheners …,” The Detroit News reported.
We can only guess what the city’s offices are going to smell like now.
This is another case in which the parties involved ought to have relied on common sense and common courtesy — rather than costly lawsuits and a bevy of hard-to-enforce new rules.