What is the worst smell or scent you have ever experienced?

The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > What is the worst smell or scent you have ever experienced?

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

I wish I could recall so I could regale you with tales of olfactory degeneracy, but alas.

Amazed that this one wasn�t posted yet, probably on par with the liquified rat story. :nms:

quote:

The infamous "Swamps of Dagobah" story

OR Nurse here. This is kind of a long one...

I was taking call one night, and woke up at two in the morning for a "general surgery" call. Pretty vague, but at the time, I lived in a town that had large populations of young military guys and avid meth users, so late-night emergencies were common.

Got to the hospital, where a few more details awaited me -- "Perirectal abscess." For the uninitiated, this means that somewhere in the immediate vicinity of the rear end in a top hat, there was a pocket of pus that needed draining. Needless to say our entire crew was less than thrilled.

I went down to the Emergency Room to transport the patient, and the only thing the ER nurse said as she handed me the chart was "Have fun with this one." Amongst healthcare professionals, vague statements like that are a bad sign.

My patient was a 314lb Native American woman who barely fit on the stretcher I was transporting her on. She was rolling frantically side to side and moaning in pain, pulling at her clothes and muttering Hail Mary's. I could barely get her name out of her after a few minutes of questioning, so after I confirmed her identity and what we were working on, I figured it was best just to get her to the anesthesiologist so we could knock her out and get this circus started.

She continued her theatrics the entire ten-minute ride to the O.R., nearly falling off the surgical table as we were trying to put her under anesthetic. We see patients like this a lot, though, chronic drug abusers who don't handle pain well and who have used so many drugs that even increased levels of pain medication don't touch simply because of high tolerance levels.

It should be noted, tonight's surgical team was not exactly wet behind the ears. I'd been working in healthcare for several years already, mostly psych and medical settings. I've watched an 88-year-old man tear a 1"-diameter catheter balloon out of his penis while screaming "You'll never make me talk!". I've been attacked by an HIV-positive neo-Nazi. I've seen some poo poo. The other nurse had been in the OR as a trauma specialist for over ten years; the anesthesiologist had done residency at a Level 1 trauma center, or as we call them, "Knife and Gun Clubs". The surgeon was ex-Army, and averaged about eight words and two facial expressions a week. None of us expected what was about to happen next.

We got the lady off to sleep, put her into the stirrups, and I began washing off the rectal area. It was red and inflamed, a little bit of pus was seeping through, but it was all pretty standard. Her chart had noted that she'd been injecting IV drugs through her perineum, so this was obviously an infection from dirty needles or bad drugs, but overall, it didn't seem to warrant her repeated cries of "Oh Jesus, kill me now."

The surgeon steps up with a scalpel, sinks just the tip in, and at the exact same moment, the patient had a muscle twitch in her diaphragm, and just like that, all hell broke loose.

Unbeknownst to us, the infection had actually tunneled nearly a foot into her abdomen, creating a vast cavern full of pus, rotten tissue, and fecal matter that had seeped outside of her colon. This godforsaken mixture came rocketing out of that little incision like we were recreating the funeral scene from Jane Austen's "Mafia!".

We all wear waterproof gowns, face masks, gloves, hats, the works -- all of which were as helpful was rainboots against a firehose. The bed was in the middle of the room, an easy seven feet from the nearest wall, but by the time we were done, I was still finding bits of rotten flesh pasted against the back wall. As the surgeon continued to advance his blade, the torrent just continued. The patient kept seizing against the ventilator (not uncommon in surgery), and with every muscle contraction, she shot more of this brackish gray-brown fluid out onto the floor until, within minutes, it was seeping into the other nurse's shoes.

I was nearly twelve feet away, jaw dropped open within my surgical mask, watching the second nurse dry-heaving and the surgeon standing on tip-toes to keep this stuff from soaking his socks any further. The smell hit them first. "Oh god, I just threw up in my mask!" The other nurse was out, she tore off her mask and sprinted out of the room, shoulders still heaving. Then it hit me, mouth still wide open, not able to believe the volume of fluid this woman's body contained. It was like getting a great big bite of the despair and apathy that permeated this woman's life. I couldn't loving breath, my lungs simply refused to pull anymore of that stuff in. The anesthesiologist went down next, an ex-NCAA D1 tailback, his six-foot-two frame shaking as he threw open the door to the OR suite in an attempt to get more air in, letting me glimpse the second nurse still throwing up in the sinks outside the door. Another geyser of pus splashed across the front of the surgeon. The YouTube clip of "David at the dentist" keeps playing in my head -- "Is this real life?"

In all operating rooms, everywhere in the world, regardless of socialized or privatized, secular or religious, big or small, there is one thing the same: Somewhere, there is a bottle of peppermint concentrate. Everyone in the department knows where it is, everyone knows what it is for, and everyone prays to their gods they never have to use it. In times like this, we rub it on the inside of our masks to keep the outside smells at bay long enough to finish the procedure and shower off.

I sprinted to the our central supply, ripping open the drawer where this vial of ambrosia was kept, and was greeted by -- an empty loving box. The bottle had been emptied and not replaced. Somewhere out there was a godless bastard who had used the last of the peppermint oil, and not replaced a single loving drop of it. To this day, if I figure out who it was, I'll kill them with my bare hands, but not before cramming their head up the colon of every last meth user I can find, just so we're even.

I darted back into the room with the next best thing I can find -- a vial of Mastisol, which is an adhesive rub we use sometimes for bandaging. It's not as good as peppermint, but considering that over one-third of the floor was now thoroughly coated in what could easily be mistaken for a combination of bovine after-birth and maple syrup, we were out of options.

I started rubbing as much of the Mastisol as I could get on the inside of my mask, just glad to be smelling anything except whatever slimy demon spawn we'd just cut out of this woman. The anesthesiologist grabbed the vial next, dowsing the front of his mask in it so he could stand next to his machines long enough to make sure this woman didn't die on the table. It wasn't until later that we realized that Mastisol can give you a mild high from huffing it like this, but in retrospect, that's probably what got us through.

By this time, the smell had permeated out of our OR suite, and down the forty-foot hallway to the front desk, where the other nurse still sat, eyes bloodshot and watery, clenching her stomach desperately. Our suite looked like the underground river of ooze from Ghostbusters II, except dirty. Oh so dirty.

I stepped back into the OR suite, not wanting to leave the surgeon by himself in case he genuinely needed help. It was like one of those overly-artistic representations of a zombie apocalypse you see on fan-forums. Here's this one guy, in blue surgical garb, standing nearly ankle deep in lumps of dead tissue, fecal matter, and several liters of syrupy infection. He was performing surgery in the swamps of Dagobah, except the swamps had just come out of this woman's rear end and there was no Yoda. He and I didn't say a word for the next ten minutes as he scraped the inside of the abscess until all the dead tissue was out, the front of his gown a gruesome mixture of brown and red, his eyes squinted against the stinging vapors originating directly in front of him. I finished my required paperwork as quickly as I could, helped him stuff the recently-vacated opening full of gauze, taped this woman's buttocks closed to hold the dressing for as long as possible, woke her up, and immediately shipped off to the recovery ward.

Until then, I'd only heard of "alcohol showers." Turns out 70% isopropyl alcohol is about the only thing that can even touch a scent like that once its soaked into your skin. It takes four or five bottles to get really clean, but it's worth it. It's probably the only scenario I can honestly endorse drinking a little of it, too.

As we left the locker room, the surgeon and I looked at each other, and he said the only negative sentence I heard him utter in two and a half years of working together:

"That was bad."

The next morning the entire department (a fairly large floor within the hospital) still smelled. The housekeepers told me later that it took them nearly an hour to suction up all of the fluid and debris left behind. The OR suite itself was closed off and quarantined for two more days just to let the smell finally clear out.

I laugh now when I hear new recruits to healthcare talk about the worst thing they've seen. You ain't seen poo poo, kid.

tl;dr Don't shoot IV drugs into your taint.

# ? Feb 4, 2024 02:49

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# ? May 11, 2024 22:14

Spinz: Jan 7, 2020; I ordered luscious new gemstones from India and made new earrings for my SA mart thread

Remember my earrings and art are much better than my posting

New stuff starts towards end of page 3 of the thread

1secondpersecond posted:

I used to work for an East Coast seafood business. Crabs, fish, & lobsters come in on boats, they go from boats to refrigerated trucks, and trucks to either the company's seafood store or restaurants that bought from them. A refrigerated truck carrying 4000 lbs of live lobsters broke down during a string of 90 degree days and wasn't retrieved from the lot (or emptied) for a week. No working engine = no refrigeration. I was told to put on a poncho and clean the thing out, and at that point it was full of two tons of hot, roiling liquified crustacean. Bad seafood is a rough smell on the best of days, but when it's that much and that far gone, it's like nothing I've ever encountered before or since. Seafood protein breaks down into ammonia compounds quickly anyway, so it smelled like someone was boiling a mass grave in the contents of a thousand trucker bombs. You'd try to walk towards it and your knees would give out.

This sounds like the worst to me

how in the world did you manage?

# ? Feb 4, 2024 02:53

Methylethylaldehyde: Oct 23, 2004; BAKA BAKA

Thesaurus posted:

There were two posts recently in the cursed images thread that described in great detail the smell of rotting rats. They say it's like nothing else you can experience and provoked insta vomit from everyone around.

Someone plz post the rat stories!

Dumpster Yeast Rat Beer posted:

This is the story of when they had to evacuate a city block in Baltimore because of a smell I made.

We were starting construction on a new restaurant location they were expanding and I was the GM for the new location so we got to work clearing out the mess left by the last restaurant. They were a bakery and out back there was a dumpster. They closed two years before. Not sure why it was there considering this alley basically has no street access other than a tiny door for I assume fire code reasons. Honestly I don�t know how they got it in there we had to cut it up with a torch to get rid of it.

It was full of dough and water we figured we could use the dumpster for something so we got to work tipping it over to get the water out. It was not water it was liquefied rat. Hundreds of liquefied rats. The three of us all began projectile vomiting immediately, before my brain could process the smell. It was a smell so strong you could feel it deep inside your chest and no amount of vomiting made it go away.
There were so many goddamn rat bones. They snuck in to eat the rotting dough and got stuck and drowned in what I�m assuming was a combination of rain water and soup made of their friends.

Covered in vomit and rat juice we did our best to regain our composure we went to the front of the building and tried to smoke cigarettes but they just tasted like death. It had been about a minute since we tipped the dumpster over and we heard screaming from around the corner. You see we weren�t the only ones projectile vomiting in fact most of the people on the street were and those that weren�t were running and screaming. Everywhere you looked people were wrenching I watched a little old lady get down on her knees and just erupt into a planter.

Then the fire department and the police and ambulances showed up. They cleared out everyone they could so they could hose down the streets and eventually came to the scene of the crime. A firefighter vomited into to his respirator. This got everyone including us into a vomitous fervor again but at least we were in the alley behind the restaurant to hide our shame.

�I�ve been a cop in Baltimore city for 30 years and I found a dead body that had been sitting in a vacant house for a month last week and this smells worse�

After a day of professional cleanup the city didn�t blame us because it was the trash of the previous owner. My wife made me take the train home instead of my car because I had a stench that literally woke nodding heroin addicts and made them move to another car. My wife made me strip in the yard and sprayed me with a hose. The clothes were destroyed, I even had to buy a new phone because it always carried the faintest hint of death smell. That was the worst thing I have ever smelled and I pray to god I never smell anything worse.

My personal theory is that there was still active yeast in the dough and it was fermenting the sugars from the rat corpses.

Behold.

# ? Feb 4, 2024 02:58

You Are A Werewolf: Apr 26, 2010; Black Gold!

Man, those taint pus and rat soup stories are perfect for this thread.

Vile, but perfect.

# ? Feb 4, 2024 03:11

JnnyThndrs: May 29, 2001; HERE ARE THE FUCKING TOWELS

Jesus.

All I have is the smell of burnt 90w gear oil - gear oil smells terrible anyway because it�s full of sulfur additives, but when a gear assembly runs out of oil and gets hot enough to melt steel, the aftermath stench will make you retch, and I�m a grizzled veteran of this poo poo.

I�ve seen apprentices open a gear cover and barf right into the unit. Then they have to clean it up, that�s the rule of the shop.

# ? Feb 4, 2024 03:19

McSpanky: Jan 16, 2005

Either a cat got into our apartment's dumpster and died or someone threw a dead cat into it, either way it was right after pickup and its body spent the next week putrefying in gradually deepening garbage juice in a particularly steamy midwest summer. The worst part was, the dead cat stew seemed to stick to the bottom of that dumpster, for months afterwards that goddamn thing reeked of rotting cat and blended kitchen offal. I'm about to hurl my huervos just thinking about it.

# ? Feb 4, 2024 03:41

Sentinel: Jan 1, 2009; High Tech
Low Life

Chicken poo poo on a hot summer day is the king of worst barnyard smells.

# ? Feb 4, 2024 03:44

Doctor Dogballs: Apr 1, 2007; driving the fuck truck from hand land to pound town without stopping at suction station

for me, #2 and #3 are a tie between the smell of grease trap being emptied and the smell of burning piles of camel bodies. (they have a lot of hair.)

#1 gotta be the time i forgot about some sweet potatoes in a cabinet and they decomposed and emitted a lot of liquid.

# ? Feb 4, 2024 04:11

Bubble Bobby: Jan 28, 2005

That taint abscess story was uh....that was a roller coaster

# ? Feb 4, 2024 04:27

Kirk Vikernes: Apr 26, 2004; Count Goatnackh

Imagine a caucasian Gamorrean guard and you have Arthur. Arthur was a 14yo 6th grader in 2003 and I'd been warned by the special ed department before he ever stepped into my classroom. I prepared myself and seated Arthur as far away from me as I could and I used the fact that our middle school is a positive pressure building to my advantage as it was the only way I survived August-December of 2003. I have never smelled anything before or after Arthur that could rival the smell that radiated from him. Rain or shine, my hallway door and the two service doors to the outside were open creating a wall of air between Arthur and I. (see image below).

Arthur couldn't read or write, but he sure could move his bowels. There had been many, many meetings between the school, Arthur's doctor, his parents or DCS (whichever was in control at the time of the meeting) and his IEP was pages and pages long but the one thing nobody could verify was his mother's claim "The boy just ain't got nerves in his rear end in a top hat".

He would poo poo himself anytime anywhere. Before, during or after class. However, the real issue was he would start then school day smelling like a mixture of dog, cat and human poo poo mixed with a musty odor and then when he poo poo himself, it was just the icing on the cake.

Students and I had issues dry-heaving around the kid because the wall of air couldn't protect us all the time and I had a couple girls that threw up from his smell. We only used the classroom about 40% of the time because I had a "modular computer lab" which was the hot ticket in the early 2000s for industrial tech classes and there was zero air movement in that room. The computer stations had roll-around office chairs and Arthur had a dedicated chair that went from gray to yellow by December and straight to the dumpster. The days in the wood shop helped because the fresh cut wood helped mask the lingering poo poo smell.

It got to the point they'd send him to the gym locker room to shower because it was affecting other students who couldn't concentrate due to the stench. Then, the custodians started refusing to clean it as he'd leave the shower walls, floor and ceiling covered in poo poo. Our principal at the time then started cleaning it up and she vomited in the showers due to the smell.

Although he poo poo himself many times in my room, I lucked out. The next year, he poo poo directly onto the floor in front of the other ind. tech teacher.

# ? Feb 4, 2024 04:48

HenryJLittlefinger: Jan 31, 2010; stomp clap

Ralph Hurley posted:

Once as a teenager I got shitfaced drunk at a party and passed out in a friend’s garage.
The next day my parents were of course furious not just because I was drinking but because I didn’t come home or call. My dad decided my punishment would be to do a bunch of yard work while suffering from a hangover. One of my tasks was to take a bunch of bags of cut grass that had been sitting in the hot sun for days and dump them onto a big pile of other yard waste. I guess the grass clippings had fermented or something and a blast of hot stank came out causing me to instantly barf my guts. My hangover probably intensified my reaction but that was an unexpectedly horrible smell. Not nearly as bad as rotting carcass or poo poo smell but this was an intense sour garbage stench that’s hard to describe.

Oh man fermenting grass clippings is a smell that just baffles me. Every couple years when I'm mowing I'll just dump a couple mower bags into the wheelbarrow and forget about it and it gets rained on. The last time I did it, it wasn't the usual mat of grass on top of a foul liquid, but the whole thing took on this peat bog consistency. I remember seeing the wheelbarrow and realizing what I had to deal with, so I set up a ramp into the back of my truck and ever so carefully wheeled it up in and strapped it down with a tarp over the top. The way the surface undulated was kind of mesmerizing. I drove it off to a ditch, by which time the seal broke and I could smell it by the time I pulled off the road. When I dumped it, it was steaming, and I'll swear the steam was green.

It's such an interesting smell. Not the worst, but it baffles me how rotting grass can smell that bad. And it's acrid and sour and chemical and fetid all at the same time.

# ? Feb 4, 2024 05:06

HenryJLittlefinger: Jan 31, 2010; stomp clap

I think probably the actual worst smell I've experienced is rotting fish, but under very specific circumstances.

My first job as a wildlife research technician, I was helping Bryan, a grad student studying black bears. The plan was to set up a strand of barbed wire around some trees about 2 feet high and put bait in the middle. The bears would theoretically smell the bait, cross over the wire, and leave a little hair on the barbs that could be used for DNA extraction. The bait we started out using was a mixture of fish and blood. The first time we made our bait was a complete and disgusting experiment. We went to a catfish processing facility with a 55-gallon drum in the back of a truck, stood at the end of a chute dumping guts and fileted carcasses into a truck (bound for a feed mill), and sorted through to get the least bony stuff. Then we went to a butcher and bought about 5 gallons of congealed cow blood. We dumped all this together and took a boat paddle and stirred it up in the drum, capped it off, and then left it to brew. We came back a few days later to distribute it into 5-gallon buckets for transport to the study sites. Needless to say, it was pretty rank by then, and Bryan puked a few times while I dry heaved as we ladled it out into the buckets. We made it through that process, did our first week in the field, and survived. This was in Arkansas in June and July, so everywhere we went, this stuff just got steadily worse, and every day was a slog of driving, hiking, and four-wheeling with putrefying fish slurry in buckets.

After the first trip, we figured out a few ways to refine the process and make it better, like not getting the fish skin or fins (don't break down fast enough, make unpredictable clumps that are hard to pour) and getting good sealable buckets with pop out spouts. So before the next trip, we went to the fish processor with a load of brand new buckets and sealable lids, carefully got the most degradable fish flesh and guts, put it in the buckets and sealed them tight. All the buckets went out to a clearing in the forest on campus (the 55 gallon drum of stew outside the wildlife building had gotten some people upset). We came back a few days later, and as we were driving into the forest we saw kind of a lot of turkey vultures. Turns out the pressure of fish rotting in a sealed bucket in the sun in south Arkansas is actually a lot. The pop out spouts on every one of the 10 or so buckets had popped up like a turkey thermometer, and one of them had geysered out the top everywhere. At this point we were terrified to touch any of them. We figured out a way to piece together a shield around one and very carefully reached in to open it. It sounded like a shaken up bottle of cola when we opened it and the stench was literally blinding. The explosion of liquid fish tissue out the spout looked like a fire hose of greyish purple slime. The smell was so bad we couldn't tell if we'd gotten any on ourselves, it was like a riot control weapon.

So now we were faced with two breached and eight sealed and very pressurized buckets of this poo poo and plans to load it all on a trailer and drive 6 hours to the field sites (on the interstate in Arkansas in July). Bryan knew of a deep freeze in the wildlife building that happened to be empty. We hatched a plan to come back early the next morning while it was still dark and the buckets would be cooled off. We carried the buckets to the deep freeze after hosing the guts off and prayed it would work. Thankfully, it did, and within a couple days they'd frozen near enough to solid to travel. A few days after the field trip, I was working on another project out in the school forest. All of a sudden, a department truck roars up the dirt road toward me, skids to a stop in a cloud of dust, and I hear "HENRY! WHERE IS BRYAN?!?" It was the building and equipment manager, who had found the deep freeze, in which something had happened. I don't know if our smell receptors were so burnt by this terrible poo poo that we couldn't detect it anymore, if a bucket had spilled, or if Bryan had left a bucket in there, but apparently the freezer was about ruined. They had to take it out to a shed and pack it full of bags of charcoal for the rest of the summer before it was useable again.

Turns out, bears were more attracted to stale donuts, so next season's bait was a lot more palatable but I was long gone by then.

# ? Feb 4, 2024 06:05

Nelson Mandingo: Mar 27, 2005

I was in high school and a casual friend looked sick. It was probably 3rd period? So around 10-11 AM or so. It's not like she was unhealthy. Healthy weight, etc.

But that day passing me while she left school she smelled just absolutely awful. Unforgettably bad. It took me everything to not horrifically gag.

To this day I'm still not sure what was wrong with her. And she was back a couple days later completely fine. But she smelled awful. It wasn't fecal matter, blood, or even a fishy vaginal smell. I can't even describe it. Completely unique. Maybe the closest thing is perspiration but way way worse.

Nelson Mandingo fucked around with this message at 06:17 on Feb 4, 2024

# ? Feb 4, 2024 06:15

Treecko: Apr 23, 2008; The Official Demon Girl
Boss of 2022!

HenryJLittlefinger posted:

I think probably the actual worst smell I've experienced is rotting fish, but under very specific circumstances.

Oh man I thought I'd forgotten this smell.

People leaving their gutted catfish in the gas station parking lot in an Iowa summer.

Nobody changed the trash cans the day before so when I went to do it, this 3 foot filetd beast fell out right on my foot swarming with maggots.

Rotten fish and gasoline yikes. Puked in my mouth a bit, took care of it and obsessively washed my hands for 30 minutes.

There wasn't enough gloves or soap in the world to erase that funk.

# ? Feb 4, 2024 06:30

1secondpersecond: Nov 12, 2008

Spinz posted:

This sounds like the worst to me

how in the world did you manage?

Step 1: get high. Step 2: hold your breath, run in, push a tote off the end toward the drain grate, hose the contents down the drain (yeah, in hindsight this shouldn't have gone into the storm sewer but what are you gonna do 20 years later), repeat. At the end, use a fertilizer sprayer to blast the whole thing with oxyclean. Step 3: burn your clothes and scrub up in clorox.

# ? Feb 4, 2024 06:33

Tarkus: Aug 27, 2000

Probably not the worst smell but A guy I had to work with in photography class in high school had his jaw wired shut for whatever reason. I had to work in a small darkroom with him for 3 times a week for like 3 weeks. His breath was loving gross and the stink filled the room as the stench got worse every time we were in the room. The smell of plaque... The smell of plaque and dirty gums still makes my gut wrench to this day.

# ? Feb 4, 2024 06:39

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Rotten potatoes somehow smell worse than a dead animal.

The worst thing that isn't rotten potatoes or dead animals is asparagus piss.

# ? Feb 4, 2024 06:46

HenryJLittlefinger: Jan 31, 2010; stomp clap

Treecko posted:

Oh man I thought I'd forgotten this smell.

People leaving their gutted catfish in the gas station parking lot in an Iowa summer.

Nobody changed the trash cans the day before so when I went to do it, this 3 foot filetd beast fell out right on my foot swarming with maggots.

Rotten fish and gasoline yikes. Puked in my mouth a bit, took care of it and obsessively washed my hands for 30 minutes.

There wasn't enough gloves or soap in the world to erase that funk.

I work in fisheries, so the smell of rotten fish and boat ramps and nasty boats in general is pretty familiar to me now. But there's still something about the smell of rotten fish that's been sealed. Whether it's at the bottom of a trash can all covered up or in a bucket or livewell, something different happens. A couple years ago, my technicians put water instead of ethanol in a sample of larval fish in a sealed 0.5 oz vial. I saw the vial had no fish in it, so I figured "what the hell, I'll open it anyway and put it under the microscope just to make sure I'm not missing anything." I figured out what had happened right away (a few tiny fish in tepid water just dissolve entirely in a few days), just in time to get the lid back on and seal it. I gave it to a coworker and said "hey, can you take a look at this for me?" and there was some immediate "HUUARGHHH."

The only thing I've found that really gets the funk off your skin is lemon juice, but it still takes a hot minute at the sink.

# ? Feb 4, 2024 06:55

HenryJLittlefinger: Jan 31, 2010; stomp clap

OneEightHundred posted:

The worst thing that isn't rotten potatoes or dead animals is asparagus piss.

I disagree, but I'm an adventurous smeller, I'll go in for a second dose of any nasty smell, and if it's funny it knocks the edge off. Asparagus piss just makes me laugh, like "lol them shits were good but look at this disgusting thing they're making my body do."

A couple years ago on a work trip, I foraged a bunch of wild asparagus and got drunk and just pissed out the door of my tent without opening the vestibule. I thought for a minute I was going to puke into the piss puddle and really have a situation.

# ? Feb 4, 2024 06:59

MrQwerty: Apr 15, 2003

I was a busboy at a restaurant and I had to clean both bathrooms at close.

I opened one of the sanitary receptacles in the women's room and, before I knew what was happening, retched into the toilet. The only thing I've ever smelled near it was a liquefacting rabbit that died in a culvert in july at my dad's house.

There were a pair of panties that looked like a murder scene and like a half inch of standing reddish-pink fluid in the bag. I called a couple of the girls I worked with in and they didn't even make it halfway to the stall. Took a good 30 minutes to regain my composure.

# ? Feb 4, 2024 08:14

Treecko: Apr 23, 2008; The Official Demon Girl
Boss of 2022!

Reminds me of another smell.

Catering totes. Used to deliver cases of food to the army base and retirement homes.

Nobody ever brought them back so it was my job to drive around and find them all. This has been sitting out for over a week and our busboy threw a knife at a customer in the bar.

I'll clean out these moldy greenbeans and start the smoker.

# ? Feb 4, 2024 09:09

Treecko: Apr 23, 2008; The Official Demon Girl
Boss of 2022!

'Oh its gross I won't touch that' is my least favorite phrase.

Now I have to do both our jobs at once. Get off your lazy rear end and help

# ? Feb 4, 2024 09:11

TheMostFrench: Jul 12, 2009; Stop for me, it's the claw!

Someone else mentioned dead rats, it's definitely that. I find them sometimes because of my cat. Even if you stick them in a sealed bag at the bottom of a container full of other rubbish they still have a stench that reaches out in every direction and attracts flies.

Besides that, it's usually a 50/50 between unwashed homeless people and blocked up public toilets (one possibly being responsible for the other).

# ? Feb 4, 2024 10:03

EoinCannon: Aug 29, 2008; Grimey Drawer

A particularly sweaty friend of mine's leather watchband that presumably hadn't been removed or washed for a long time. Surprisingly awful

# ? Feb 4, 2024 10:39

Staluigi: Jun 22, 2021

wound care on a woman who had breast cancer growing in her for years and because of various personal beliefs or stubborn denial absolutely refused to have any medical professional look at it. eventually the entire left side breast turned red, then black and blistered, then slowly fell off

was on combined wound care outpatient and home health checkups. insistence of family member ensured some compliance but this person was otherwise sour and impatient with anyone who was trying to deal with her or treat her. permanent inflammatory carcinoma abscess cutting deep into muscular chest tissue where the breast used to be, and the ... cancer hole ... traveled as far north as her armpit where it was creating all sorts of new, erupting issues with tissues and glands there. whole affected region presented as a crater of deeply inflamed tissue in various stages of rot, and some parts which had previously hardened to a leathery texture but would start to dissolve and fester because of how often the wound was "patient managed" aka packed up with various tissues or cloth or menstrual products and then wrapped with tape, for days at a time because she just wanted to cover up the issue and go right back to grocery shopping or curio hunting or whatever like nothing the gently caress was the matter.

this mess of absorptive and decidedly non-sterile materials would embed into the wound seepage and then spoil. then she would end up in our care and the embedded, rotted-in wads of "its cool bro don't worry about it" bandaging and packaging would have to be cracked open like a necronomicon of scents. on top of every issue you could imagine from everything i just described, the doctors described the smell as being worse in their experience than any other tissue decay they ever experienced, for completely unknown reasons to them. was it that IBC cancer tissue just pickled her different? or maybe it was that she was self-medicating with something that just sank its stink in and made everything uniquely more awful? no answer forthcoming, but the resulting mess must have had incredible potency because when her horrible giant diy bandaid got peeled off the resulting incapacitating miasma traveled across multiple rooms and would cause retching at .00000000001 ppm or whatever

deteriorating condition, inpatient. grew increasingly aggressive and abrasive to everyone who interacted her about being 'held' there, 'needlessly'. dama. was returned in a couple days. dama. welfare check, dead

not cna anymore

aint got it

do not got it

# ? Feb 4, 2024 10:57

MrQwerty: Apr 15, 2003

Treecko posted:

'Oh its gross I won't touch that' is my least favorite phrase.

Now I have to do both our jobs at once. Get off your lazy rear end and help

"It's gross I won't touch that," takes on a whole new meaning when you experience the sights and smells and hazards of chemo/injectable drug manufacturing.

We did a week hold cleaning study on a drug whose compound was a base of egg protein, soybean oil and anhydrous ethanol. It looked like cum that was thinner than water and it was foul.

The entire plant smelled like it for 3 weeks afterward.
Also the giant puddle of pure botulinum pooled under the conveyor to capping you had to clean up after a botox fill.

Nothing ever compared to that women's room, though.

MrQwerty fucked around with this message at 11:36 on Feb 4, 2024

# ? Feb 4, 2024 11:34

Treecko: Apr 23, 2008; The Official Demon Girl
Boss of 2022!

Oh yeah infection and cancer have it's own weird smell, I wanted to be a vet when I was younger but my stomach isn't as strong as I thought it was.

I tried and I can hold them still while someone else digs in the wound but even the sound of my own blood being drawn makes me wanna hurl.

# ? Feb 4, 2024 12:58

Internetjack: Sep 15, 2007; oh god how did this get here i am not good with computers; Top Cop

OneEightHundred posted:

Rotten potatoes somehow smell worse than a dead animal.

The worst thing that isn't rotten potatoes or dead animals is asparagus piss.

The gas given off by rotten potatoes is actually poisonous. Too much of a concentration and it will kill you quickly. It takes a lot of potatoes; but there are reports of families that had cellars of rotten potatoes and one person is told to go get some potatoes for dinner and does not come back. Next person is sent to the cellar to see what the hold-up is, and does not come back. Third person, same thing.

You do not want to stockpile half a ton of potatoes and let them rot.

# ? Feb 4, 2024 20:36

Dixville: Nov 4, 2008; I don't think!; Ham Wrangler

Internetjack posted:

The gas given off by rotten potatoes is actually poisonous. Too much of a concentration and it will kill you quickly. It takes a lot of potatoes; but there are reports of families that had cellars of rotten potatoes and one person is told to go get some potatoes for dinner and does not come back. Next person is sent to the cellar to see what the hold-up is, and does not come back. Third person, same thing.

You do not want to stockpile half a ton of potatoes and let them rot.

Well, I guess you could officially say that's the worst smell they ever experienced!

# ? Feb 4, 2024 20:41

Buttchocks: Oct 21, 2020; No, I like my hat, thanks.

Certainly the last smell.

# ? Feb 4, 2024 21:23

Nissin Cup Nudist: Sep 3, 2011; Sleep with one eye open

We're off to Gritty Gritty land

Gotta go with my farts, op

# ? Feb 5, 2024 01:14

Toxic Mental: Jun 1, 2019

Extremely old woman's house whose toilet didn't work right and she was a mega hoarder

# ? Feb 5, 2024 01:28

BAGS FLY AT NOON: Apr 6, 2011; A Soft Nylon Bag

Staluigi posted:

wound care on a woman who had breast cancer growing in her for years and because of various personal beliefs or stubborn denial absolutely refused to have any medical professional look at it. eventually the entire left side breast turned red, then black and blistered, then slowly fell off

was on combined wound care outpatient and home health checkups. insistence of family member ensured some compliance but this person was otherwise sour and impatient with anyone who was trying to deal with her or treat her. permanent inflammatory carcinoma abscess cutting deep into muscular chest tissue where the breast used to be, and the ... cancer hole ... traveled as far north as her armpit where it was creating all sorts of new, erupting issues with tissues and glands there. whole affected region presented as a crater of deeply inflamed tissue in various stages of rot, and some parts which had previously hardened to a leathery texture but would start to dissolve and fester because of how often the wound was "patient managed" aka packed up with various tissues or cloth or menstrual products and then wrapped with tape, for days at a time because she just wanted to cover up the issue and go right back to grocery shopping or curio hunting or whatever like nothing the gently caress was the matter.

this mess of absorptive and decidedly non-sterile materials would embed into the wound seepage and then spoil. then she would end up in our care and the embedded, rotted-in wads of "its cool bro don't worry about it" bandaging and packaging would have to be cracked open like a necronomicon of scents. on top of every issue you could imagine from everything i just described, the doctors described the smell as being worse in their experience than any other tissue decay they ever experienced, for completely unknown reasons to them. was it that IBC cancer tissue just pickled her different? or maybe it was that she was self-medicating with something that just sank its stink in and made everything uniquely more awful? no answer forthcoming, but the resulting mess must have had incredible potency because when her horrible giant diy bandaid got peeled off the resulting incapacitating miasma traveled across multiple rooms and would cause retching at .00000000001 ppm or whatever

deteriorating condition, inpatient. grew increasingly aggressive and abrasive to everyone who interacted her about being 'held' there, 'needlessly'. dama. was returned in a couple days. dama. welfare check, dead

not cna anymore

aint got it

do not got it

# ? Feb 5, 2024 01:31

Staluigi: Jun 22, 2021

really 100% dont got it, did not have it, etc

probably already knew before then but definitely knew afterwards. i'll clean the dead rats instead

# ? Feb 5, 2024 07:03

ghouldaddy07: Jun 23, 2008

In a house share a long time ago a party went on too long and some human poo poo ended up in a microwave which was then turned on. I truly can not even describe the smell. The house was evacuated people vomited I had a nightmare about the smell.

Some death threats were made, a rental deposit was lost but wisdom was gained.

# ? Feb 5, 2024 07:15

Junk: Dec 20, 2003; Listen to reason, man. Why make your job difficult?

ghouldaddy07 posted:

In a house share a long time ago a party went on too long and some human poo poo ended up in a microwave which was then turned on. I truly can not even describe the smell. The house was evacuated people vomited I had a nightmare about the smell.

Some death threats were made, a rental deposit was lost but wisdom was gained.

loving lmao

# ? Feb 5, 2024 09:30

GhostofJohnMuir: Aug 14, 2014; anime is not good

Someone I lived with got sold on traditional medicine for weight loss and bought ingredients for tea. I rolled my eyes but didn't think anything of it until they started steeping it and the entire house filled with this indescribably sour odor. It felt like I was physically struck and I ended up with a headache for an hour afterwards.

I've worked with grease traps, at landfills, around rotting animal carcasses, and none of the worst purification measures up to whatever the hell was in that medicinal tea. Didn't smell like any chemical or biotic material I've ever smelled before or since. I can't imagine how anyone could manage to ingest it.

# ? Feb 5, 2024 11:26

les enfants Terrific!: Dec 12, 2008

people talking about mouths and tumors made me remember how wretched a dog with oral cancer smells. really rough smell.

# ? Feb 5, 2024 11:53

bitterandtwisted: Sep 4, 2006

HenryJLittlefinger posted:

Oh man fermenting grass clippings is a smell that just baffles me. Every couple years when I'm mowing I'll just dump a couple mower bags into the wheelbarrow and forget about it and it gets rained on. The last time I did it, it wasn't the usual mat of grass on top of a foul liquid, but the whole thing took on this peat bog consistency. I remember seeing the wheelbarrow and realizing what I had to deal with, so I set up a ramp into the back of my truck and ever so carefully wheeled it up in and strapped it down with a tarp over the top. The way the surface undulated was kind of mesmerizing. I drove it off to a ditch, by which time the seal broke and I could smell it by the time I pulled off the road. When I dumped it, it was steaming, and I'll swear the steam was green.

It's such an interesting smell. Not the worst, but it baffles me how rotting grass can smell that bad. And it's acrid and sour and chemical and fetid all at the same time.

Growing up on a farm, we made silage for animal feed - essentially just tons of fermented grass. The smell of the runnoff was distinctive. but It just became a background farm smell to me - not pleasant or unpleasant.

# ? Feb 5, 2024 12:16

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# ? May 11, 2024 22:14

Samovar: Jun 4, 2011; I'm 😤 not a 🦸🏻‍♂️hero...🧜🏻

Tonsil stones. I... Can't quite describe how they smell besides from 'bad' because I can't think of a reference point. Closest I can would be... To imagine if chalk could go 'off'.

# ? Feb 5, 2024 12:29

The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > What is the worst smell or scent you have ever experienced?

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