He Who Smelt It, Dealt It

Dear Air Freshener,

Originally, I planned to write to air ‘fresheners’ in general, however, upon discovering you, Poo~Pouri, I couldn’t help but momentarily focus my rage.

I would like you to take a good, long look at your name. It is beyond frustrating and sadly begs further research. A quick browse through the illustrious Internet imparts the knowledge that the definition of poo is ‘shit’. The tilde could mean a hyperbolic billion things, the most common of which is a mathematical range. I have to assume with ‘pouri’ that you are attempting a take on the French ‘potpourri’ and have simply committed a horrendous misspelling. Nevertheless, potpourri and thus your ‘pouri’ comes from the French meaning ‘rotten pot’. Particularly, ‘pourri’ refers to the rotten aspect. So your name is a reference to shit becoming rotten. Lovely. But I digress.

In your description, I can see that mention a Sergio Batiz, who worked in an office with ‘less than perfect ventilation’ and didn’t like smelling poo all the time. Luckily his sister in law, the lovely Suzy Batiz, who is allegedly a master of blending oils and business acumen took his concept, literally, and now he has nothing to do with it. In thinking about the less than perfect origins of Poo~Pouri, I came to think of my own office bathroom’s automatic air freshener again and I thought to myself, ‘Did you really come up with this all on your own/with Sergio, Suzy? Did you?’

And then I remembered why I got started on this in the first place, Poo~Pouri, and that was because of the offensive automatic air regulation in the bathrooms at my place of work.

I will confess to spending time in the cubicles of the men’s room alternately crying and trying not to cut myself from the sheer horror of working, as I do, in a call centre. A lot of time. And in that quiet time, in which I am the only one in the bathroom and am not to my knowledge, defecating; the automatic freshener goes off regularly, filling my lungs with noxious perfume. A slow, but fitting way for a call centre operator to die. But I digress again.

Why am I subjected to air freshening, conditioning and moving around by way of fan when all I really need is someone to open a window (that is bolted closed)? Why do you, Poo~Pouri, insist upon jumping on this artificial bandwagon and shoving yourself in our faces (though hopefully not literally) with your home-spun lies and scents? And why can I not spend three blissful minutes of silence in a toilet cubicle crying without being reminded that the stench of my humanity needs to be cleansed away? Why?

I fear this gauntlet will come back to me smelling of rosewood and lavender oil, but I’m sending it your way Poo~Pouri, through the toilet, as your website suggests.

Adrik