What's 30 foot long and stinks of piss?

The Post Office queue on Monday morning. Boom Boom!!

You'd be amazed at just how stinky the general public are. It's not just the stereotypical stench of piss that certain old people reek of though. To be fair, most old people are niff-free but there are some who really could do with a good hosing down, a change into clean clothes and ideally a hermetically sealed nappy. A fad for garlic capsules has also spread throughout some of our coffin dodgers. Although we're too polite, we'd love to point out to them that odour free they are not. It's a sad state of affairs when I try to do a whole transaction on one lungful. At least they're not gonna have a problem with vampires. Or anyone with a sense of smell for that matter. Certain members of our local travelling community have managed to dodge soap for quite a while. Generally, when we spot 'em coming in we do a pre-emptive air freshener spray followed by another as soon as they're out again. Often this is not enough. Smelly buggers.

The worst stink offender was an old fella who also happened to be a chicken farmer. I don't know a great deal about chicken farming but I'd guess that he perhaps had slightly too close contact with his birds. He used to come in covered in chicken shite. Not just his clothes but his hat (I thought that chickens couldn't fly. The mind boggles as to how it all got there), face and hands. He only appeared to have one set of clothes and predictably enough was the type of customer who faffed and got confused thus making any transaction with him about 5 times as long as it needed to be. Literally he would make your eyes water.However, there is a happy ending to this tale. He died. Although he's probably a little bit more smelly now (probably not much though), at least I don't have to put up with it.

As much as I dislike the smell of stale piss, sweat or chicken poo I'd also like to point out that it's possible to go too far in the other direction.This particular sin seems to be committed most often by old ladies. Perhaps is because they get bought gallons of smellies for Christmas every year and feel the need t use it all up. More likely it's to mask the smell of stale piss and/or slowly decomposing flesh. I'm sure half of our clientele are undead. They just seem to be fixated on pensions instead of braaaaains. If there is a zombie apocalypse and it happens on a Monday morning I don't think I'm going to notice for a while.