Posted on 07/05/2007 8:55:27 AM PDT by COUNTrecount
WASHINGTON (AFP) - An office worker for the US city of Detroit is suing for her colleagues to be banned from wearing perfume which gives her such severe headaches, nausea and coughing fits that she must leave work.
Court documents showed Thursday that Susan McBride suffered so acutely from allergy to the chemicals in scents, lotions and sprays that she had to go home sick when a heavily perfumed co-worker shared her office at the city's historic districts department.
Her sensitivity is such that she avoids the detergent sections in shops and cannot sit near perfumed people in a movie theater or on the bus.
The co-worker refused to leave off the perfume, according to the complaint filed at the district court in Detroit, in the northern state of Michigan. McBride needed medical treatment and was off work for some time.
Now she is seeking a jury trial to make the city force fellow employees to come to work un-scented, citing disability discrimination laws. She is claiming unspecified damages for "pain, suffering, humiliation and outrage" suffered.
McBride and her manager have already asked the city authorities that employ her to enforce a "no scent policy as an accommodation to her disability, without success," the complaint said.
Personally, I have to avoid perfume counters, or RUN past them. It’s not as bad now, but a few years ago my throat would swell up to the point I was choking. Ended up an EMS thing once. Fortunately, it has settled down to the point where it is a mere annoyance, not sheer terror.
People who have problems like this (allergies to smoke and scents) shouldn’t be imposing their disabilities on the healthy and productive. Stay home or only go places where it is not a problem.
Yeah I know, back in your mother’s day women thought they just had to sit there and take it.
Yes, because the products are not necessary in the workplace and they are affecting another worker.
Ask yourself why is this person wearing perfume? Is for themselves to smell or are they emitting an aroma for others to detect?
If it is the latter then they are knowingly broadcasting chemical substances that they have been told are harmful to a co-worker.
You peanut analogy is false. If one kid is allergic to peanuts that kid can take steps to avoid them and everyone else can eat them with no detriment to the affected person, therefore banning peanuts is unreasonable. However, in this case, the allergic person has no control over their exposure to the allergen, and it is the other workers that are triggering her allergic reaction with an item they have brought in that doesn't even need to be there.
The only way you analogy holds up is if the other kids are bringing peanuts to school and forcing them down the allergic kid's throat.
The reality is already absurd. I agree with you, it makes you're head spin.
But there are things I can't discount: for example I can't tell whether or not the woman who brought the suit is litigious or desperate. It seems that she didn't just jump into court over this. I'm inclined to sympathize with her as I've suffered the same problems, all of my life.
Maybe I'm romantic, but I seem to recall a time when people voluntarily cooperated with neighbors. In those days politeness was a virtue; now it's regarded a weakness.
There are other factors not mentioned: for example around 30 years ago architects forgot how to put windows in office buildings, and started pumping the air in from the basement and through a matrix of tubes. Office space got more expensive and companies started stuffing employees into offices like Vienna sausages in a can.
These are the same employers who make pissing in a cup a prerequisite to hiring.
A major facet of the root of this is the invasion of privacy. Having our 'business' in the street and the street in our bedrooms is screwing with people's heads. Our society, no longer content with just soap, consumes gallons noxious concoctions to hide its smell. I wonder if deep down, we think we're putrefying. At the same time we call down thunder from heaven, defiant over trivialities like the right to wear cheap cologne, believing this to be emblematic of our freedom.
So now there's a lawsuit; sew the wind and reap the whirlwind.
What???? “My neurosis trumps your neurosis”
A neurosis and an allergic reaction are not at all the same thing. While a neurosis might make you uncomfortable, an allergic reaction can stop your ability to breathe.
You know what the allergists would tell her? Stay away from strong scents.
That dozens or hundreds or thousands should warp their lives around one person is nonsensical.
Oh. And good morning to you too.
No, she just despised whiners.
Do we now?
I've actually found that smoking bans have had the salutary effect of keeping whiners who obsessively blather on at great length about their countless ailments out of my sphere.
Very irritating and generally humorless people, human hairshirts.
No worse than bitchy old smokers, endless complaining about having to smoke outside.
My defense of private property rights vis a vis smoking bans has been filtered through your brain and been perceived, in the absence of any evidence whatsoever, as my "complaining about having to smoke outside."
Your incessant sniveling about your endless list of allergies and your smug elation about smoking bans seems to be a pitiful cry for sympathy and attention.
By the way, does your allergy medication make you irritable?
Your defense of private property rights is a farce, it is purely self serving.
That’s why they call them Yahoos.
LOL! Sure, right, think that if it makes you feel better. Go burn some weeds and breathe deeply, that’s rational.
84 posts before the REAL problem was even mentioned - the windows don’t open.
Funny how many ills can be cured by fresh air.
And how many are caused by office building air.
I share an office with someone who is highly sensitive and I am in that office partially because I am known to bathe and use light perfume.
I have a problem with people who take a bath in perfume and come to work and use perfume to cover up the fact that they haven’t seen the inside of a shower in weeks.
I have a solution. The Muslims have invaded Detroit. Go to work for one of those companies. The smell of non bathing and no perfume will be worse.
Difference is someone’s weight does not hurt someone else.
Of course there’s the weight nazis who only stop beating their kids to make nasty fat remarks,
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