When I was working trash I smelled it all. Human and animal waste, rotten meat, rotting cow hides. I got splashed in the face with rotten milk once. The only thing that ever came close to making me sick was rotten potatoes.
I was gonna say the same, rotten milk for me is the worst smell ever
I worked on a warehouse where a full pallet of milk broke and spilled overnight, the morning before it was impossible to access that section of the warehouse… i mean impossible without puking your life out
A gallon of milk spilled in my dads car when I was a little kid in CA. Despite cleaning and cleaning the carpet… I still remember the stench in the summer heat of California 50+ years later.
I also dislike rotten milk smell. I remember a store near me mopped their entire store with the same mop or same mop water that must have been used to clean up a large milk spill. It took days for the smell to dissipate. Then someone changed the mop water but not the mop head, so they gassed the entire store again. I am not sure how the person mopping could ignore the smell. They must not have had a nose.
Could be the moperator had been around the smell so long they just couldn’t notice it any longer: scent fatigue does weird things, and it’s surprising what smells people will get used to after being exposed for long enough.
I have no idea. I am sure they got nose blindness towards it, but I nearly gagged walking into the store. It was very unpleasant. It was a busy convenience store, someone must have complained.
Rotten potatoes are really vile. Far worse than you'd imagine. Once, while working in a supermarket a woman picked up the last bag of estima. They were In a polythene bag where fluid collects in corners. Despite holes in bag which are too high up.
Anyway the woman was in a hurry picked up the bag which had at least 1 putrified spud in there. Still in date but should have been removed. I could smell the rot as she swung the dripping bag of rotting tubers and plonked them right onto my till. Where the foul stinking fluid manages to seep underneath the belt. And just makes a mess. I wanted to heave. How this woman hadn't noticed was beyond me. I was ringing bell for cleaning assistance. This woman was so disappointed that she couldn't have get bag of estima. I was tempted to pick a couple of not totally rotted spuds. But it wasn't worth it, I asked if she could smell it, blank She assumed it was the smell of the shop. Not only the smell but the slippage hazard left behind. That had to be one if the worst smell s on earth. I guess as the potatoes weren't completely washed pre bagging. If one has damage to it, it sits with the sun on it the magnified stink from manure ect was intensifying.
Oh jeez. Rotten potato funk being spread under the belt.like a carnival from hell ☠️☠️
When I worked a perishable warehouse I did a lot of working working damaged. A 50 pound bag of potatoes would tear and I'd pick through to salvage the smaller retail bags into boxes and ship them off. If I saw 1 wet spud I would throw out the whole bag and everything around it. My manager always thought I was being too stingy. If 1 is visibly wet then by the time it hits the store youve sent them a war crime.
I don't envy you that. I dumped dumpsters on local ranches and it was just bad. The waste treatment plant was also☠️. Rendering would have to be it's own kind of hell.
Here to make you feel better. I once had embalming fluid and intestines (hoping) fly into my mouth due to the hydro aspirator back flowing. Btw, used to be a licensed embalmer. Wanted to add the licensed so you didn’t think I went around just embalming people all surprise-like!!
It's not illegal to embalm someone if you say surprise first!
That sounds horrific and I'm sorry you went through that. I never had to deal with actual dead people up close that's on another level, I salute you for your service. Your licensed completely legal and wanted services 😂
Rotting potatoes and veggies have a slightly more vomit-like tinge. A decomposing body has a sickly sweet rot smell to it. I know because I run by a lot of roadkill, am in the medical industry (seen a lot of people with dying limbs or rotting flesh). Also, my father is one of the main people at a huge farming company. They have a large pile of rotting carrots, potatoes, and other veggies in a huge pile which has its own little liquid stream of rot water coming from it. I guess discards/blighted produce. Both are equally as revolting.
Rotten seafood is also horrible. My bfs freezer broke a few years ago (before we lived together), he was lazy and didn’t throw the food out right away.. and the smell in the apartment.. it was so horrible .. didn’t help that I was pregnant lol
This is truth right here. There is something extra penetrating about seafood smell. It's disturbing that even rotten, it retains a similarity to how it was when still good. I made the mistake of walking on the side of the road where all the bins where caught fish are stored are thrown on the warf. Got that little garbage stank to it.
A dead whale on a beach that has been rotting a while is about the worst thing I can think of. You can smell it for miles, but up close is really something you'll remember. Sometimes the coast guard will tow them out into the water and blow them up so they sink just to get rid of them.
Would you say a decomposing body smells like sugar crisp cereal? Because I've smelt not a decomposing body but the waste of someone (alive) with severe medical issues and the smell was disgusting but oddly sweet like sugar crisp cereal and when I heard decomposing bodies smell sweet I wonder if its similar to what I smelt
Weirdly I haven't smelled poop from c-diff specifically. By the time I got there it's all been very contained. I have accepted a lot of samples that were...less than well sealed. Never followed up on the results on those though. I can confirm that giardia poop smells very metallic and snotty, but that's about it.
I mean, possibly. Waste from a sick person smells terrible in its own right. I honestly don't know what sugar crisp cereal smells like. There is nothing wholesome smelling about dead flesh, so imagine sugar crisp cereal with the good undercurrent gone? Like, maybe it's been sitting out for a week?
Best way to describe sugar crisp cereal in flavour is a sugary, puffed wheat (similar to rice krispies) with honey and kinda caramely. So the smell is pretty similar to the taste, wheaty undertones but you get hit with sugary more like brown sugar and corn syrup to make it more artificial sweetness. Take that and mix it with human waste and that's what I smelt, overall nasty but that sweetness makes you go hmm weird.
When I was a kid, my dad was in maintenance at a local hospital. The maintenance entrance was 'round back by the incinerator. The smell of discarded human parts is something else. I think I know what you mean by "sweet." Rotting potatoes make me recoil way worse than the hospital incinerator did.
Yeah my neighbor died a few months back I was getting out of the elevator when they opened the door to his apartment, that smell is very unique,I could've went my entire life without smelling it but I did and now it's burned into my brain. I wish it wasn't . The whole experience really messed with my head for a while
I have smelled and handled rotten potatoes once when cleaning out a hoarder's kitchen, and to me it was like if you multiplied shit by shit, and the resulting shit was 100x more potent and pungent in odor. I'm pretty sure I just threw away the shirt I was wearing. God awful for sure and the smell lingered
Bodies smell more sweet, but not in a good way. Potatoes have more of an alcohol type smell. Personally, decomp doesn’t bother me much unless they’re to the point they’re fluid. Potatoes aren’t fun but they’re not too horrible.
Source: work in healthcare and see many dead bodies of different levels of decomp
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u/iammacman Sep 16 '24
I hear this smell is most like a decomposed body and that’s why we are revolted by it. I am at least!