PARDON ME, BUT YOU
SMELL REALLY, REALLY BAD!
A cranky opinion for
CRANKY OPINION SATURDAY
CRANKY OPINION SATURDAY
Sometimes
you have to be rude. Friday night Mrs. C
and I went to NYC for dinner and an Off Broadway play, “Piece of my Heart.”
This is a musical about Bert Berns. Who
you say? Well that was the point of the
show. Bert Berns was the writer of many
popular songs, but no one ever heard of him.
Among the many songs he wrote were “Twist and Shout,” “Hang on Sloopy,” and “Take
a Little Piece of My Heart.”
Dinner was
excellent, and the show was very entertaining…at least for me; for Mrs. C. not
so much.
Five minutes
into the show, a very fat (needing a cane to walk fat), very sweaty lady asked
if the seat next to Mrs. C was taken.
Mrs. C said “Not yet.” Seats were assigned and clearly marked on the
ticket. This lady decided she preferred the
seat next to Mrs. C over her assigned seat.
This did not
seem so bad to me, but the lady did ask lots of questions as if Mrs. C was her
new best friend. She even asked,
“Do you know what this
is all about? I never heard of this guy.”
(That is kind of the point of the
whole show you dip shit.)
This
bothered me, so every time she started to talk; I leaned over and interrupted
her to talk to my wife. She finally got
the hint. Sometimes you need to be rude
to trump rude, and I knew Mrs. C was too nice to be rude.
When the
show was over I started to make some small talk about the play and Mrs. C cut
me short.
“I couldn’t wait to get
out of there!”
“What, you didn’t like it? I thought
the music and all was really good.”
“The show was fine, the fat old lady
that took the wrong seat next to me smelled like she hadn’t bathed in a month,
and she either peed herself or needed to change her ‘Depends.’”
So what to do
in this situation? This was a $60 ticket
wasted because this lady had no idea she stunk.
A lovely night out ruined because a fat, smelly, pee soaked lady who
would not shut up sat in the seat next to my wife.
Do you
request a seat change? Do you request
that the usher moves the lady to her real seat?
Do you take her assigned seat (a worse seat and not next to your husband?)
Do you tell
her she smells really bad? I mean
apparently no one has told her and other than smelling like a homeless person
she appeared to be a lady of means.
Why can’t
you just tell a person,
“Excuse me, but you smell so bad I
feel I may throw up.”
Why is that
considered rude, but smelling like a latrine is not rude?
Maybe she
reads blogs. If so:
“Hey - fat, sweaty, stinky lady from
Westchester, who may have peed herself and sat in seat G117 Friday night at ‘Piece of my Heart’…YOU FRIGGIN STINK…BAD and you ruined
our night out!”
Is that
rude?
That whole experience really stinks! My sympthies. I hope everyone who is too lazy to bathe and do their laundry reads your post...and at least feels a twinge of guilt.
ReplyDeletei'm sorry. i don't know what i'd have done - if anything.
ReplyDeleteWhat would you have done had you known at the time, instead of afterward?
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure I'd have asked the management to do something.
I would imagine, though, that even that would not really make it good.
That contraction of "Fire trUCK" came to mind when I first read the post.
DeleteThat's why I don't go out much, and any time we've gone to say, the opera, we buy tickets that are so eye wateringly expensive, that most anyone sitting next to us only reeks of money. Ha!
ReplyDeleteAnd that....is probably why we don't go out much.
That's what your wife should have said. Some people just don't know how that adversely affect others. Bless their hearts.
ReplyDeleteHave a fabulous day. :)
That's a difficult situation to be in. I think I might have excused myself, found an usher and asked them to return the woman to her proper seat. But it's hard to speak to someone about personal hygiene. I once had to fire an older employee because customers complained about her smell and she refused to do anything about it.
ReplyDeleteI think that saying, “Hey - fat, sweaty, stinky lady from Westchester, who may have peed herself and sat in seat G117 Friday night at ‘Piece of my Heart’…YOU FRIGGIN STINK…BAD and you ruined our night out!” would have been the gentlemanly thing to do!!
ReplyDeleteMy mother is from Westchester.
ReplyDeleteIt's a lot easier to silence a talkative person than to shoo away a stinky person. I don't know what I would have done in your wife's situation.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Stephen. If you had known, you could have told the usher, and the usher could have done his job and moved Stinky out of that seat.
ReplyDeleteOccasionally, we have little stinkers at school. You really have to hold your breath to not get sick. The other kids are pretty good about not embarrassing the stinkers. Our policy is to tell the school nurse, and she calls in the kid to see if they need anything. Some of them just need soap and shampoo and deodorant because they don't have it at home. Some don't have running water, so the nurse arranges a way for them to shower at school. I guess Westchester is too far to send our school nurse for a conference with Stinky.
Queenie will make all sorts of passive aggressive comments in such situations .... IF I am by her side for protection. She would have also switched seats with me and order me to handle the situation.
ReplyDeletewhich i would probably do. or not. i'm moody like that
It's a definite poser. Suppose Mrs. C could have responded "yes" when the interloper asked if the seat was taken.
ReplyDeleteI'm a stickler for rules and think if she wasn't where she should be, then she should be asked to move back by an usher. But then I'm thinking "oh what if her husband just died a month ago and she's hanging on the best she can" but then I'm thinking "but Mr. and Mrs. Cranky had a ruined evening," so basically I'm not sure what I would have done. All I would hope is it wouldn't happen the next time I was planning an enjoyable night out.
ReplyDeletebetty
If I had a dollar for every time I wished I could tell someone they stank, I'd be so rich I could buy a house without a mortgage.
ReplyDelete