Sincerely, One More Clove And I'm Gonna Kill You

Dear Abby,

I have a work situation that I'm not sure how to handle gracefully. It's not that I care so much about tact, but I'm going to have to work with this person for at least a year. See, when she first started through a special program that gives us another worker for up to three years, I wasn't very impressed. She constantly forgets things she's been told five minutes earlier. When she calls people and I talk to them later, they tell me she sounds like she's "in a fog." She's already having basic disagreements about her job description, even though it was made perfectly clear to her what she'd be doing before she started. Suffice it to say she's not the brightest bulb in the office.

But I have two even more basic problems than that. First, she doesn't have a car. She said she was getting one before she was hired. Her big plan was that she'd be a participant in a medical study and get cash for it. When that fell through (for unknown reasons), she had no back up plan to get a car. Our office is on the bus route, but it is out in the county. On day one, I ended up driving her home. I was not impressed. I mean, it's not like I wouldn't give somebody a ride. But when you put me in the position where I have no real choice in the matter except to look like a total bitch or drive you home, I don't like that one bit! To top it off, when I drove her home, I found out she lives one block from me! This sets me up to be her chauffeur whenever she's going in to work. I've since dodged at least five attempts at "You can swing by and pick me up, right?" And she's been here about two weeks. My response is usually, "No, sorry, I'm doing this other thing. So when are you getting a car?" The biggest problem with this transportation dilemma seems to be that since I work at the office three days a week, we're often the only two there together at the end. It's obvious that I'm going home. What kind of heel am I if I don't take her with me? After all, it's not like we're not going to exactly the same area. I'm pretty sure she's banking on me to be her ride three days a week. How do I get out of this?

Part two of my conundrum explains one of the reasons besides just generally being put upon that I don't want her in my car. She smells. In this age of soap and water, she smells. It's not like she exactly smells of B.O. She smells...well...like burnt hippy. If you've ever heard Ween's song "Hippy Smell" off of their God WEEN Satan album, it's spot on:

Hippy smell, I can tell
Patchouli oil, Sixties hell
You're not real, you're not surreal
Can't you tell? Hippy smell

She's got the hippy smell, ladies and gentlemen
You can smell the patchouli oil on her breath
She's got the grateful dead posters hanging up all over the place
She's says, "You know, man, I wish I was alive in the Sixties, Those were really groovy times!"
Well you know what? I've got something to tell you
You wouldn't have wanted to be alive in the Sixties
Cause you would've probably got your little hippy ass killed, or something
You little shit face

Refrain

Or if Ween is too fringe for you, I know you must've heard Lynyrd Skynyrd's song "That Smell" on the radio a million times:

There's too much coke and too much smoke
Look what's going on inside you
Ooooh that smell
Can't you smell that smell
Ooooh that smell
The smell of death surrounds you

Where "smoke" = pot and "the smell of death" = the last cry of the sixties.

She probably uses some kind of crystal instead of deodorant and she probably washes her clothes in some sort of special hippy water, like some people add lavender water to their laundry cycle. How the hell do you tell somebody that they smell stale? This Friday was particularly wretched, as it was cold. I turned up the heat. It was like lighting a scented candle. Eau de Hippy. It made things worse. I came home and I smelled like her, and not in a good way!

The best way I can explain it, is if you've ever worked in a restaurant or a pizza place, you know how the smell of french fries and just plain old grease sort of lingers on your clothes after you're home, and you pretty much have to change and take a shower if you want to smell any different? Well, that's what she smells like, only I think she forgot the part where you wash your clothes and then you wash yourself to get it all off.

I came home, had a bath with salt in the water, scrubbed myself with some sort of exfoliant before I did my regular washing and afterward coated myself in oil just to get it off of me. This is a beauty ritual that, while pleasing, I do not have the time to do three days a week. Help!

Sincerely,
One More Clove and I'm Gonna Kill You