Smells Like Geek Spirit
Touring the odor-scape of the working world
by Lee H Goldberg

National Public Radio's recent story about how the Scent Marketing Institute is helping gas stations to spread the smell of coffee at their gas pumps to spur sales at their convenience stores got me to wondering about whether this is an early warning of an imminent olfactory invasion afoot. Until now, most of the public odors (not counting public restrooms) we've lived with, both pleasant and unpleasant, have been un-manipulated byproducts of the natural world: our own activities providing a scent-scape which was often more informative than what we were seeing or hearing. I worry about a day when the forces of commerce start cluttering our nasal radar with noise and false information instead of the cues that we count on for our sense of place.

Whether it's the subtle mix of popcorn, salt air, and slightly stale fry grease that tells me I'm at the Jersey shore, or the top notes of lilac and andromeda blossoms punctuated with a hint of compost that defines my garden in the spring, smell has always been the sense that provided reliable dead reckoning across vast gulfs of space, time and culture. Even to this day, the heady odors of hay and horse manure in the barn where my daughter rides has the power to transport me back 30-odd years to the steamy summers I spent on my parents' horse farm working 12+-hour days baling hay, fixing tractors, and shoveling out stalls.

Workplaces also often have their own identifiable bouquet that tells us a lot about the place itself and the work that's going on there. For example: the unique blend of musty air conditioning ducts, fossilized floor wax, ancient lubricants, and a slight tang of ozone that is the signature scent of the many aging industrial buildings I worked in. Machine shops often have a similar smell, but with richer, heavier notes of cutting oil, hot metal, and various other materials that have overheated from time to time.

While modern electronics labs generally seem to be pretty scent-free, the many older facilities I've spent time in had their own distinctive smells. I can't quite place what mixture of odors jumps out at you, but there is definitely something that lets me know I'm in a place where electronics are being born. I suspect that some of the key ingredients include the smells of old office furniture, stale coffee, hints of burnt solder rosin and copier ozone mingled with the flat, dusty/metallic tang of overly-recycled air that has not seen daylight in a decade. Surprisingly, quite a few of the 1960s and 1970s vintage labs I visit on my editorial tours still have faint hints of cigarette smoke riding on top of the rest of the odorous cacophony. Given the public's fascination with aromatherapy and the new trend for high-end hotels to permeate their properties with a so-called signature scent, it's not hard to imagine a creative marketing type trying to replicate that smell to give newer, more sterile buildings the proper air of a place where real engineering work gets done. Besides making some of us old-timers more comfortable in those modern buildings it would provide an assuring subliminal message to visiting investors, customers and potential employees that the company they were visiting had a solid history behind it, regardless of the real facts.

Odors might also have some interesting (albeit worrying) applications at trade shows. I know I already sometimes follow my nose to whatever booth has a popcorn machine or espresso bar running, but it's only a matter of time before somebody steps up the ante. If you've bought or sold a home recently, you've probably got some firsthand experience with the real estate industry's tactic of baking cookies or bread in the kitchen just before an open house to help put potential buyers in a receptive mood. I can't help but wonder what sorts of scents enterprising marketeers might broadcast from their booths onto the show floor to get attendees into a buying state of mind, or to at least sit through the demo. Already large trade shows like ESC and Electronica subject their attendees to a cacophony of competing noise from various booth demos, but in a few years will you also find yourself in olfactory shock as each exhibitor tries to grab you by the nose? I wonder what sorts of scents are really attractive to folks like us? Fresh-brewed coffee is the obvious one, but how many of us would find ourselves lingering even longer in a booth that smelled ever-so-slightly like a pine forest, a sea shore, or one of those other places that sunlight-deprived tech workers rarely get to visit?

Comments? Questions? Ideas for stuff you'd like (or hate) to smell at work or a trade show? Sniff me out at: lhg at en-genius.net.