Perfume counter girl
Don't spray me with that perfume
No perfumed wrists please
Some years ago - for my sins - I used to be a courier taking parties of Sun readers to Paris for the weekend.
One of the stops on the Paris tour was the museum of perfumery at the HQ of parfumiers Fragonard at Paris Opéra.
At the end of the tour all the punters were shown into a rather claustrophobic perfume shop in the basement where they would be madly spraying themselves with samplers of the dozens of perfumes that Fragonard offered. Not only did they do their own range but they also cloned all the popular perfumes from other perfume houses. At the time Giorgio Beverly Hills for women was THE perfume and so the basement of Fragonard absolutely stank of that overwhelmingly un-subtle scent!
"Georgio" was about as subtle as a punch on the nose! So much so, that some restaurants actually refused to serve would be diners who wore it, as its extreme pungency, the management decided, would interfere with other diner's enjoyment of their subtly flavoured meals.
I have a mild sensitivity to some of the ingredients used in perfumery, so staying in the basement at Fragonard whilst people drenched themselves in perfume would have triggered streaming eyes and possibly a massive sneezing fit in me! I used to stand outside having a cigarette and only dive back in to collect my commission (it was one of the big earners on that gig - a 20% commission on all perfumery sales!). Just as well, as couriers we were paid £20 for a weekend's work so the commission on perfume sales and on tickets for the "Bateaux-mouches" on the Seine were the major earners for us.
There were usually between 6 and 10 coaches waiting for us at Dover (the couriers only joined the tours at Dover) and of the couriers, I was the only one who spoke French meaning that whenever there was any trouble between our passengers and the authorities or 'commerçants' I was always the one called upon to sort it out! On one occasion an entire coach load of Sun readers walked out of the café where they had just eaten breakfast without paying. They allegedly thought that breakfast was included in the £5 that they had paid for a weekend in Paris! Fortunately the lady who ran the café ran out of the café waving her arms just in time for me to stop their coach from pulling away. (it wasn't my coach).
@Paulos_the_fog wow. We really were touring the best of our culture. Priceless.
@Paulos_the_fog oh deary me. What "fun". The lure of supposedly smelling expensive for free. I always felt that wearing any scent needed to ideally be subtle. Tacky really to go around smelling of the entire bottle.