It’s routinely bandied about everywhere from corporate retreats to back-alley dumpsters. The notion that everything in your job comes down to a keen sense of smell. Though what constitutes the “smell test” is rarely if ever mentioned. Is the method akin to sampling perfumes with a clean and disposable paper strip? Does it involve taste in any way, since so many smells are connected to our consumption? And what does it truly mean to fail the smell test?
Does an oversized schnozz give someone a nose up on sniffing the competition? Perhaps, it’s what made the Romans such a prosperous civilization in an age where chiseled features weren’t everything.
Sadly, as our society walks away from nuance, we have lost what it means to judge things individually. Say you enter somewhere, and the aroma of pungent fish stops you in your tracks. This would be a problem if it weren’t in a fish market, where the natural bouquet of marine life is perfectly normal, as opposed to say, your bedroom. Walking into a fish market and smelling soap or anything other than fish would be a clear failure of the smell test.
Be careful how you judge the smell test. And not passing isn’t the same as failing.
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