03/22/2021
Serenissima
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Serenissima
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Management? Follow your nose!
In the mid-seventies, there was a big seller among the fragrances for young women:
The fragrance that you met almost everywhere: "Charlie"!
The company I was employed by at the time was headquartered in a high-rise building. The management took up the entire seventh floor.
The young women employed there all used "Charlie". There was not one exception.
And even in the stairwell, all you had to do was "follow your nose"!
On each desk stood ready to hand at least one flacon of this fragrance. By the exposure to light the contents had discolored differently; also the smells had changed thereby. Not to their advantage!
All the documents that came from "above" were tainted with this uniform scent. For "Charlie" was quite "encroaching" in those days.
You couldn't miss the executive floor even with a heavy sniffle.
The gentlemen of the management must have been very patient at that time. For they, too, were surrounded by this cloud of fragrance - and took it home with them.
(I just imagine: If this brought then mixed with the perfume of the wives: oh, woe!)
It was just too much of a good thing: "Charlie" was everywhere, spreading out, and even successfully riding the subway: you didn't lose her, the colleague!
I'm not sure if I even knew at the time, how the original Eau de Cologne smelled. Because I have never tried it.
Intensely floral-spicy on a woody sandalwood base and yet very lively, a colleague described it to me at the time. (He had given "Charlie" to a new girlfriend!)
Actually, so a fragrance that dressed young women of that time very well.
But there it was just too much!
As a young woman, I didn't think much about this "one-size-fits-all" fragrance. I thought it was rather cute; we laughed about it!
I almost think the consistently also very young women who worked for the management probably felt they were a "cohesive unit".
Well, they certainly stood out from us!
Today I realize that such a thing is no longer possible at all: strong perfumes in secretariats!
On top of that, there was still a lot of smoking going on at the time. Maybe "Charlie" had to stand up to the smoke, too!
I'm sure my last boss would have shown me the door had I used anything more than rose water.
After all, he didn't like that sort of thing at all; not on himself, nor on me.
A good two years ago I passed the office building on Bayerischer Platz once again.
Smiling quietly to myself, I wondered if it still smelled like "Charlie" on the seventh floor.
With the intensity of the use of that scent, surely the concrete should be soaked with it by now.
But perhaps a general asbestos abatement has been done in the meantime.
Too bad, I will never know!
The fragrance that you met almost everywhere: "Charlie"!
The company I was employed by at the time was headquartered in a high-rise building. The management took up the entire seventh floor.
The young women employed there all used "Charlie". There was not one exception.
And even in the stairwell, all you had to do was "follow your nose"!
On each desk stood ready to hand at least one flacon of this fragrance. By the exposure to light the contents had discolored differently; also the smells had changed thereby. Not to their advantage!
All the documents that came from "above" were tainted with this uniform scent. For "Charlie" was quite "encroaching" in those days.
You couldn't miss the executive floor even with a heavy sniffle.
The gentlemen of the management must have been very patient at that time. For they, too, were surrounded by this cloud of fragrance - and took it home with them.
(I just imagine: If this brought then mixed with the perfume of the wives: oh, woe!)
It was just too much of a good thing: "Charlie" was everywhere, spreading out, and even successfully riding the subway: you didn't lose her, the colleague!
I'm not sure if I even knew at the time, how the original Eau de Cologne smelled. Because I have never tried it.
Intensely floral-spicy on a woody sandalwood base and yet very lively, a colleague described it to me at the time. (He had given "Charlie" to a new girlfriend!)
Actually, so a fragrance that dressed young women of that time very well.
But there it was just too much!
As a young woman, I didn't think much about this "one-size-fits-all" fragrance. I thought it was rather cute; we laughed about it!
I almost think the consistently also very young women who worked for the management probably felt they were a "cohesive unit".
Well, they certainly stood out from us!
Today I realize that such a thing is no longer possible at all: strong perfumes in secretariats!
On top of that, there was still a lot of smoking going on at the time. Maybe "Charlie" had to stand up to the smoke, too!
I'm sure my last boss would have shown me the door had I used anything more than rose water.
After all, he didn't like that sort of thing at all; not on himself, nor on me.
A good two years ago I passed the office building on Bayerischer Platz once again.
Smiling quietly to myself, I wondered if it still smelled like "Charlie" on the seventh floor.
With the intensity of the use of that scent, surely the concrete should be soaked with it by now.
But perhaps a general asbestos abatement has been done in the meantime.
Too bad, I will never know!
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