Addressing poor hygiene with boss

[AlocasiaPolly]

What is the best/least offensive way to bring up poor personal hygiene with someone who is technically my boss?
I could ask our more senior managers to have a quiet word, but because we've worked together for many years I think he'd probably take it better from me.
If I don't say something soon I'm pretty sure that more junior members of the team will take it to senior management, it's becoming an issue for thier training.

I worked with someone who had foul BO. I bought a few cheap deodorants and left one a week on their desk. After a few weeks they started wearing a clean shirt to work everyday. 🙃

There's no easy way to tell someone they smell.

I'd leave it to senior management.

What a sneaky and nasty thing to do!

Mission achieved, for you , but not a nice thing to do at all. OP I would personally let management deal with it.

This is a really shitty thing to do.

OP definitely go to senior management

No way in hell would I be addressing that with somebody who is technically my boss. It needs to come from somebody senior. It doesn’t matter how you dress it up, you’re telling your senior that they honk. It can’t end well for you.

OMG- I had this years ago. He didn't use deodorant or anti-perspirant and even clients complained about the BO stench! You could even smell it after he'd left the room an hour beforehand😩

I think in the end his boss or HR spoke to him and things improved. Speak to their senior or HR OP, its not your job to inform them!

Wow, what a passive aggressive, nasty way of dealing with it.

Thanks all, I'll speak to our senior manager Monday.

Leave an anonymous letter on his desk. Get chat gpt to write it so that it doesn't "sound" like you. Wear gloves when loading up the paper and printing so that they can't get your finger prints.

Good luck!!

... I am kind of joking but also kind of not.

Leave it to senior management OP. You don’t want to be the bad one! There may be a personal reason for it and having someone approach it professionally and gently may allow for him
to get some help/support.

What a horrible way of dealing with it. Poor person must have felt humiliated. Weird how you sound proud of the outcome despite it being such a passive aggressive, sneaky way of 'dealing' with it.

You know him so you would know if he'd probably prefer to hear it from you but it I wouldn't follow PP's mean suggestion to leave deodorant on his desk

That's horrible.

Being direct but not brutal is the best way, and approaching it from the perspective of asking if anything is wrong - this gives the person a way to save face. "Some people have noticed that your clothes don't smell very fresh lately and I wondered if anything is wrong."

@JockTamsonsBairns @whatsitcalledwhen @FriendlyNeighbourhoodAccountant @LadyKenya @Eightfour @Fallenangelofthenorth Can I ask why feel that leaving a deodorant on someones desk would be humiliating and nasty? Surely its more subtle than confronting the person?

As a teen I had a Saturday job. The boss came to me one day and asked that I use more deodorant. I was utterly mortified and would have much preferred a note or something more subtle than the awkwardness of that conversation.

I agree with you, I don't understand why this is so bad. A discreet drop if deodorant on the desk, noone has to say directly and saves 'some' embarrassment fur everyone involved but the implication is there

@CJ4713 - it’s the anonymous passive aggressive nature of it. It’s not polite, it’s cowardly.

Did they know it was you or was it anonymous?

For a start, it’s passive aggressive as other posters have pointed out.
It will have made your colleague feel like you’re talking about them behind their back. They would have most likely felt that you were laughing at them behind their back and that placing the deodorant was a huge joke. Doing it every week will have escalated those feelings.
They probably still wonder who did it and feel shit about it.

Exactly this.
One person having a discreet word is much nicer than feeling paranoid that any of your colleagues could be the ones leaving deodorant on your desk until you get the hint.

There isn't a nice way to do this. Years ago a very junior member of my team began cycling to work, we had no showers in the office and he cycled in his work clothes, he smelt awful. People commented on it. The smell was so bad that one of our colleagues was struggling a lot with it. She was a lovely girl and visibly upset when she raised it with me. I was a new and junior manager, it was a very small company with no HR. In the end I spoke with my own boss and he decided that as senior lead, and the only other male in thar particular room, it was better for him to have the chat with the junior colleague. Afterwards he told me what he'd said, it was a clumsy but well intended "sorry xxx there's no easy way to say this, you smell of BO when you cycle in, what can we do to help?"
Ive no idea how they resolved it, but from the next day there was no smell, and no one ever mentioned it again. Junior team member didn't seem too badly impacted, I think it was probably better for him not to know who in the team had "noticed" the BO. Senior manager didn't tell him that other people had noticed, so I guess he could tell himself he'd caught it early on before it became an issue.

In contrast, I had an issue very early on in my career that I'm embarrassed about to this day. Colleague sat next to me used to make loud comments about the "strange smell" Making it clear for all around us that she'd noticed a pong (she was a bit of a cow in general). Neither she nor anyone else in the company knew there was a medical reason. I'm grateful that she brought it to my attention that my efforts to mask the problem were unsuccessful, but mortified that she felt the need to make a public thing of it. If no one can have a quiet word then perhaps the subtle deodorant on the desk (or similar) would be preferable than the more public version that I went through! For context my issue lasted about a week and was medical.

Don't see the deodorant leaving as being nasty at All.
There's no nice way to tell ppl they smell!