"Les odeurs"

Most days of the week I join my colleagues around a coffee table in a lounge kind of setting to eat lunch. While sandwiches and salads are common in the summer, with the weather getting cool, more and more people are bringing left-overs or buying the "plat du jour" (yesterday's main dish) from the CROUS cafeteria to re-heat.

On a busy day, there are 10 of us eating together, which means the last person to arrive might have to wait 20 minutes to get to use the microwave.

This is not a new problem, and last year the professor in charge of the budget agreed to order a new microwave. Most people thought we could hang on to the old and thus have two, but the head of the department just wanted to get a "more powerful" microwave which would reduce the time needed to heat food.

Just the other day we had quite a long line for the microwave, and once again began talking about installing a second one, but someone reminded the group that the head of the department already finds that there are a lot of "odeurs" with one microwave, so we definitely can't have two. Someone volunteered to keep the second in her office, since she "didn't care about the smell". Occasionally a colleague will eat in his or her office if pressed for time, and I've always had a profuse apology about how it surely must smell.

All this reminded me of the very French obsession with "les odeurs". Occasionally I've mentioned that I like having our kitchen separate from our living room, and I've invariably gotten a response about how it's indeed better for "les odeurs", and usually a comment about cooking fish.

This has always seemed really bizarre because a) I don't cook a ton of fish, and when I do I don't find it particularly smelly and b) I usually think of the aromas from cooking or baking as good. I mean, are French people often cooking things they find smell bad? I find the aromas of lasagne in the oven or meatballs on the stove appetizing.

I find it funny that people comment on food odors and have serious discussions about what to do about them (carpet is another one of those problems that trap food odors), but have next to no comments or opinions on body odor. Any funny experiences with "les odeurs"?