Ooh, for the sweet lost smell of OO: Scented candles for WFHers that remind us of the past

Strange as this may sound to those living in the timeline yet to be hit by Covid, lockdowns and WFH, many living in the here and now — absurdly named ‘new normal’ to make ‘abnormal’ smell better — are missing office, more specifically, OO, or office odour. The genius of capitalism now has people providing the product-service of recreating OO for the WFH. The New York-based Eau D’Office is selling scented candles that include odours ‘Warm 96-page deck left on the printer’ and ‘Room 12F.1 after a 6-hour workshop’. What started as a joke — ‘hardworking blend of anti-perspirant and musky colognes, in the smallest conference room at RGA’ —is now selling like hot cakes.

Katie Facada and Thibault Gerard, creative directors of design firm RGA, started their operations as farewell gifts for two outgoing colleagues — coffee, potato chips from the vending machine, shreds of paper mixed in one ‘noxious’ smelling candle. But as Marcel Proust reminds us in his masterpiece In Search of Lost Time, smell — like the one he described after dipping a cake in tea — triggers fond memories, in our case, of office. Perhaps in the context of the Indian office, there will be some entrepreneur who can wax eloquent via scented candles smelling of idli mixed with keyboard, cheap aftershave/perfume with a busted AC. Ooh, the sweet smell of OO.