Don't Let Your Cubicle Cooties Infect the Office

3. Smell

Either you're a grown-up and you already know many of the things that make you smell bad (a list that must be updated with exasperating frequency as we age), or you think you're still a kid and you don't realize you stink.

Miss Conduct hates to be the one to break it to you, but it's time to investigate your olfactory presentation. Miss Conduct assumes you already shower, brush, floss and apply a nonaluminum deodorant daily (and of course you keep a toothbrush, mouthwash and gum in your desk), so now start with a list of all the foods and beverages that make anyone in your family stinky.

If your family is too smelly to approach for inquiry, try to avoid the following: broccoli, cauliflower, beans and peas, onions, garlic, soy products (remember, soy is a bean), ground nuts (such as peanuts) and lactose-containing dairy products. Wean yourself off all of them, then re-introduce them one at a time to determine your sensitivities.

Smell may be the first sense to adapt to unpleasant phenomena, but having colleagues who dread coming near you just won't do. If you have to, think of it this way -- corporate skullduggery is impossible if your colleagues can tell what room you've been in long after you leave it.

Therefore, keep the aftershave and perfume to a bare minimum. Someone should only be able to detect your presence if they get close enough to hug you, which shouldn't be happening in the office anyway.