The Written Podcast: A Smell

I have a mystery on my hands. Unfortunately, it’s a mystery that’ll never be solved. It generates a lot of questions, but no answers. All I can do is speculate and draw my own conclusions, but even then it is difficult to conceive of a strong, adequate and coherent timeline.

I discovered this mystery at work, whilst looking at the jobs which were booked in for a later date. My task whilst going through the jobs is to put the necessary parts on and/or to order the necessary parts and/or just leave it if it is a diagnosis and the necessary part needs to be defined by a technician. The job which had the mystery within was a diagnosis, so no parts were needed to be put onto it. I found out about it being a diagnosis job after opening the VHC line, which had notes describing what it is the customer would like to be looked at. It said:

“The customer has complained about a bad smell coming from their vehicle, which they have described as a smell.”

Well, they’re not wrong. You might be wondering what the mystery even is – if you take the sentence for what it is, everything is explained: There is a bad smell coming from the vehicle, and that smell is most definitely a smell. There’s no doubt about that, it is 100% a smell.

Doesn’t help the technician, though. There’s a lot can which can unpack from that sentence, and the more you start thinking about it, the more questions form with no answers attached. How did the conversation go between the customer and the person in the booking office? Who actually stated the smell was indeed a smell, was it the person inside the booking office or the customer themselves? What exactly is the smell that they are smelling?

I can imagine the conversation going something like this:

Customer: “Good afternoon” (I chose the time of day to be the afternoon as I’m visualising the customer having woken up at midday due to a long night of partying in the night clubs; yes, plural)

Customer: “I would like to book my car in as there is a bad smell coming from it.”

Booking office: “OK, I can do that for you. All I need is a few details from you and a short description on what the problem is to help with diagnosing.”

*Customer details are handed over and an official booking is generated*

Booking office: “Thank you, now all we need is a description on what the problem is.”

Customer: “Yes, it’s a bad smell coming from the car.”

Booking office: “Can you describe the smell?”

Customer: “Yes I can; it’s a smell.”

Booking office: “Perfect, thank you.”

Customer: “Excellent, thank you for your help.”

*The phone call ends*

Or did the customer rattle on about something that went flying over the booking office’s heads that they simply put “A smell” just so they can end the conversation there and then and continue on with their day?

When the technician starts the diagnosing process, what on Earth are they going to do to troubleshoot where it’s coming from? It could many reasons why a bad smell is coming from the car. I can think of many just off the top of my head:

They haven’t cleaned out their boot in months.

They partied too hard and they’re the ones who’re smelling.

An oil leak.

A fuel leak.

A coolant leak.

Something’s stuck inside one of the air conditioning pipes.

It’s a new car and haven’t acknowledged they don’t like the new-car smell yet.

There’s a hole in the exhaust system and fumes are being funnelled into the car.

And many, many more…

What if the owner of the car cannot smell anything and is booking the car in based on advice from a neighbour who had to physically hold his nose whilst walking passed the vehicle? That question may be a bit of a leap, but the utter ambiguity of that sentence has gotten my mind racing with possibilities. There may be an entire paragraph that’s missing which explains everything, but the booking office decided not to write it down as it was quarter to pub on a Friday.

That would be the mid-point to this story:

Technician: *After looking at the vehicle and nodding his head with confidence that he knows what the problem is, writes his findings down on the job sheet and heading back to the service adviser to phone the customer to tell them what is wrong with the vehicle* “I have diagnosed the problem.”

Service adviser: “Excellent. May I have the job sheet, please.”

Technician: “Certainly.” *Hands over the job sheet and walks away proudly after solving another mystery.

*The service adviser looks at the job sheet and there, written in the notes section are the words, “they require an air freshener”.

The car is going to be looked at by the technician anyway, so I do hope to find out the reason why there is a bad smell coming from the vehicle, so in a roundabout way, that section of the mystery will be solved, so I’d be able to rest easy then.

But does the customer describe everything like that? Do they describe a noise to be “a noise?” Do they describe something they’re tasting as “a taste?” Do they describe something they’re touching as “A touchable object?” Again, they’re not wrong, but they’re not right either, and I feel for them that they may never know they are wrong. That feeling I would be feeling there would of course be “a feeling.”

Whoever they are, they are obviously living an easy life, a stress free life; a life where complications don’t exist. There must be people who understand this person perfectly, who after hearing what a particular description of something is, can decipher every piece of information needed to move on with their life, and not get bogged down with confusion and end up writing down this mystery in a blog post as it is the only way to get it out of my head.

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)