A week ago, we shared Rocco Pendola’s story over at The Street about the body odor problem at the Santa Monica Apple store. After speaking to a couple anonymous Apple retail employees, Pendola was able to confirm that store management recognizes the problem. The employees blamed the smell on poor positioning of high-tech “sniffers” that Apple stores use to activate a ventilation system if stores become too smelly. However, in the Santa Monica store, the “sniffers” are placed too high on the wall, which means the stores stink until the body odor reaches the sensors late in the morning.
Since Pendola’s first report, the situation appears to be getting worse; when he visited the store yesterday, he said it was “easily the worst I have ever smelled it.” Not only does the store smell of B.O., but now it appears to smell of some sort of adhesive, or at least something “more chemically-charged.”
Apple apparently caught wind of the stinky situation and is investigating, in the form of three air samplers spotted at the store. The air samplers (one of which is pictured below) are positioned evenly around the store, with one near the entrance, another about a third of the way into the store, and another near the back of the store.
And the problem isn’t isolated to this Santa Monica store. According to Pendola’s sources, Apple has had “similar problems at other locations.”
