This Job Stinks

Alternate Title: "This Place is (near) the Dumps"

So I work in a dump. And by that I don't mean that things are worn and/or broken down around my office. I mean that there is a dump right outside the place that I work. It's not a straight up "landfill", but it's pretty close. Here's the bird's eye with my office in relation to the dump. My office is the helicopter, the dump is the red hazard sign. After that is a close-up of the dump itself. Pretty good resolution around here. You can almost see the rats.


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Anyway, I'm about 3/4 of a mile from the dump and on a hot day (like today), you'd think it was right out my window. For some reason, the wind almost always blows northeast around here, placing us upwind from the stench.

Let's say you lived and worked in the dump, or perhaps a sewage treatment plant. So every minute of every living day you'd smell the unrelenting stink of decaying refuse and/or human feces. After a certain period of time, you've got to become immune to it, right? The same way that you don't notice the smell of your house unless you leave on an extended vacation, then come back to realize that your house has a particular odor that you've just gotten used to. In the same vein, the stench of crap and trash would just become part of your smell landscape. You'd stop noticing it. Assuming that to be the case, then would you every think anything smells bad? If you forget to take out your trash, or an egg rolls under your counter and starts rotting, would you notice the smell? Would a different kind of stench register with you, like a skunk? Or would your sense of smell just become dulled? Would you be able to enjoy a pleasant smell, like fresh baked bread or flowers, while living in the foul air everyday?

It doesn't smell bad enough here for me to conduct an objective observation, but maybe I can get the Germans who work at the dump to help me out.