It's High Time Someone Called Out The Scam That Is Full-Body Deodorant

Well, well, well… if it isn't another Tuesday, which means it's time for another edition of The Gripe Report!

After a one-week hiatus to recharge the ol' griping batteries, we're back in action, and I've got plenty to gripe about.

Have a gripe? Send it in!: matthew.reigle@outkick.com

I don't want to do too much yapping up top — this is a griping marathon, not a sprint — so what do you say we get right into it?

Drawing of some dude applying deodorant to his pits; the only place people have put deodorant until about five minutes ago. (Getty Images)

Deoderant

I hope that all of us are using deodorant, but I hope we’re not getting taken for a ride by the latest bit of snake oil salesmanship I’m seeing out of the industry.

Worse yet, it’s of their own making.

The con I’ve been seeing as of late is "full-body deodorant." That’s something that I feel like has only existed within the last few years, despite the fact that people have been stinking for several thousand years. 

I mean, I don’t know about you, but whenever I watch a movie or show set in the past, all I think about is how bad it must have smelled. I imagine anything set pre-1900 just smells foul on a level that makes your average comic book convention floor smell like a bouquet of roses.

Take Independence Hall, for example. Imagine getting all of those dudes in wool suits and powdered wigs together in a small, stuffy room with no air conditioning on a humid summer day in Philadelphia.

That’s a recipe for some serious founding father funk.

Fortunately, these days bathing regularly will keep you fresh south of the equator, so I don’t know why all of a sudden people were acting like there was suddenly an epidemic of rank nads.

That’s when I realized that the deodorant companies just want to sell more deodorant. 

Instead of one swipe per pit, you’re now smearing this stuff all over, thereby using more of it. It’s the same idea behind "wash, rinse, repeat." There’s no need to shampoo twice, they just want you to use twice as much as necessary.

You can find examples of this everywhere, like laundry detergent or dish soap, where they try to get you to use more than you need so that you have to go out and buy more.

But why did this suddenly happen with deodorant? My theory is that it has to do with the way they marketed how long deodorant will keep you fresh.

I swear, ten years ago, deodorant was like "Hey, here’s 12 hours of anti-stink protection. You're welcome, pal." 

Unless you're digging ditches or competing in an Iron Man triathlon, that’s plenty of stink-freee time until your next application. You just reapply the next morning, and you’re golden for another day at the office.

But over the years, I noticed sticks that advertised 24, then 36, then 48, and I swear I’ve seen 72 hours of protection advertised.

At some point, there will be a stick that’s like, "Hey, dab this on those nasty pits of yours and you won’t need to reapply it again until your kids graduate high school."

Telling people you only need to use your product every three days is a massive blunder, and I think that’s why, out of nowhere, everyone suddenly smells so bad that we’re supposed to smear the same deodorant over every inch of our bodies.

I’m on to you, Big Deodorant. 

The NBA and MLB are here with some weird jersey colors meant to confuse the hell out of fans for no reason. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

Weird Color Jerseys

A couple of weeks ago, our own Anthony Farris sent me a gripe that’s very fitting given the NBA Finals are about to get underway.

Now, I’m all for teams experimenting with their uniforms, but the only thing I would ask is that you keep things in the same ballpark as your normal colors.

The NBA and MLB? Yeah, they don’t do that, as Anthony pointed out.

We had what might be one of the most egregious instances of this just last week when the New York Mets wore their purple-accented City Connect jerseys when they took on the Double-A team that is the Colorado Rockies.

Y’know, the only team in Major League Baseball that regularly wears purple.

So, this gave us a double whammy of confusion.

Of course, it’s not the end of the world, but I hate that couple of seconds of confusion when I turn on a game and can’t tell which team is which. Like, I’m looking for blue and orange if I’m watching a Mets game, who the hell invited purple to this party?

Sure, these uniforms are cool, but they’re not worth the five to seven seconds where I think I’m having a stroke because I can’t tell which team is which.

All of those tables and this woman did the right thing and took a two-top since she is by herself. I'm nominating her for a Nobel Prize. (Getty Images)

People Who Take Up More Seats Than They Need In Restaurants

Now, here’s a gripe that I think could be just a me thing, but maybe I’m just more considerate than everyone else.

I hate when I see people taking up more real estate in restaurants or coffee shops than they need. For instance, it drives me nuts when I see one person sitting at a table meant for four people, when several feet away, there’s a perfectly good two-top that would be better suited for them and would free up the four-top for a group of three or four people.

Now, I practice what I preach on this front to the point that those with me think I should be committed. If it’s me and the lovely fiancée grabbing some coffee, we’re sitting at a table for two.

Why? Because I know how much I’d hate it if I came into a place with a group and we couldn’t get a table because one idiot decided they were going to stake their claim to a big table for no reason at all.

I liken it to using the handicap stall. Sure, the extra square footage and handrails are pretty sweet, but if someone who needs it more rolls up (in this case, I mean that literally), then you’re on the clock. 

The same goes for people who take seats without eating or who sit while waiting for a to-go order. If you want to sit at a table, take a load off, and scroll through TikTok like a zombie without having any food or drink, that’s fine, but the second a handsome writer who is also surprisingly good at situps comes along with a tray full of croissants, you’ve got to move it a long.

I place some of the blame on the establishments for not enforcing this. I get that no one making minimum wage wants to get into any kind of confrontation, but I think you’ll be alright telling the high schoolers who posted up at the coffee shop after school without spending a dime to move amscray so paying customers can have a place to their microwaved egg sammiches.

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Alright, folks. That's enough griping for this week. 

Be sure to send in any and all gripes you may have, and they could show up in a future edition of The Gripe Report!: matthew.reigle@outkick.com