Restaurant Odors and the Sense of Smell

Over the past few months, I have had three disquieting experiences in local restaurants.  Each of the three is part of a different national chain...either franchised out or directly run by the corporation, I don't know.  The food is good and so is the service.  And they all seem to be popular, with customers coming in filling up the "joints" and reacting with favor to their dining experience.  But in each of these places, the minute I walk in I detect a nasty underlying odor.  It is an odor of decay and dirtiness, and is in all likelihood due to one factor: old, smelly carpeting.

In a way, though, I can understand why a lot of customers don't pick up on this unpleasant stench.  At one of the places, my wife had to point this out to me before I noticed.  But once she had, I wondered to myself how I could have missed it before, it was so bad.  It's as if, as humans, we've suppressed our sense of smell so much that someone else has to tell us when something doesn't smell right!  In any event, once I was alerted, I began to pick up the same disgusting odor elsewhere.

Could it be that people in general are losing their sense of smell, or like me, have they trained themselves not to recognize unpleasant odors when they arise?  Maybe it's a bit of both, I suppose.  But I don't want to frequent any of these places until they fix their problem!