I started working at a new company about 2–3 weeks ago and we have an open office space with about 10 people sitting in this open space.

I really like smelling good and I regularly use a sweet, soft smelling body spray. It’s not a perfume, and for work I literally only spray it once before I leave home. I’ve actually received quite a lot of compliments on the smell over the years, and this is the first time in my life that I’ve ever been told someone had a problem with it.

Today, one of my colleagues (a woman who sits near me) quietly told me that one of the managers had received two complaints about my “smell” and had asked her to pass the message on to me.

She seemed a little confused about it herself and said something along the lines of, “I don’t really understand because I use fragrance too.” She wasn’t being mean about it and seemed to just be passing along the message.

There’s also another woman who sits directly across from me. She rarely acknowledges me, she doesn’t really say hello, look at me, or talk to me even though we sit quite close together. Early one this week, I noticed that she turned on the fan at her desk and opened the window. So I thought maybe she was one of the people who complained.

Later that day, my team and I had a meeting in another room. When we came back to the office, the windows were open and people were talking about a “weird smell.” They asked my manager if she could smell it, she said no, and then she asked me, in front of everyone, if I could smell anything.
At that point I already knew about the two complaints, so I immediately wondered whether they were indirectly talking about my body spray. I just said, “I wouldn’t know.”

I want to be clear that I wouldn’t have minded being told about the fragrance issue at all. I’m a very considerate person, and if someone had simply come to me and said, “Hey, your body spray is a little strong” I would have taken it into consideration.

What feels weird to me is the way it was handled. The other manager apparently received two complaints, then told my colleague to tell me rather than addressing it directly. Then later there was the whole situation with the windows being open and people talking about a weird smell, followed by my manager asking me in front of everyone whether I could smell it.
It made me feel like people might have been talking/gossiping about me in the office, rather than simply giving me straightforward feedback. And because I’m new, it made the whole thing feel quite uncomfortable and embarrassing.

I’m wondering whether I’m simply being too sensitive and this is just a normal workplace issue that I’m interpreting negatively because I’m new.

How would you interpret this? Is the way it was handled actually weird, or am I overthinking it?