About a week ago, I was hanging out with some girlfriends of mine, and one of them had to get an Uber to meet us.

Uber is fairly reliable and safe for the most part, but what my friend went through that day made her want to forget about the company entirely.

When we met up she asked me if I could give her a ride home because the guy that Ubered her creeped her out.

He apparently told her, “You smell really good.”

This is a compliment when it comes from your family and friends but is uncomfortably creepy when it comes from a total stranger. There are things you just don’t say to someone you don’t know.

When I was in middle school, a random guy told me that he’d “hit that.” I told him to get lost with my best confidence, but inside I felt degraded and objectified.

The fact is that these offhand comments aren’t just made by men. Boys take part, too. If parents just taught them at a young age to respect people, it would be better.

I say respect people because women have been known to say these things to men, too. In college, I heard a woman in my class say that she’d like to “go at it” with our teacher. I reported it, of course, as the college has a strict harassment policy.

With all this in mind, think carefully about a compliment. It might turn out that it is in fact not compliment but an unnecessary degrading comment.