The next time I read about the New York Times having to lay off some employees, my sympathy levels will be at an all-time low: The newspaper announced this week that it’s hiring … a perfume critic.

Chandler Burr’s column, Scent Strip, will run 14 times a year in the newspaper’s style magazine and rank fragrances on a scale of zero to four stars. Even "acceptable" fragrances earn a zero — no grading on a curve here.Who’s going to benefit from this? Who’s so taxed and intimidated they can’t peruse the tester bottles at the fragrance counter and make their own decision? If you can’t make up your own mind about what you like, you’ll never be your own person.On a related note, my Great Stuff column in the Tribune on Sunday takes a look at three new unisex scents — but there are only descriptions, not ratings. (Then again, the name of the column is Great Stuff, so you can safely assume they’re not dreck.)

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