If you rustle sweets packets in meetings, WHY DO YOU DO IT!?

Rustling is annyoing, but chewing sweets with mouth open makes me want to scream! I've had to leave a meeting before where someone was chewing on a sweet like a fucking cow!

You don't know anything about his job or what his options were. On that particular day, I can assure you it wasn't as simple as 'being assertive about a lunch break' or just deciding his meetings weren't important.

He asked if I minded him eating his lunch, and I didn't mind in the slightest. I've worked with him for a decade and I'm capable of having a conversation with a man eating a mozzarella salad out of a Tupperware pot.

I've never really known anyone to eat sweets in meetings. It's bad manners/unprofessional surely? Chewing gum fair enough. I mean if I did bring sweets it would be a big packet and share round everyone in the group. Then at least if everyone is doing it the noise is less annoying! But I'd probably not do it or get them out at break time or something.

If it’s not a single sweet due to coughing it’s madness it’s allowed!!! On the crisp thing, they’re noisy, it’s a pity but it sometimes has to be done! (Not in work but I do feel guilty having them in the canteen but they’re my ‘it’s been one of those days’ things!

Yeah that would annoy me too. But where I work, any meeting over about an hour and a half would have a 5 minute comfort break in it anyway, so there is less need to bring food in to meetings.

I think it would be okay to ask for a "reasonable adjustment" to accommodate your clear issue in this area and ask for no eating in the meeting.

I have sometimes described it as a hearing issue, which it sort of is as I cannot listen properly with noises such as pen clicking, rustling etc.

And it's not just a matter of "chilling"

Quite agree. We would have specific breaks with biscuits and coffee. I would find constant eating very rude.

Your boss needs to be assertive about a lunch break. I doubt all the meetings were so important he could have missed it.

I would question why you have two hour meetings to begin with, in person. Or if you all need to be there all of the time.

In the unlikely event you do, agree no unnecessary noise. I bet those making it are bored with the said meeting.

But they might not have had the chance to eat anything else all day. My boss was eating (not sweets, it was his lunch) in a meeting with me the other week - that wasn't because he 'can't stop eating for a couple of hours', it was because he'd got to 4pm without having had a chance to eat anything at all.

It's a meeting, not a production of Hamlet. I don't think opening a bag of sweets is that big a deal. It sounds like you've got quite a specific aversion to certain noises which isn't really anyone else's fault.

If it was the cinema or the theatre then yes, it would be disruptive. Not really in a meeting though.

I don't think I really know anyone who brings sweets or food to meetings unless they've been in back to back meetings all day and don't have time for lunch. However, in long round table meetings where I work, or things like training or workshop sessions that last all morning, there are usually biscuits or occasionally sweets on the tables.

I think it sounds like you’ve got misophonia for this particular sound. For me this would be mildly irritating at most, if it drowned out what someone was saying, for instance.

For me it’s anything squeaky, and also chewing.

oh mate - it’s a few sweets not a 9 course tasting menu 🤣

Theyre not under eating if they cant stop eating for a couple of hours

It's easy to think they must know its loud, annoying but they probably don't. For those of us who don't have misophonia, noises are easily tuned out.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5499245-stop-talking-at-the-theatre?reply=150907961

See my other thread!

@towardagain

I think you and I are on a very similar rant today

www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5499245-stop-talking-at-the-theatre?reply=150907961

agree.

don't get me started when DH has a bag of crisps...🙄

I suffer from misophonia. Some noises sens me in an inner frenzied rage. It's irrational but it affects me deeply. Chewing, rustling packets,scraping the last bits of a yogurt pot,coughing repeatedly,licking lips, fingers biting...The list is scarily long...

I'm with you. I couldn't concentrate

I'm not a not a snacker so I find some people's habits of having food in every meeting different to my own choices, but this response seems extreme to me.

If it's really that bad and concentration in this particular meeting is that important, I might suggest a pause while everyone unwraps their sweets, but I suspect it's you who'll seem unreasonable. How fragile is your focus if a sweet wrapper distracts you from important matters?

It’s possible they are effectively self medicating with sucking- particularly if they are older and weren’t issued with fiddle toys at school! I don’t mean they are fiddling with the wrappers, just that the sucking helps concentration in the same way doodling does. I was in a big meeting (auditorium style) and playing a game on my phone (silent). It frees me up to listen. I ask appropriate questions, and am paying attention, but people assume I’m not.

How is a few sweets in a meeting overeating? Do you know what they eat through the rest of the day/week/month?

Neither are the over eaters

I'm with OP on this - it's distracting, stops others from working efficiently, and thus has a major negative effect on the economy 🙂