People eating at work/at desks

[RightsaidFreud]

This stems from another thread i've just read, and it got me thinking!

Does anyone find that people eating constantly during the day at their desk/in the office, a distraction? I only ask this as my OH sits next to a women who litterally doesn't stop eating during the day. breakfast, 2 bags of crisps, lunch, countless biscuits, fruit. It sounds relentless to be honest, and distracting. He's come across this at the 2 offices he has worked in. Everyone gets an hour for lunch, some people eat at their desks, others will go out or go to another part of the office to eat. He eats lunch at his desk sometimes, doesn't take up the whole hour (hes not a slow eater, more wolf it down kind of guy) but that's it. Not constantly grazing the day away.

Where I work, we're lucky there is an area where we can go sit for lunch, and sometimes I will eat at my desk, and whilst people will eat at different times of the day, its not an ongoing all day activity.

Just wanted to get others opinions really!

I work 12 hour shifts. We get 2 breaks which may not fall at traditional meal times so eating at our desks is quite normal.

As we don't sit in the same seat each day I have a ritual of cleaning my desk with a
wipe and shaking the keyboard upside down to get rid of the crumbs ( and other unknown matter).

Does your DH work with mine. He's always moaning about a woman in his office with similar eating habits.

Im a grazer but I have low blood pressure so feel dizzy quite easily. I don't eat bag after bag of doritos though. I tend to have a cereal bar mod morning, lunch at my desk (soup or salad) then in the afternoon I have some fruit/nuts. Smokers definitely spend more time away from their desk to smoke than I spend eating.

I used to eat my lunch at my desk - usually crispbreads - oh it did used to clog up my keyboard.

I eat most of the day but I only work 4.5 hours and don't get a lunch break. So I time my snacks in 45 min intervals to give me something to look forward to.

My job is very dull and they whack the air con up so I need to eat to keep warm and relieve the boredom.

I find the eating out of boredom thing quite interesting, surely this can't be good for you meglet? Do you eat like that when you're not at work, or is it a purely work thing to make the time go quicker?

It makes the day go quicker. I'm skinny and walk to work most days. I just hate sitting a desk not talking to people staring at a screen. Believe me I time my toilet, snack and tea run breaks to stop me going insane!

Hardly anyone has a 'lunch break' as such where I work: we're expected to use our lunch breaks to catch up on emails MNet or something similar. It's an office park so there really isn't anywhere to go at lunchtimes. Most meetings between 12 and 2 involve people frantically eating sandwiches, so I don't mind people eating at their desks so much.
That said, the bloke that ate three bowls of cereal at his desk - with his mouth wide open - every single morning was awful. He never washed up either so there was usually a smell of stale milk by the end of the day. I wasn't sad when he left - until four weeks later when I realised he'd left his dirty washing up under his old desk and it stank to high heaven....

we have nowhere to go at my office ,not even near shops ,cafe or anything so if you forget to bring your eats we all share.We do not thouhg graze all day we keep to a morning break and lunch time but the odd cuppa in between.

I don't care about them eating as such but don't like the clacking noise some people make when they eat apples with their mouth open and that scrabbling noise of spoon on yoghurt pot bottom.

Now I feel bad and unreasonable :(

They have done experiments on secret eaters and the more food that is available and allowed, the more everyone ate and didn't go for healthy options, even if they normally would at home.

It does depend on the office, i sort of work out of an office, in the care secotor the legal break thing doesn't always apply, people sometimes bring in emergancy food, just in case and we all find that we eat it.

We have to eat at our desks, we normally read back our notes that we have written on 'the system'.

sir you are not being unreasonable! apples are one of the worst offenders, and crisps. and soup slurpers. you know who you are!

Does anyone have people in their offices who are 'feeders'? always bringing in cakes/sweets and things? If you do, watch to see if they actually eat any themselves, there'sevidence through studies to suggest that they don't, and that they like fattening up their colleges!

*always bringing in cakes/sweets and things for the office to eat

Yes, the soup slurpers too. Down with the lot of 'em.

I can't stand it when people feel the need to eat all the time, wherever that may be. My friend and her husband and kids are like that, they literally cannot go anywhere without eating. She brings a carrier bag of food round for the kids to eat when they are here for an hour-long visit, and they say 'I'm hungry' constantly.

I think some people need to learn there is more to life than food!

My keyboard is full of crumbs. Our office always has someone munching.

I used to make vomitty faces at the bloke who was a body builder and used to microwave something that smelt like rotting hotdogs.

I also got huffy at my colleague who used my desk to put his banana skins on and his licked yoghurt spoons. It stopped after we got an insect infestation due to the collection of apple cores under his desk.

Everyone in my office eats at their desk. We are too far out from town to go in (the walk there and back takes the 36 minutes we have) and there is nothing to do in the refs room. So everyone sits at their desk and uses the internet at lunch. People eat throughout the day - which is just as well because I run a tuck shop for charity. If people stopped eating snacks our Ugandan village would be without their midwife !

they like fattening up their colleagues!

Cannibals?

and we regularly have cakes/sweets etc. Not sure why this is seen as a bad thing, it's just normal that when you go on holiday you bring back duty free sweets adn when you have a special occasion you bring in cakes. On Christmas week we have a buffet that runs for about 3 days before we break for xmas, everyone brings in something - nobody has to bring in any lunch for that week ! Maybe it's just normal in the police force that people share food.

My DHs section takes turns cook breakfast for each other on a Sunday morning

And some of you would go bonkers if you had to work with the man that sits opposite me - he eats hot sardines in tomato on toast for lunch...

A colleague had a theory about it, that because it was quite a stressed and unhappy environment, the food was all they had to look forward to, to puncuate the day. A variation on the theme of comfort eating.

this is definitely a significant factor in my office. confectionery sales go up massively when we are short staffed nad busy - which is most of hte time

If any of the staff in my office were constantly eating I would not be very happy - they are paid to work, not snack.

Just wanted to correct an earlier poster, in the uk the law is that after 6hrs of work you are entitled to a 20min break, not 4 hrs - though many nice employers do this!

We eat all the time in our office, have a lot of good bakers in the team... Am worried about cannibals now.

Actually makes me laugh saying this after my thread yesterday, but I graze in work because I'm bored. If I'm mad busy or doing something interesting I can go all day without eating.

Quite worried that I work with the op's dh now