Meet the Other Phone. Protection built in.

Meet the Other Phone.
Protection built in.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

AIBU to ask someone to stop sniffing

183 replies

PhoneyToney · 04/06/2019 20:32

I was on a tour of a local attraction and one of the guides was sniffing every 10 seconds or so.

I was brought up to consider sniffing as rude and wasn't allowed to do it around my parents.

I found the sniffing to be unpleasant and distracting. I tried to ignore it but couldn't and after 10 minutes or so with no end in sight I asked them to stop. They said they had a medical condition ( I don't remember what ). I didn't say anything further - I didn't know what to say. They reduced the frequency and left soon afterwards.

Was the sniffer BU? WIBU to ask them to stop? What if they just had a cold? What if they had been farting or had tourettes?

OP posts:
Damntheman · 04/06/2019 22:36

Wow OP! Sniffing is one of my misophonia triggers and not even I would ask anyone who wasn't my own child to stop sniffing.

StoneofDestiny · 04/06/2019 22:42

Sniffing is horrendous. I've sat next to people sniffing non stop on train journeys and wanted to throttle them.Seriously - get a tissue and blow!
(But I'd not tell them to stop much as I wanted them to).

tiedy · 04/06/2019 22:44

Is blowing your nose supposed to stop it from running? It doesn't seem to make any difference for me.

JellyBellyyyyyyyyy · 04/06/2019 22:44

In defense of this poor individual, I personally can't blow my nose when I have sinusitis/a bad cold - it hurts my throat (or glands? Somewhere in the throat region) far too much so I end up sniffing and using a tissue.

You've likely ruined that persons entire day by being so insensitive. It wasn't hurting you, suck it up next time. No one likes sniffing every couple of minutes, they're probably far more uncomfortable than you.

HavelockVetinari · 04/06/2019 22:48

The majority of the UK population (myself included) finds sniffing revolting because it's culturally unacceptable. In some countries it's far ruder to blow your nose in public.

I think it's fine to offer a tissue, but not fine to verbally request a person stops sniffing as they may be unable to (which must be terrible and very embarrassing).

I feel your pain though, it's awful to hear and most people would feel the same.

WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll · 04/06/2019 23:06

Sniffing is horrible!! Gives me the total rage. Just blow your nose!

I once had a team leader, who took and exercised her position of seniority veeeery seriously (much more so than any of the actual managers), who made my working day an absolute misery.

She would stage-whisper patronisingly to me to come over to her desk when the manager was away from his desk for 'advice' about all perceived peccadilloes, such as using my desk phone for outgoing calls rather than the payphone that nobody else in the whole place (including her) ever used. I'd done it for the first ever time, when I had to make a very urgent call in a panic to prevent a re-mortgage falling through because of an absurd false assumption by the lender. When I needed to make a follow-up call, I excused myself and said I was going to use the payphone and the manager spluttered incredulously "But why? There's a phone right there on your desk!!!"

She was one of these people who would randomly grill everybody she spoke to on the phone as to when they'd arrived, purely so that she could inform them that she'd already been there since 7:30 [actually more like 20 to 8] and scoff at those who didn't arrive until just before 9. What she never thought to mention, though, was that, after deliberately sending a one-word email when she arrived, to make the point, she would always spend the first hour and a quarter of every day fetching and eating a drawn-out breakfast (noisily) and on her desk phone, chatting with friends, arranging every dull aspect of her own personal life, before starting actual work at two minutes to nine - and then spending most of the day deflecting work by batting back requests and pulling people up because of the most ridiculously trivial typos and insignificant minor errors, before leaving at 'home time' - 4pm - and smugly telling those who did the standard core hours that had to be covered of 9-5 that they would have to stay 'late' because they 'hadn't got in until nine' (as was their normal agreed working pattern).

But enough ranting, rambling, digression and tenuous scene-setting: every single time I sniffed, even just once, she would call me over and ask if I wanted a tissue, so that I 'could' blow my nose.

She too bought into the common myth that every time a person sniffs, it can automatically be 'cured' if they simply blow their nose. People sniff for a whole range of health-related reasons - none of them 'just for fun' or 'to annoy you'. Her insistence that blowing my nose would instantly cure my (very quiet and occasional) sniffs, despite any explanations to the contrary, just made me paranoid and frightened to even breathe freely in her presence.

She wasn't an intentionally horrible person, but just extremely self-absorbed and self-important and certainly not one of life's thinkers. She would follow 'received wisdom' on everything and accept cliched sayings as proven, established fact (e.g. "There's no smoke without fire" and "People always die in threes"). She was of the school who would, genuinely thinking she was helping, frustrate and embarrass stammerers even more than they already felt by giving them the 'valuable pearls of advice' that they'd hitherto supposedly never ever heard from other ignorant blowhards such as "Breeeeaaathe," "Just slow dooooown" and "Now, think first what you actually want to say".

Far TL;DR: Believing and assuming that all sniffing can be instantly stopped by blowing your nose is very naive - and going as far as forcing a tissue on people and/or ordering them simply to stop (when you quite possibly have many far more annoying habits and behaviours yourself anyway) is both dim and arrogant in the extreme.

Standandwait · 04/06/2019 23:12

Blowing your nose has been shown to be worse health-wise in various studies for the invalid (sorry in phone google should show) than sniffing. More to the point it's far more worse in terms of spreading germs to others. And I grew up where blowing your nose in public is very very rude esp if you then don't wash your hands.

Sniffing caused by "a health condition" could be cystic fibrosis BTW.

Patienceisvirtuous · 04/06/2019 23:19

I have a sniffing and throat clearing tic. Worse when stressed and i’ve had it for over 30 years.

Have been made to feel shit about it many times.

As long as you felt vindicated though OP, well done.

givemesteel · 04/06/2019 23:33

You were rude and unkind I'm afraid OP.

Sniffing, like other things people do (nose blowing, phlegmy coughing / hacking, burping, passing gas) is not very nice to be around as we associate it with germs / illness. But it's life and the polite thing to do is to ignore it.

Decormad38 · 04/06/2019 23:37

I hate constant sniffing too. It’s preventable but some people either don’t seek treatment or blow their nose. YANBU.

madcatladyforever · 04/06/2019 23:37

I'd have left the second the sniffing started. I can't stand it. I don't blame you.

FurrySlipperBoots · 04/06/2019 23:39

@WillowSummerSloth

If it's a tic there's nothing to blow!

I developed a nervous sniff when I was learning to drive. It lasted a year or 2 and must have driven my poor instructor potty but there's not much the sniffer can do about it! Telling someone with a tic not to is like telling someone with one leg to walk properly, a blind person to look where they're going!

BetsyBigNose · 04/06/2019 23:46

I'm with you OP in that I find frequent and/or repeated sniffing disgusting, the sound just turns my stomach. Whenever I encounter someone who does this, I offer them a tissue. Only on one occasion has the 'Sniffer' declined my offer. That was the only time that I've actually said anything to anyone about their sniffing (something like "Well if you won't use this tissue, perhaps you could pop over to the toilets and blow your nose?"), I'm not sure I'd have had the nerve to just ask them to stop, though I would no doubt have been sorely tempted! Envy (not envy)

MitziK · 04/06/2019 23:52

I've worked with somebody who constantly sniffed.

They were doing a line at 8am, 1.15pm and 3.30pm.

He was an utter prick even without the coke. But the sniffing was easily the most irritating thing about him, along with the bollocks about hayfever. Well, that and the way he was a belligerent little shite for an hour or so afterwards.

Sushi123 · 05/06/2019 06:01

I find sniffing rude and disgusting...why someone would rather suck up and then often swallow their own snot is beyond me, plus the noise is gross...I've asked people to stop in past. Yanbu

Ihatehashtags · 05/06/2019 06:25

Sniffing is disgusting! Good on you! Use a bloody tissue!!

SnuggyBuggy · 05/06/2019 06:33

Sniffing and swallowing is what you are supposed to be doing. You have antigen presenting cells in the gut.

Offering a tissue isn't unreasonable but nose blowing doesn't have a 100% success rate and in these germ phobic days what you suppose to do if you can't wash your hands?

Amazonfromkent · 05/06/2019 06:36

If I were the tour guide I'd tell you to take a running jump.

Fucket · 05/06/2019 06:38

My son has a sniffing tic, poor kid’s got enough anxiety as it is.

How fortunate for all you bitching about sniffers to live in a world where you or your loved ones suffer no neurological conditions.

Tourette’s is not learned behaviour and there is no cure.

Sniffing can be annoying but I hate ignorant loud mouths who like to put people down in front of others even more.

FabulouslyGlamourosFerret · 05/06/2019 06:54

First goady post .... my brother had a tic that manifested as a 'sniff'.

So for those two reasons I declare you an arse, so fuck off.

LL83 · 05/06/2019 06:59

Yabu.

I find sniffing really irritating. I always think person can't help it, doesn't have a tissue or isn't aware of it. Never mind the more serious issue such as a tic or tourette's.

I would never call them out on it. I am sure there is something you do that bugs people (and I am sure you think there isn't anything you do that is annoying too!)

HunterHearstHelmsley · 05/06/2019 07:01

I can't blow my nose (problem with my nose, I'm not just dim). It infuriates me when people say "stop sniffing". Like it's that bloody easy!

Beyond rude to bring it up too.

0ccamsRazor · 05/06/2019 07:31

What lovely caring behaviour op, Hmm

Patienceisvirtuous · 05/06/2019 07:36

God there are some arseholes on this forum 🖕

Buddytheelf85 · 05/06/2019 07:43

My DH gets hay fever. And sniffs. And sniffs. And sniffs. It’s a total performance to make a point about how much he’s suffering, because he can stop as soon as something more interesting grabs his attention. Incredibly irritating and one of only a handful of things that I’d change about him if I could. So I’m with you OP.

Swipe left for the next trending thread