Office Eating!!

[shhhFFS]

Ok I know there are lots of posts about this but I need to vent and make sure I'm not being unreasonable to be revolted.

New colleague, eats his lunch at desk. Fine, so do I. He does eat loudly, it does annoy me, I don't like loud eating, but not to the extent of a phobia or anything, but I also accept there's not a lot to be done about this and that for all I know I could also be a loud eater.

We only have our screens between us, small desk so it is close. We also work in an office which is open plan and if clients are due in they will walk past our desk. If my boss is meeting with a client they can see us and our desks. So if meetings are in I will either eat my lunch around this so I'm not eating when clients are here or go out for lunch. I've never been asked to do this but seems professional to me to not be munching in view of clients.

Anywho, here are my problems:

1. He brings in a salad, bag of crisps and 2 pieces of fruit everyday. The salad he brings everything whole. Whole chicken breast, whole tomatoes, even whole cucumber. Goes and gets knife and fork from kitchen and proceeds to noisily saw through everything as he munches. Shaking our shared desk as he does. Am I the only one who if you are going to go to the effort of bringing a prepared salad to work, that I cut the bloody stuff up first??

1. He takes no notice of whether clients are in or not so goes about his cutting and sawing regardless of a client being in a meeting feet away.

1. He looks at football pages or plays candy crush on his phone. Fine, his time, but again does this regardless of being in view of clients. Which I don't think looks great.

1. Crisps. And this is the killer. He eats crisps loudly, rustling around, again in view of clients too. Then when he's finished, he loudly, almost comically, licks each of his fingers (in a sort lip smacking fashion), and then no hand washing, wipes, tissue, NOTHING and goes about his day. This makes me want to vomit honestly.

He is not an office junior or anything like that, he is someone who has worked in this line of work, offices, clients etc for decades.

There has been months of this now and I try and avoid being around during his break as much as possible because the whole scenario is like fingers down a chalkboard to me.

Am I being an unreasonable nutter? Or is he a gross inconsiderate human being?

Your desk must be really flimsy if slicing a tomato causes it to shake. Perhaps you should report to facilities before it collapses altogether if it’s honestly that bad. The rest of it you’ll just have to put up with. Put some headphones on when he gets the crisps out maybe! I used to work in a really open plan office with 100s of us and dear lord the smell especially on Fridays when it would typically be a hungover fry up for breakfast then fish and chips for lunch, and the sea of dirty crockery because everyone was too busy to take it back to the kitchen. Guy eating a salad really doesn’t seem too bad in all honesty!

The only part that would bother me is number 4 - that is just vile. The rest, I think you are being a bit petty and unreasonable, tbh.

There is a woman like you in my office and people are scared to eat/drink/breathe around her for fear of getting snide looks. Poor man that he can't sit and enjoy his lunch.

I don't have advice but wanted to share something similar... I was in a very formal all day meeting and we broke for lunch. People brought food into the room we were meeting in as there wasn't anywhere else to go. All of us pretty senior in our roles and from a number of organisations working together. A colleague walked in from his car with- I kid you not- a full on farm style vegetable box with everything in it still whole, and proceeded to pick up an iceberg lettuce in one hand and bite into it like an apple! I couldn't look at him for trying not to laugh out loud.

I'm sorry I find these threads so anal its astonishing.

I mean yes I can be irritated by noisy eating in particular.

But in reality if there isn't a communal space provided for eating, people have to eat somewhere. The idea that people are so repulsed by someone fulfilling a basic bodily function out of necessity just seems so mean and hostile and self-limiting.

The guy has got to eat somewhere. He is choosing to eat something fairly healthy and that involves some food prep.

Would you all prefer he brought cardboard sandwiches in and ate them surreptitiously in a hermetically sealed cupboard?

I'm not denying some of people's food habits can be a bit yuck at times. I just find it depressing that people have got to the stage where the idea of someone eating their lunch is considered offensive.

There was a similar thread recently about someone eating something on a train and it brought out hordes of pearl-clutchers talking about how "offensive" it was.

There are many things I find offensive in life but I think if you're offended by someone eating you've got bigger problems tbh.

Maybe you have misophonia?

You can't tell people how to eat lunch