To be infuriated with chronic coughing in office

[Luucylu]

I am probably a bad person for saying this, but I am getting so irritated by a couple of my colleagues who seem to suffer from a chronic cough.

I know they can’t help it, but seriously, take something for it, drink water, or shut your door if you’re going to have a coughing fit and start to retch in your office.

Am I really mean or would this eventually do your head in too?

I have had an ongoing cough for weeks now. It's annoying me, let alone what it must be like for those around me. I've had various Ed viruses, leading to pneumonia and time off - but still coughing and now picked up a cold. I've m]been told by the respiratory team, who are monitoring me after the pneumonia. The cough could last for several months. It's horrid - it's painful, I pulled a muscle in my shoulder at one point from coughing, I've chipped the back off a tooth as a result of coughing and grinding my teeth as a result overnight. I've had chest pain and rib pain from constant coughing.

But I do take things for it - it just doesn't help. The only thing that really suppresses it for a short while is codeine, but I can't really take that at work. It makes me sleepy and a bit out of it! I have water, throat sweets, everything I can think of.

Luckily I'm in school holidays now so I'm hoping I will have time to recover fully.

I know it's annoying but seriously - I doubt they'd be coughing unless they need to/can't help it. If nothing else it hurts after a while. Luckily my dh is being very understanding.

Shut the door on their office.

You can hear through the door. My colleagues have mentioned it - not in an unpleasant manner luckily, more concern esp before being diagnosed with pneumonia.

And sometimes it's just too warm. My classrooms have no air con so opening doors and windows are sometimes the only way to make them bearable, even if it's not that hot outside, and the warm stuffy air then makes the coughing worse.

The only real alternative is to stay home - but you can't do that the whoe time!

YANBU there's someone in my office who has been coughing for weeks
It's fucking annoying

I also hate coughers on planes, once one starts it's a domino effect

In my menopausal state it's highly likely that I may kill someone for coughing or blowing their nose like a fucking trumpet

They aren’t coughing to inconvenience you 😂
A cough is fucking annoying if people can avoid it they would. I wouldn’t hold my cough in to the point I am practically choking because someone else might find it annoying. I do agree if you can close your office door so others don’t have to hear it as much they should do that.

not ideal solution but noise cancelling headphones?

I sat next to a throat clearer for a while until it got to the point where I was dreading going to work and sitting through another day of it and I begged to move desks. Drove me to the point of actual rage. I could hear it through headphones.

Yes you are really mean. Get over it

Not as bad as people chattering about their holiday/boyfriend/house decor etc while you're trying to work. Open plan office.

I cough a lot. It's uncontrolled and can feel and sound violent. I apologise that my lung cancer is "fucking annoying". It's much more annoying to me though.

@shiningcuckoo awful to have lung cancer. I'm sorry.

Have to acknowledge this fantastic comment.

I'm asthmatic and can sometimes cough for months. No, I don't really care if it annoys other people. When someone has a chronic cough they likely have more going on than just the cough - in my case it means that my body is working harder than normal to breathe and so I'm exhausted and cranky and probably not sleeping well either.

But hey, here I am trying steroids, turns out I should be having a drink of water.

I have a lung disease and one of the reasons my self confidence is in the floor is because of my coughing. It's also phlegmy. It's the main symptom and I'm taking things for it, I do everything I'm told to by consultant but my reality is that I cough loads and it's often accompanied with phlegm. I get regular infections which makes my cough even more productive and gross. Colleagues used to moan if I went to the bathroom too frequently, they also moan about too much time off when I had infections. I once overheard some women at work say I was obviously exaggerating for attention, the opposite was true. I hate the attention on me, why would I want people being repulsed and calling me gross?

I know how much people are disgusted and annoyed by my coughing because plenty make "repulsive" "gross" "eeeew" or give me filthy looks when it happens in public. Having that type of cough at the start of the pandemic was a barrel of laughs too.

People in wheelchairs should just try harder to walk. They inconvenience me.

Children with autism should choose not to have a meltdown.

Women with endometriosis should just not bleed all of the time.

Or maybe MN posters in offices shouldn't be so ignorant and rude. Yep that's the one! Imagine coming on here and showing how uneducated and awful you are without even being asked.

I recently had a quite rough chest infection along with a sinus infection, which resulted in me coughing for nearly 7 weeks, most of that quite severely at times (which I had to have nearly a month off work with because of it), as a few other posters have also experienced, to the point of retching and struggling to breathe, cracking/bruising ribs etc

It's almost completely gone now, but believe me it's no more fun for the cougher than it is those around us - I actually felt very guilty that I must have been disturbing the neighbour below my flat at times, especially during the night when it was at its worse, for hours on end I was coughing terribly nonstop and then sleeping during the day to make up for that lost sleep. It's exhausting and painful and there is very little we can do to bring it under control if it's that bad.

Me too. My mother used to tell me that if I could just stop coughing for a bit, it would calm down & go away... no shit! I love coughing until my ribs ache & I've got burst capillaries round my eyes.

Hi five to Kitty...