It goes without saying you have to be a very selfish person to eat this at your desk?

[OfficesmellQ]

My colleague returned from Tesco on her lunch break with a pot of boiled eggs from the food to go counter. She ate these at her desk and I struggled not to gag.

Surely it goes without saying that this isn’t an appropriate lunch to inflict on others in an enclosed space?

I could do boiled eggs but any sort of spicy or smelly food, then 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮

Someone in our office used to microwave kedgeree every morning…

I honestly don't have an issue with this. There's far worse food items out there. Leave her in peace. Maybe move away for the few minutes it will take her to eat them?

Grim.

Not possible as I was covering the phones on our rota.

I only really eat vegetarian stuff so if I’m forced to buy a meal deal it’ll be egg and cress for me or some kind of falafel wrap. I WFH now but when we were office based I’d always eat in the canteen rather than at my desk.

I cannot stand the smell of fish or seafood but don’t give someone a hard time for eating a tuna sandwich or jacket potato. Ideally no one would force their food smells on others by eating at their desk but I know it’s unavoidable in some offices!

Rank. That’s up there with microwaving and eating fish in an open plan office. I’d say she’s a sociopath

Someone in my office cooks haddock chowder in the work kitchen microwave 🤮

Oi, Mavis, please can you save the stink bombs for Brighton Beach.

We were temporarily working at another site. Having to use the staff room as no office space available. No windows, just a roof velux each end of the ceiling.

Working alone at the large 10 seater table. Someone sat right next to me & my laptop & started eating tuna sandwiches. The smell of fish to me is 🤮. I had to leave the room.

That’s just part of work. I don’t mind eggs but hate the smell of bananas. I just accept people will eat some foods I hate the smell of.

Unless it’s Durian….

There is one woman where I work and she is constantly munching on food throughout the day and she doesn’t keep her mouth closed! She then complains she is overweight (she is obese.)

2 people at work (who I really like so I don’t want to say anything negative) regularly have fish curry - which they heat up in the microwave in the staff room which has an internal door but no window! There is no time to go elsewhere for lunch and we don’t have desks as we aren’t office staff.
Also there are certain staff on all protein food due to diets / mounjaro who sit there & eat boiled eggs, tinned mackerel etc.
Great.

Apparently boiled eggs are now the most sold meal deal snack, so I guess lots of people must be eating them at their desk.

It's not something I've ever done, but it must have been for all of a minute or two.

Wouldn’t bother me.

Eggs are fine. Fish less so, but neither would be a real issue.

Do you mean like those protein pots? With some spinach or similar? I don't think those really smell at all. Plus they are eaten in about a minute as there's not much to them.

Like @JHound I cannot stand bananas, anything to do with them makes me heave. But they are most people's convenience food of choice, so I just have to get on with life really.

Wouldn’t bother me because boiled eggs don’t have a smell to me unless they are inches from my nose and even then I don’t find it a horrible smell. The smell of rotten eggs however, definitely not. I struggled with showering in Iceland because of the smell of the water due to the rotten eggs smell aka sulfur.

YABU. Eggs are just a perfectly normal food. They have a smell. So do lots of foods - some of them much stronger than a hard-boiled egg. You must be very sensitive if you gag at an egg being in the same room as you! Mind you, it never ceases to amaze me how many MNers seem to be constantly gagging and retching at things. If you go to a restaurant, you're surrounded by food smells. Would an egg being eaten at the next table in a restaurant make you gag?

Somone I work with moves desks in the office to eat her lunch as she doesn’t want it to smell where she works - doesn’t matter that now smells where i am working. What’s worse is that we have a kitchen with seats, breakout areas and a massive canteen. It’s not like she even works when eating as she brings her paper!!! Drives me mad

I have no issue with boiled eggs what would you have liked her to eat for lunch, gagging is quite a strong reaction!

Wouldn't bother me in the slightest, are eggs known to make people gag or something? I've not heard of that

I always have them (home made no less) in our fridge. I’d not take them to work though!

Nothing wrong with an egg! Or tuna. Actually, when I was at work, I sometimes took a Tuna Niçoise Salad. Covering all the bases there.

I love hard boiled eggs. I don’t work in an office but if I did, I would probably take some in for my lunch. Other people eat foods in public that I don’t like the smell of and I just have to grin and bear it. I also dislike the smell of most perfumes and aftershaves, as well as fabric conditioner. Those are everywhere and I expect I would be seen as unreasonable if I asked people to stop using them. We all have to deal with sights, sounds and smells we’d rather not be confronted with, and that’s just part of being humans on a very over-populated planet.