If you rustle sweets packets in meetings, WHY DO YOU DO IT!?

[towardagain]

I know it isn’t the biggest thing in the world but it makes me so, so angry. We have regular meetings in a large room, and every single week people decide they cannot get through a couple of hours without eating sweets. They take fucking ages opening the packet, and rustling it at the volume of a jet engine. If they absolutely must eat sweets, why can’t they just quickly open the packet and put it down?

Same as people eating crisps. Put your hand in, pick the first crisp it reaches up and eat it. WHY are you making such a bastarding noise!?

Theyre not under eating if they cant stop eating for a couple of hours

oh mate - it’s a few sweets not a 9 course tasting menu 🤣

I think it sounds like you’ve got misophonia for this particular sound. For me this would be mildly irritating at most, if it drowned out what someone was saying, for instance.

For me it’s anything squeaky, and also chewing.

It's a meeting, not a production of Hamlet. I don't think opening a bag of sweets is that big a deal. It sounds like you've got quite a specific aversion to certain noises which isn't really anyone else's fault.

If it was the cinema or the theatre then yes, it would be disruptive. Not really in a meeting though.

I don't think I really know anyone who brings sweets or food to meetings unless they've been in back to back meetings all day and don't have time for lunch. However, in long round table meetings where I work, or things like training or workshop sessions that last all morning, there are usually biscuits or occasionally sweets on the tables.

But they might not have had the chance to eat anything else all day. My boss was eating (not sweets, it was his lunch) in a meeting with me the other week - that wasn't because he 'can't stop eating for a couple of hours', it was because he'd got to 4pm without having had a chance to eat anything at all.

I would question why you have two hour meetings to begin with, in person. Or if you all need to be there all of the time.

In the unlikely event you do, agree no unnecessary noise. I bet those making it are bored with the said meeting.

Your boss needs to be assertive about a lunch break. I doubt all the meetings were so important he could have missed it.

Quite agree. We would have specific breaks with biscuits and coffee. I would find constant eating very rude.

I think it would be okay to ask for a "reasonable adjustment" to accommodate your clear issue in this area and ask for no eating in the meeting.

I have sometimes described it as a hearing issue, which it sort of is as I cannot listen properly with noises such as pen clicking, rustling etc.

And it's not just a matter of "chilling"

Yeah that would annoy me too. But where I work, any meeting over about an hour and a half would have a 5 minute comfort break in it anyway, so there is less need to bring food in to meetings.

If it’s not a single sweet due to coughing it’s madness it’s allowed!!! On the crisp thing, they’re noisy, it’s a pity but it sometimes has to be done! (Not in work but I do feel guilty having them in the canteen but they’re my ‘it’s been one of those days’ things!

I've never really known anyone to eat sweets in meetings. It's bad manners/unprofessional surely? Chewing gum fair enough. I mean if I did bring sweets it would be a big packet and share round everyone in the group. Then at least if everyone is doing it the noise is less annoying! But I'd probably not do it or get them out at break time or something.

You don't know anything about his job or what his options were. On that particular day, I can assure you it wasn't as simple as 'being assertive about a lunch break' or just deciding his meetings weren't important.

He asked if I minded him eating his lunch, and I didn't mind in the slightest. I've worked with him for a decade and I'm capable of having a conversation with a man eating a mozzarella salad out of a Tupperware pot.

Rustling is annyoing, but chewing sweets with mouth open makes me want to scream! I've had to leave a meeting before where someone was chewing on a sweet like a fucking cow!

I have no issue with them eating. If they wanted to biscuits or a sandwich or pizza or a full roast dinner I don’t care. I do care that they take so, so fucking long to unwrap individual sweets and unfathomably keep rustling the wrapper.