How To Deal With Noisy Eaters at Work?

mattcanary

Some extremely sensitive people on this thread....










You're not exactly being bullied in the workplace or being made to sit in freezing cold, Dickensian conditions, are you?

bigpat

Almost anything YOU do is likely to cause a bad feeling between you which will only make matters worse.

So: telling them has to be somehow anonymous so that they can't be certain who's complaining. I can think of two options and it depends on your office set-up which one might work.

1) Type something up (at home!) but make it sound as if it COULD have come from a manager, HR dept etc. Label the envelope appropriately and secretly drop it in their in-tray or send it via a completely different department, if you're in a big organisation with a post-room.

2) Get yourself a free email address somewhere and email them from there. Chose a nonsensical username like a random string of letters and numbers @yahoo, @gmail etc.

You need to say something like "several people have complained..." so that they can't be sure who's behind it. They may SUSPECT, but if you're careful they can't prove it.

I feel your pain. In my last job I had to go out for a walk every day when the woman in the office started eating. Think pig-in-a-trough!

Good luck

mattcanary

bigpat wrote: »

Almost anything YOU do is likely to cause a bad feeling between you which will only make matters worse.

So: telling them has to be somehow anonymous so that they can't be certain who's complaining. I can think of two options and it depends on your office set-up which one might work.

1) Type something up (at home!) but make it sound as if it COULD have come from a manager, HR dept etc. Label the envelope appropriately and secretly drop it in their in-tray or send it via a completely different department, if you're in a big organisation with a post-room.

2) Get yourself a free email address somewhere and email them from there. Chose a nonsensical username like a random string of letters and numbers @yahoo, @gmail etc.

You need to say something like "several people have complained..." so that they can't be sure who's behind it. They may SUSPECT, but if you're careful they can't prove it.

I feel your pain. In my last job I had to go out for a walk every day when the woman in the office started eating. Think pig-in-a-trough!

Good luck

And you'll look like a muppet if the person goes to see their manager about this letter.

aileth

This can be truly grating.

I stopped going to the canteen when there was a certain fella in there at a past job. When he had an apple, he would latch onto it like a vampire and then suck and make the most disgusting noises. Then he'd get his yoghurt out, scrape scrape scrape, and then actually attach it to his mouth and lick the tiny remnants out.

It gives me chills thinking about it now.

Horasio

I hate noisy eaters too - anywhere. I went out on a job with a guy to a place that offered us food. He made the worst noise and it ruined the lunch for me' I get on well with the guy, so found it hard to say anything.

Now get me onto smelly food in the office ...

If I was in an office and couldn't get away, I would wear earphones and listen to music from my phone or i-pod. I put music on at home to drown out any unwanted noise at home

ShadowPuma

happyinflorida wrote: »

I would jokingly say to each of them - "are you aware of how much noise you make whilst eating and drinking?" - see their reaction. They may smile back and say "yes" or be genuinely horrified - they may not realise it.

That could work.

Now another way of dealing with it would be to also annoy them in some way such as if you're female, get one of those smelly perfume atomisers and spray it their way quite a few times. If they say anything you could retort "didn't think you'd notice over all that loud munching and slurping!"
!

First suggestion I have no problem with.

However the second? Just makes you look like a childish nasty person. Not only that but a person who is spraying perfume on another persons food or towards their face as they are eating. Then YOU will end up the one being spoken to by the manager!

G6JPG

Get hold of a fairly powerful, old-fashioned tape (cassette) recorder - even one you have to buy batteries for if suitable sockets aren't near your desk. (Or, a powerful speaker you can connect to your 'phone, or other modern recording device. An old-fashioned "ghetto blaster" might be easier to get hold of though, or you - or someone you know - may already have one. And I suspect it'd be easier to operate without doing the wrong thing.)
\
Now, one day when things are particularly bad, put it prominently on your desk. Don't say anything: just do so. Not making any secret of what you are doing, but not making a particular point of it either, set it recording.
\
After say three to five minutes, stop it, rewind the tape, and set it playing. Make sure you've set the levels beforehand so that they're fairly loud. (Make sure there's nothing on the tape that will blast out afterwards - best to use a blank tape.)
\
If you're lucky, you won't actually have to say anything. If one of the offenders actually asks you to turn it down, just (ideally having prearranged with your fellow sufferers, if any) smile broadly, and ignore them.
\
I hope this works for you.

Retrogamer

minicooper272 wrote: »

Can you use headphones? If not, can you ask permission, and maybe explain why? This way it's not you complaining, it's you asking to instigate a solution.

We can't use headphones because of the role. I do outbound calls but work with people taking inbound. It makes us look too relaxed with headphones or similar, people complained about it and management agreed it looks too casual on the floor.

bigpat wrote: »

1) Type something up (at home!) but make it sound as if it COULD have come from a manager, HR dept etc. Label the envelope appropriately and secretly drop it in their in-tray or send it via a completely different department, if you're in a big organisation with a post-room.

That wouldn't work. The only way we get letters is when they get delivered to our managers tray, then they hand them out personally. The office building is huge (600+ desks at a guess over a few floors) so not possible to send mail to a single person. Manager delivers them by hand.

bigpat wrote: »

2) Get yourself a free email address somewhere and email them from there. Chose a nonsensical username like a random string of letters and numbers @yahoo, @gmail etc.

That won't work either i'm afraid. The works email system captures any email addresses not on a safe list and filters them as spam. Only the IT guys for our site can change this.

G6JPG wrote: »

Get hold of a fairly powerful, old-fashioned tape (cassette) recorder - even one you have to buy batteries for if suitable sockets aren't near your desk. (Or, a powerful speaker you can connect to your 'phone, or other modern recording device. An old-fashioned "ghetto blaster" might be easier to get hold of though, or you - or someone you know - may already have one. And I suspect it'd be easier to operate without doing the wrong thing.)
\
Now, one day when things are particularly bad, put it prominently on your desk. Don't say anything: just do so. Not making any secret of what you are doing, but not making a particular point of it either, set it recording.
\
After say three to five minutes, stop it, rewind the tape, and set it playing. Make sure you've set the levels beforehand so that they're fairly loud. (Make sure there's nothing on the tape that will blast out afterwards - best to use a blank tape.)
\
If you're lucky, you won't actually have to say anything. If one of the offenders actually asks you to turn it down, just (ideally having prearranged with your fellow sufferers, if any) smile broadly, and ignore them.
\
I hope this works for you.

Can't do this i'm afraid. Any recording devices even switched on in the building (video or audio) would be a written warning at the least. It might pick up conversations with customers and be deemed as a DPA issue / breach.




I think the next time they make the noise i'll ask them if there's any chance they could try eating with their mouth closed.
Hopefully they don't ask why and will understand at that. :rotfl:

G6JPG

Retrogamer wrote: »

[]
Can't do this i'm afraid. Any recording devices even switched on in the building (video or audio) would be a written warning at the least. It might pick up conversations with customers and be deemed as a DPA issue / breach.

Oh dear.

I think the next time they make the noise i'll ask them if there's any chance they could try eating with their mouth closed.
Hopefully they don't ask why and will understand at that. :rotfl:

Oh dear. If they do (and it's the eating with the mouth open that's the problem - though I thought you said there were finger-licking and other such too), you could say something like "it irritates the hell out of me - but I realise that could be seen to be my problem; however, a customer might also hear it."

Can you (or better, unless you have a believable voice-changer!, get a friend to) call in as a customer, and make some comment? Actually, if the company - it sounds as if you're some sort of call centre - has any sort of customer feedback route ("if you wouldn't mind telling us how we did, please stay on the line/press 1/etc. after your call is over", that sort of thing), that might be a good way to get it in, and in a way that management really shouldn't ignore. Complaints from staff can be ignored; ones from customers ... Especially if the complainant says something like "when I was speaking to your agent, it sounded as if another person nearby ...", making it clear that it is very noisy. [If it isn't that noisy that it is plausible it could be heard from another's 'phone, then perhaps it isn't that bad, though I still sympathise.]

1ipstick

I love this thread. 3 pages of comments and you can tell we're all British by the lengths we're going to to not talk to them directly.
How about: when they're in the middle of chomping away, say to them with a smile "excuse me, you tend to be quite loud when you're eating and the noise is distracting me from my work. Would you mind making an effort to keep it down? And obviously let me know if I'm doing anything that bothers you."

Open-plan offices/ shared working spaces ALWAYS come with issues like this, and it's fair to expect people to respect other's workspaces.