UURRGHH!! I was just at a luncheon with several collegues and the place we chose had pretty tight seating, we were really sardined in there. The guy behind me had a rack of baby back ribs and he was sucking and slurping and gnawing the meat off the bones and making much more noise than is necessary whilst eating! This is one of my absolute biggest pet peeves! When you can hear someone crunching, slurping, and sucking food when eating. I know much of it is hard to stop but seriously folks… it is really disgusting when someone is eating like a caveman next to you and it is making your stomach do flip flops!
The Hardee’s commercial with the two painters in the truck fighting over the cheesy burger wrapper drives me batshit insane. So does the Wawa (east coast convnience store chain) radio add with the people jagged out on caffeine, slurping their coffee.
I’d love to find the geniuses who wrote the ads, and introduce them to Mr. Axehandle…
I have a co-worker who is always slobbering away on a cough drop or a piece of candy. Then she’ll lean over my shoulder to talk about something on the computer screen and put her face right next to mine…schlurp, chomp, gulp, ssschlurp… I’m so grateful I have no sense of smell, because if I caught the tiniest whiff of whatever she’s working on, I don’t think I could hold my breakfast down. It’s hard enough already!
Some people are just noisier than others. In everything. And some people just don’t seem to have much tolerance. Somewhere in there is an acceptable middle ground. Was the guy realy causing gastro-intestinal distress to other diners or was he simply a little louder in his enjoyment of a good meal than some finishing school graduate would find bearable?
There are foods I simply won’t eat in public. Ribs tops that list. I prefer the big country ribs that you can consume with a knife ‘n’ fork (or do you say forkin’ knife?), but I never see those in restaurants anyway.
Yup…I’ll get down with the ribs and other messy finger food at home with the ol’ man and the cats, but there’s just no place for ribs and me in public.
My peeve is a worse offense. I had a coworker that ate with us every day, and every single friggin’ day she had to loudly, sloppily, wetly blow her nose at the table right after she finished. Gah! Nice to have a healthy snot serenade for dessert every day.
If slurping and sucking while eating turn you off, never go to Asia – specifically, China or countries that have a large Chinese population, like Malaysia or Singapore. I was in Malaysia en route to Kuala Selangor to go see the late-night firefly riverboat ride, and we stopped at a seafood place for dinner. Every single person there was chewing, cracking, slurping, and picking at shrimp, crabs, clams, etc. I actually got hit in the back of the head with a piece of shell from overzealous fellow diner trying to get the most out of his crab.
It was great. Those cultures have the idea that you should enjoy your food and eat enthusiastically, and I plunged right in. great seafood and we wound up buying about three rounds for the next table, who sent over steamed freshwater clams in black bean sauce.
You ought to watch the great Japanese movie, Tampopo. In one scene, a teacher has taken her class of girls to a restaurant, to teach them about eating Western style. She lectures them that Westerners eat quietly, and never slurp their food. I think they’re eating spaghetti, and having a hard time being quiet.
Then they hear a noise, and notice a Westerner at another table slurping away mightily. They happily turn back to their food, which they slurp down noisily.
Food noises drive me completely batshit. I just can’t stand it. There’s no reason not to have manners, especially when you are out somewhere or in an office. The last thing I want to hear is someone chomping, slurping, or making any other offensive noise with their food and drink. It makes me feel like I’m going to lose it.
i’ve got a friend who comes over and brings a snack with him, if he hasn’t eaten dinner yet. It’s not a problem, but when he eats…
…nothing stops the process once it starts. He smacks his lips and inhales the food, never pausing- if he feels the need to speak he will just go on, mouth full and bits of food flying out all over. It’s worst during a football game, if any error is made by the home team he has to swear at them.
He brought a cheese dip one game day, and it was pretty good. We ate most of it, but there was a lttle left that I put away in the fridge, in one of my plastic bowls. Two days later he calls and asks to come over for some gaming, cool. When he got here he went straight to the fridge, got the dip out, and proceeded to eat it out of the container with a spoon. No one else was eating at the time, and he never asked- my first clue was the slurping.
Just the other day, he stopped by unannounced with a hoagie. He opened it and started to eat, in the living room I just spent the morning shampooing and cleaning. I asked him to at least get a plate; he said “I’m real good at eating it out of the bag!” so, for the next few minutes, he kept his face in the plastic bag, chomping, slurping and rustling the plastic, effectively killing any attempt to converse.
I’m glad that I’m a patient man. I said nothing, but kept it to myself until I vented here. It wasn’t that bad in the overall scale of things, but it was damn irritating.