I don’t work with barbarians, so I’m fortunate not to have the problem of people eating meals while standing and talking to me.
However, I do see quite a few people who start eating their lunch while in line to pay for it, or eating while walking from my building’s cafeteria back to their desks. Seriously? Picking at your salad while walking down a hallway or in an elevator?
C is the killer for me-- and I think it goes back to my dad, who chews with his mouth open and slurps his coffee. We work in the same office and I want to throw myself off a building each morning, because at 10 AM he eats an apple. CHOMP. SLURP. CHOMP CHOMP. SLURP.
My boyfriend is a slurper, too. I once told him it was driving me crazy and it led to a fight. But honestly, WHY SLURP AND CHOMP? I somehow manage not to, everyone else can, too.
Rage. Rage. RAAAAGE. Oh, and don’t even get me started on commercials with smacking and slurping. I’m looking at you, Kit Kat and Carl’s Jr. Oh, oh! I also hate the sound when it’s coming from my dog licking herself. Slurp. Slurrrrrrrp. SLURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRP.
Ahem. Ok, better now.
I don’t mind when people I know comment that something I’m eating looks good. Hell, it IS good. That’s why I’m eating it.
What I hate are people who come into my store when I’m trying to eat lunch and comment, “Lunch time, huh?” or something similar. I also hate when someone leans way over the counter while the other owner and I are eating lunch and asks where we got whatever we’re eating. Um, mind your own business, that’s where.
I will admit, though, that I’m hyper-sensitive when it comes to people being nosy, or what I perceive to be nosy.
Major Issue.
For starters, I don’t want to hear CHOMP SMACK SLOBBER during a phone call. Put down the lunch and finish the call or put down the phone and finish the lunch.
Unless you are paying for my food, it’s not your business what I eat. If I eat a tuna sandwich and an apple for lunch while you’re tossing chocolate cake down your pie hole, don’t get resentful because I’m “eating healthy.” You made your choices and I made mine. Deal.
Also your dietary choices don’t impress me. You’ve been a vegetarian for 30 years? Hey, if that works for you that’s nice but I don’t really care all that much and I don’t want to hear you yammer about it.
I can get behind the disgust of people smacking loudly, etc. But, I am totally clueless as to why someone asking where you got food is annoying. I’ve never heard that opinion before and completely don’t understand it.
I work on an open floor and everyone can smell everyone else’s food. If something smells good, it’s quite common for people to ask what it is or where it came from.
Oh you are not alone at all. Once I was on the phone with a tech support person located in S. Carolina, during ice cream time. Literally he was macking ice cream with a spoon … into the phone … mmmm… “yesh” mmm… “shure” mhmm … mmslsmm … right in my ear. Criminy didn’t your mother teach you any manners! Sharply I told him to call me back when ice cream hour was over.
Also, I don’t know of anyone who enjoys someone looking at your food and commenting about it.
I remember the first time I noticed my own chewing. I was in some kids church program or some such. You know where the little kids go so they don’t annoy people in church. I was eating a cracker and I was like “what is that noise? Seriously, where is that coming from? Oh God it’s coming from my mouth. Can other people hear that?” Thus my paranoia began. Thank you for giving me reason to continue this paranoia. I always think that I’m annoying someone with my chewing. Raw carrots are like completely unacceptable for me to eat because they may cause a raucous.
I’m just saying…beware…you may give someone a complex. 
So not alone.
Why, today, my officemate had Dorito’s in her lunch. How do I know? Because she can’t chew them with her goddamned mouth closed. And she can’t eat the whole goddamned bag in a single sitting, say, with her sandwich.
No. It’s to be a slow, gradual torture.
Around 10:15, I’m sitting in my office, minding my own business, actually working, when I hear CRUNCH Crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch. She has eaten one chip.
Half an hour later: CRUNCH Crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch
An hour goes by. Time for another bite. CRUNCH Crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch
Finally, I decide the only reaction is retreat. So I go off to lunch myself, hoping she will down the entire bag of Dorito’s while I’m gone.
Just as I clicked on this thread to reply, whaddya think I heard? Oh yes. CRUNCH Crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch
Please shoot me. 
Why can’t this twit get up and go to the goddamned break room, which is provided for just such a purpose, to eat her lunch? Why can’t she eat the whole fucking bag in one shot, like a normal person does? Why does it have to take all goddamn day to eat a bag of Dorito’s?
Is there a nice, polite way to tell this woman – who is my boss and takes offense at any suggestion that she isn’t exactly perfect – to knock it the fuck off?
That’s fine and dandy if she can’t eat right away. It was just the choice of food. We were in an area that was almost exclusively worktables, and was supposed to be kept pretty clean and clear. A granola bar is one thing; you can take a bite with one hand and lay it aside, but cereal requires assembly and liquids and utensils, and has to be eaten within a certain time period, and then you have to dispose of the dish . . . It was just too futzy to eat at a workstation, IMHO. We had a break room.
“Wow - those are some loud chips. I can hear them all the way into my office!” Said with a big smile.
Commenting on food, smells good, where’d ya get it, all that, doesn’t bother me.
The people who can’t keep their goddamned lips together while chewing - I really would like to pound their faces in with their utensils.
Yep, 100% agree with that one - all non portable food should be eaten in the break room. I’d say all food but I’m not a complete control freak. 
Yes, it’s strange, and no you’re not alone. I’m very similar to you.
.
Well… If I walk into a store and someone’s behind the counter with smelly food and stuffing their craw while I’m a potentially paying customer who didn’t expect to walk into a restaurant/deli/grocery - I’ll likely comment something similar. As a hint.
Don’t you have a back room? Especially if there are two of you present at the time. You shouldn’t be eating in front of customers. If I caught an employee eating lunch behind the counter - as in a sandwich or something that must be eaten with a utensil - I would correct them in no uncertain terms. A snack thing like almonds or something small that can be hidden, doesn’t cast an aroma, and can be taken in surreptitious small bites between customers is okay. Anything more involved should be eaten in a non-customer area.
If you are eating in front of your customers fer chrissakes, it certainly is their business! Frankly, I would possibly walk right on out and tell you maybe I’ll be back after lunchtime with your smelly food and eating in front of me. If I’m out running errands and am still going to stores around lunch time, maybe I’m really hungry, too, and haven’t had time to eat yet. I’ll not appreciate some counter person stuffing their face in front of me while I’m trying to patronize the place. Maybe I’ll go to Petsmart instead, where they’re not allowed food on the floor, and have a break room where smelly food is contained and customers don’t have to deal with it.
I don’t get it.
I guess it would be different if they were performing other necessary biological functions in public, but eating? Really? That’s some borderline phobia you folks have going on.
I wouldn’t call it a phobia. It is a hypersensitivity to sounds and visual stimuli. You won’t “get it” if you don’t experience it yourself. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. It makes life more difficult for sufferers and their family members.
OP: You are not strange, and you are definitely not alone! When my husband eats, standing up in the kitchen, I want to scream!!! The chewing sounds and pacing around. I have to say something if he is eating without a plate. Come on, I’m the one who sweeps the floor. Have some courtesy and don’t fling your crumbs everywhere.
Hypersensitivity to sounds is called Misophonia. I posted about Misophonia on another thread.
"Misophonia – literally the hatred of sound -can be defined as a hypersensitivity to background sounds or visual stimuli that are generally ignored by other people. More importantly than the individuals inability to block out the offending stimuli or “trigger” is the acute negative emotional response experienced as a direct result of being in contact with a trigger.
The response has been described as a reflexive emotional flood of rage and panic with a storm of fight-or-flight reactions becoming paramount. Adrenaline flooding, face flushing, heart-pounding and/or shaking and the need to physically flee or attack are often experienced. The mindful thoughts that the emotional reflex/response is unreasonable given the facts of the stimulus is often actually harmless come only after the fight-or-flight response is in full force and the affected person may find themselves in a constant mode of “talking themselves down” into a normal state of calm.
The majority of trigger stimuli are counted as harmless or just part of every day to day life by the “normal” person, but to a person inflicted with Misophonia, they are a tremendous burden, often the analogy of nails down a chalk board or exposed nerves have been used to describe the disturbing response."
I must have this misophonia thing.
Today, my coworker didn’t have Doritos. But she did just trim her fingernails. She does that every day too. Gah! :facepalm:
Wow! Along with fighting my ignorance, that explanation is both a salve to my guilt and an eye-opening review of my past relationships.
My ex-husband’s scraping of utensils on his plate made me crazy, and all this time I thought it was because I hated him. (Really though, who has to cut a fried egg with the side of their fork? Over and over and over?)
Water bottle squeezing is on the list of triggers. I hate, hate, hate, both the sound of the bottle squeezed, but the sucking noise and then pop of the lips of an adult drinking from those infernal water bottles with the little ‘nipples’ on top. I never realized that was part of this whole hypersensitivity.
Thank you so much for this explanation. I will be reviewing the list and perhaps by knowing the beast has a name, I can cut myself and the perpetrators some slack.
Office noises are not to be trivialized. I need a billing code for plotting the death of one of my coworkers because, as it turns out, I spend quite a lot of time on the task.
Randie does this stupid fucking breathy whistle/sigh thing at least once per hour, sometimes more and each time I want leap over the two desks between us and stab him in the face with my pen until he die, die, DIES. labored breathing
Dogzilla, your post made me laugh. It also made me want chips.
While we’re on the subject of assholes and food, yesterday Ken, who will not shut up asked me for a cookie. I cheerfully fetched the bag from another room, he said, “Wow, you’ve eaten that many already?” with a disgusted look on his face.
Fuck you Ken. When a woman’s downed half a bag of Milanos, it’s probably the wrong time of the month to taunt her, you dolt.
It doesn’t usually bother me but there was one woman that I used to work with that bugged the shit out of me. She was an insanely picky eater which was her business but she would always comment on all the things she would never eat in a way that implied that anyone that would eat that thing was an idiot. You’d kind of have to experience her to see what I mean. It wasn’t so much what she said as how it was said.