So- a coworker comes to speak to you, which results in about a 25 minute conversation. The whole time, you’re sitting across the desk from each other. Unbeknownst to coworker, he/she has a pea-sized, yellowish wad of wet snot stuck to the base of one nostril, right where the outside curve of the nostril meets the face. You try to avoid looking at it, but part of you has to keep checking to make sure it hasn’t dropped into your In bin.
Do you tell coworker about it in as tactful a way as you can muster and keep him/her from going through the rest of the day with it, or ignore it and let him/her discover it privately?
If you say something about it, how do you do it?
If it’s not obvious, this just happened to me. I’ll spend the rest of the day actively trying not to think about it…
I’ll tell them. Not like “You have a giant snot hanging from your nose”, but “Blow your nose. Here’s a tissue.” And 9 times out of 10 they realize what I’m saying and blow, and then ask me, and if it’s not gone, go check in a mirror.
The 10th time? Those people don’t seem to care anyway.
In Basic Training the guy that formed up beside me had some sinus problems. One morning he sneezed three times is rapid succession, leaving a looooong string of snot (to his waist, I can’t believe it hung there). I could just see him out of the corner of my eye (we were at attention). He couldn’t wipe it because he wasn’t supposed to move so…
SNOOOOORRRRRTT!
It was really, really gross and now I have shared it with you.
Eh. I have a seven year old; snot, in all it’s varied forms, doesn’t bother me anymore.
My son regularly sneezes out more snot in a single shot than I can produce blowing my nose all day. He never seems to see these things coming, so of course we get the Snot Explosion, which ends with him standing there, bent forward, cupping both hands under his face, and looking up at us helplessly while trying to keep the slime from oozing through his fingers.
Gross? Yeah, the first dozen times. After that it’s just tiresome.
My grandfather was worse. Not only could he produce massive, bucket-sized quantities of snot, he was fond of what he called the Farmer’s Blow: place the thumb against one nostril and squeeze it shut; expel snot directly onto the ground from the other nostril. Snort back the excess, switch hands, and repeat.
Myself, I prefer a tissue, and I’d offer one to someone with a booger hanging out, but other than that I can’t get too excited about it anymore.
Absolutely tell them. Tactfully, of course, by handing them a tissue and saying, “Oh! Here, you’ve got a little something…” They usually get the point, use the tissue, and all is well.
I just try to put myself in their shoes. I’d rather be told. It’s less embarrassing to have it pointed out to you briefly, the moment it is noticed, and have it taken care of quickly, than to see it yourself in the bathroom mirror and wonder to yourself how long has that thing been there? …and that explains all the horrified looks I’ve been getting.
My relationship with most of my coworkers is pretty awesome (I play rugby with alot of em). I’d tell em, but not till they were on the way out, so I could laugh silently to myself the whole time they were in my office. “You’ve got somethin’ on your nose,” is what I’d tell somebody in a professional setting. “Bat in the cave,” works pretty well in social settings, especially if you get the “Huh?” look because they hadn’t heard the expression before.
