Because people don’t like weirdness. They don’t like feeling weird or being around weird.
I eat the same thing every day for lunch. Cheese toast and a piece of cheap, non-exotic fruit, like a banana or some prunes (shut up). People will kid around with me and ask, “So, monstro. What’s on the menu TODAY?” knowing good and well that it’s going to be the same thing as it was yesterday and the day before. I used to get the “What else are you going to eat?” lecture, but I guess the naggers have figured out that my answer to that question isn’t going to change either. So they don’t ask it anymore.
My guess is she’s feeling insecure around you. She sees you not eating a formal lunch and wonders guiltily if perhaps she should be refraining as well. But the insecurity is manifesting itself as snark. It’s kind of like when I get to work after walking from home, and someone tells me it’s too cold for me to be walking such a long way. Inside they are probably wishing they had the balls to go walking in the cold, but instead of admitting that to themselves, they try to make me share in their insecurity.
To get her to shut up, maybe you can offer to share whatever you’re grazing on with her. She’ll see you eating and be comforted knowing you’re not becoming skinnier than she is.
What the heck’s wrong with prunes? They have a great mouth feel!
And I actually think that Thudlow Boink’s WAG has some merit. People like that have learned that bugging people about their eating habits is a way of showing they care. They’ve learned one way to eat, and then when someone else is doing it differently, they immediately think “oh, that’s bad for your health! I wonder if she knows that?”
I feel for you. Chewing sounds can bother me, but my college age daughter says it makes her want to stab the chewer! (love your word, “stabby”) She has to mute the tv when that Kit Kat crunchy commercial comes on. She had a class this past semester where a student would crunch through a whole bag of mini carrots! We found a medical term for it: misophonia. Here is an article about it:
The OP didn’t mention eating particularly crunchy foods, but the grazing aspect of eating off and on all day could rattle her co-worker. The chicken patties might smell pretty strong. Just my guess.
I used to get bugged all the time about my lunch, too. I dealt with it this way, but this may not work for you: I waited until it came up in casual conversation once, and I brought up a story of where someone had genuinely insulted my food (said it looked gross!) and commented on how much I hate, hate, hate, when people comment on my food. Made a big deal out of it.
Now if your coworker is completely oblivious it won’t work. But mine thankfully do listen, and are considerate, and now they don’t bother me anymore.
Why she is interested doesn’t matter. Her questions are intrusive and make you uncomfortable. Tell her to stop. You can do this politely, of course, but I encourage you to be direct.
Oh my, so there’s a name for it, and I’m not alone. People don’t understand that I don’t just dislike chewing noises - I actually become irrationally enraged by them. They also don’t understand that if they’re clicking a pen in a meeting it becomes the only thing I can hear. So at last I can actually share with people what I suffer from - thanks so much for this.
You are not alone and I, too, am relieved that there’s a name for this. I thought I was just persnickety. I have to work really hard to quell the rage when someone’s eating something crunchy around me, or OMG, smacking and slurping their gum like a cow masticating her cud. I once heard the secretary smacking on her gum from like 20 feet away. That sound cut through every bit of white noise and office conversations. I walked out of my office in search of the offending gum smacker. When I found the secretary, mindlessly smacking away, I took a deep breath and asked, “Is that you chewing gum? Did you realize I can hear that in my office?” She apologized and stopped. Throwing a rage fit is rarely effective, but if you handle these situations calmly and politely, most people will try to adjust around you.
Reminds me of a story.
I went to the opera once with a couple friends. There was some random woman sitting to my right who had decided to chomp and smack on her gum. The lights go down, still smacking. Orchestra fires up, still smacking. Just as the curtain is about to go up, I’m desperately trying to think of a nice, calm, rational way to tell this woman to knock it the fuck off without making an ugly scene and all I can think about is “This is like a four-hour opera. Are you seriously going to work that gum through the entire performance? Really? Gum at the opera? Were you raised in a barn?” Instead, I took a deep breath and held my open palm up to her face, just under her chin, and whispered, “Can I take your gum for you?”
She went all :eek: horrified, apologized, rummaged in her purse for a wrapper, and removed her own gum. I was perfectly willing to take some stranger’s masticated gum right into my bare hand – I hate hearing gum chewing that much. Thankfully, she realized she was about to commit Egregious Opera Sin #1 and I didn’t hear a pop, crack, or slurp through the entire performance. Upon reflection, it occurs to me that I should have thanked her afterward because I was able to actually enjoy the performance.
In the future, however, I’m not going to claim I’m suffering from some sort of disorder. I either join in the crunching, remove myself, or ask the person to stop, depending on the circumstances. It’s my problem and I don’t really expect other people to accommodate me. If the gum lady at the opera had given me a hearty fuck you and kept on chomping, I probably would have gone out to the lobby, found the house manager, and asked for another seat.
Quite possibly. On a related note, food has a strong emotional attachment to a lot of people. That’s why a lot of people express disdain at the notion of eating low-fat or low-calorie meals, saying “That’s not real food” or words to that effect. It’s also one reason why obesity is such a hot-button topic – because food has such an emotional attachment to many people. If you’re not having what they deem to be a “real meal,” then in their view, you’re not really living.
Heck, all you have to do is look back at various SDMB threads wherein people say things like “Dietary changes don’t work!” or somesuch rot. Food has a powerful hold on a lot of people. I’ve seen people roll their eyes when I choose to have a chicken breast sandwich instead of a greasy hamburger, or when I choose fat-free, lower-calorie frozen yogurt instead of full-fat ice cream. It’s not that such choices are wrong; rather, in their minds, these are the kinds of choices that only an ascetic would make.
No, we’re equal. And she tends to take her lunch in the break room when it’s just the two of us, so it could be she feels awkward being the only one.
Valid point. I hate loud chewing too. Her desk is very far away from mine, to the point where we kinda yell to be heard, so that’s not it.
Sounds legit. I think this most closely satisfies my curiousity. I know it is hard to refrain from sharing your method of doing things because it works so well for you. I have the same problem putting myself in someone else’s shoes.
You’re right, just understanding why might give me a better way to approach her.
My first inclination was thinking maybe the co-worker is just a social eater and is lonely eating lunch by herself. What? That’s not real food! Have a real meal with me!
As to the chewing/repetitive noise thing - I have that, too. I use white noise to sleep or I would end up throwing a cat across the room with the “I have to groom myself right now, whatever time it is, and while I’m on the bed with you.” People chewing gum in public, or co-workers who forget where they are and start to do it loudly, and especially the cracking gum! AAAHHH!!! I want to strangle the lot of them.
A couple weeks ago a coworker was getting ready to leave and we got into a conversation (I was at my desk, going to be there for a couple more hours), and she had the sniffles. She would say (sniff) a few words (sniff) and then have to (sniff) before even taking another (sniff) breath, and then keep talking (sniff) about a subject that (sniff) didn’t matter, and I (sniff) just wanted her to (sniff) GO AWAY! So I waited (sniff) until I just **(sniff) **couldn’t stand it, and was about to (sniff)lose my shit, and asked her to please (sniff) take her sniffles home, now, or go blow your nose please.
I do bug one of my project managers about eating. There are times I have to remind her, when she’s stressed about a project, she’ll almost purposely not eat because she’s so focused on it, she gets into this weird cycle where the more stressed she is, the more she’ll avoid eating even if that’s exactly what she needs. And she’s tiny, so she can’t really afford to get hypoglycemic. I have gone so far as to go out and buy her lunch because I knew she needed to eat. She gets very cranky (when she’s not eaten, not when I make her eat :D).
And yes, it’s the mom/grandma in me. I also keep snacks about and offer them up to all of my coworkers, either just for a taste (as in you HAVE to try this) or if they happen to get peckish when I’m not there. My snack drawer is your snack drawer. I’ve been this way since long before I was a grandma even. I used to keep PBJ fixins around just in case one of my “boys” at my old jobs forgot their lunch.
I would not, however, force this on people. If my mom ways were not received well upon my first offer, I wouldn’t keep bugging the person. So far, in all of the jobs I’ve had within my industry, it’s pretty well received judging by the eagerness with which my former and current coworkers accept snacks.
Most people are food evangelists. They enjoy eating so much they want everyone else to enjoy it the same way they do.
I don’t like food much, I have a very simple diet that I stick to, so over the years I’ve had many people want to try and get me to eat what they like. They always fail.
It doesn’t bother me too much, but I know I never talk to other people about what they eat.
And some people are insufferably smug about their choices. Did you simply order the chicken breast sandwich without comment, or did you say out loud that you were choosing the chicken breast sandwich over the “greasy hamburger”?
Maybe your dining companions knew you were judging their choices. If they did, I can’t blame them for rolling their eyes.
And maybe they’re the kind of people who are so paranoid about their food choices that they will invent persecution and judging on the part of some poor innocent who’s quietly enjoying a chicken sandwich.
Have I given any indication that I was being insufferably smug? Any indication whatsoever? Even the tiniest bit?
The reality is that people will offer those derisive comments without any invitation whatsoever. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve carried around, say, a back of low-fat microwavable popcorn at work, only to hear someone say, “How can you possibly eat that crap? It tastes like cardboard!” Or the times when I’d eat fruit instead of cake at a company party. Almost invariably, someone will say, “Come on. You need to enjoy yourself! One slice isn’t going to kill you” or words to that effect.
The simple reality is that many people get defensive when it comes to healthy eating choices. To many folks, this is simply an unreasonable sacrifice – “no way to live,” as one guy put it. Like it or not, that’s how many people think.
Just last year, for example, I posted a Facebook comment about how it’s a good idea to practice self-control and avoid holiday binging – the kind of healthy advice that nutritionists and fitness experts have been saying for decades. Predictably, one guy piped up with “Are you saying that people need to throw away all these cookies that Grandma so lovingly baked for us???” Now obviously, self-control is all about moderation rather than total self-denial. When it comes to food though, many folks cannot make that distinction, at least not at a visceral level. Intellectually, they may understand the need, but in their gut, it’s simply too much to ask.
So no, this is not simply about people responding negatively when you hit them over the head with a healthy eating message. You don’t have to do that. Food has such an emotional chokehold on people that even just practicing healthy eating is enough to invite snorts of derision.
