I really hate listening to people eat

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Especially my co-worker who eats ALL. DAY. LONG. ("Grazing. It's better for you. Keeps your metabolism active." It may be better for ME, but it's going to get you a stapler to the side of the head, pal).

Crunchy sounds I don't mind so much - assuming they don't go on for hours. Sometimes they do.

Wet sounds, smacking sounds, on the other hand, make me want to vomit into my trash can.

Please tell me I'm not alone.

― luna (luna.c), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:14 (twenty years ago)

This thing is best with siblings, I think. No matter how old you get: they make one little slurping sound with the cereal and you're all "I'VE PUT UP WITH THAT GOD DAMNED NOISE FOR A LIFETIME."

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:17 (twenty years ago)

this kinda annoys me, too. esp. when it's on public transportation (though i'm guilty of eating burgers & drinking coffee on the train myself). though it's usually the SMELL that i find more offensive, esp. on the train.

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:17 (twenty years ago)

He has moved on from rice cakes to cottage cheese.

― luna (luna.c), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:18 (twenty years ago)

sucking hard candy & knocking it around on the teeth.
slurping cawfee.

yes, lip & gum smacking by far the worst.

― geyser muffler and a quarter (Dave225), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:18 (twenty years ago)

Also if you really want to disgust yourself, just watch really carefully as someone eats. Concentrate on the chewing details, and the sounds, and the person's expressions. Eventually it's like you're looking at a monster.

Eisbar, I do plenty of train-eating, but I was horrified to find someone on there the other day eating really super-aromatic and super-cheapsmelling SHRIMP. The whole car reeked.

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:20 (twenty years ago)

(And luna, I'd be more annoyed by this guy's diet than the noise: he spends all day eating rice cakes and cottage cheese? Does his "grazing" come along with hourly trips to the bathroom?)

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:21 (twenty years ago)

Eisbar, I do plenty of train-eating, but I was horrified to find someone on there the other day eating really super-aromatic and super-cheapsmelling SHRIMP. The whole car reeked.

i do, too, so my post is kinda hypocritical (and impractical -- as busy as people are, it's kinda unreasonable to not expect them to eat). but yeah, when someone eats something really smelly it is absolutely GROSS (b/c it's being done in a confined space usually w/ bad air circulation). the eating noises are an added "bonus," heh heh.

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:23 (twenty years ago)

On this one flight from somewhere to somewhere else (I don't remember exactly which flight), I had to sit next to this one barely-able-to-fit-into-the-confines-of-the-seat sized fellow who had brought onto the plane with him a massive fuckoff like forty-foot long shitty airport "philly cheesesteak". I will never forget the combined sonic brainrape of chomping, lip-smacking, gastrointestinal-juices-running-for-the-hills working in concert with his apparent complete inability to breathe through his nose.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:24 (twenty years ago)

nabisco: I'm so traumatized by eating cereal with my brothers I've haven't eaten it for 15 years.

― The Sensational Sulk (sexyDancer), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:24 (twenty years ago)

Last week I saw someone on the train eating what I'm pretty sure was a loaf of cookie dough.

― C0L1N B... (C0L1N B...), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:25 (twenty years ago)

With a fork!

― C0L1N B... (C0L1N B...), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:25 (twenty years ago)

My fucking brother eats noodles, cereal, and soup and makes this pasty sound with his mouth and it makes me irrationally angry. Which, naturally, he gets a huge kick out of.

― Je4nne ƒur¥ (Je4nne Fury), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:25 (twenty years ago)

nickalicious: it was probably worse coming out than it was going in!

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:26 (twenty years ago)

the last piece of meat i ever (knowingly) ate was a shitty airport philly cheesesteak. true!

― jaymc (jaymc), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:26 (twenty years ago)

No, he eats all kinds of shit, that's just what he happens to be eatig now. He wants to order chinese for lunch, so I expect hours of slurping and smacking entertainment.

― luna (luna.c), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:27 (twenty years ago)

To keep in theme of this thread I didn't mention it, but, like, 30 minutes into the flight, that guy took one of those fat-guy-stinks-up-the-whole-airplane shits I probably would've HEARD had I not put my headphones on POST HASTE.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:28 (twenty years ago)

You are not alone. Complain to HR that your co-workers, apparently raised by feral beasts, have eating habits so far removed from the norms of civilzation, that they constitute a hostile working environment.

― M. White (Miguelito), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:28 (twenty years ago)

AND NO MORE MICROWAVING FISH

― The Sensational Sulk (sexyDancer), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:29 (twenty years ago)

We have a correspondent here at the magazine who NEVER FAILS to call my department when she has a mouth full of fuckin' food (usually a banana or something). It's entirely upsetting.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:29 (twenty years ago)

We have ants here now (this building was just completed in NOVEMBER) because of these women that work in this wing and all their muffin crumbs and random lost Ranch dressing drips and lord only knows what the fuck ever else. ANTS.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:30 (twenty years ago)

He wants to order chinese for lunch, so I expect hours of slurping and smacking entertainment.

uuuuugh, nothing can stink up the joint quite like cheap, greasy chinese food!

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:30 (twenty years ago)

As on offshoot to this thread, I'd like to say that people who bring food -- and especially fragrant food -- and eat on subway cars should be clubbed into submission with a tire iron.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:31 (twenty years ago)

although at one of my old jobs, i ate kippers from a tin for lunch. one of the partners' office was next to mine, and i was pretty much told that it wouldn't be wise to eat kippers for lunch in the office again.

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:31 (twenty years ago)

I foolishly think eating will solve my morning sickness. I really am at a loss. So I do snack in between meals.

― nathalie's baby (stevie nixed), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:33 (twenty years ago)

People eating smelly food on the subways is one thing; they're likely to get off from one moment to the next. But taking that shit on an airplane (much less the following taking A shit) is beyond uncalled for! Eat one club sandwich, faetty!

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:34 (twenty years ago)

i wonder if any NYCers have been on the subway if/when someone brings some durian onto the train.

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:38 (twenty years ago)

Alex, have you ever heard Yanc3y's story about the lady with the KFC on the subway? Very extremely funny. And gross.

― Je4nne ƒur¥ (Je4nne Fury), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:38 (twenty years ago)

AND NO MORE MICROWAVING FISH

This one guy in my office microwaved canned salmon and refried beans together. I defy you to come up with a worse smell.

― luna (luna.c), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:44 (twenty years ago)

I have a co-worker who eats really loudly and scrunches her whole (extremely hairy, treading dangerous waters here) face up while munching Lays and reading endless Nora Roberts novels. I have actually gotten up and left to get away from her. I think she may have noticed. SHe is also one of those people who comments on your food. "Hmmm, Lasagna. You like Italian food?" No I fucking hate those wops and that's why I'm eating their food.

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:45 (twenty years ago)

I know I went off on a big, angry, spittle-drenched rant about this somewhere else on ILX, but people who BRING THEIR OWN SMELLY FOOD to movie theatres aren't fit to breathe the same oxygen as the rest of the planet's occupants, and should be crammed into a submarine, towed out to sea and torpedoed.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:46 (twenty years ago)

I want a bag of whatever that guy - the guy who thought there was any kind of reason to microwave canned salmon and refried beans TOGETHER - was smoking.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:48 (twenty years ago)

I like how one of the primadonnas I work with asks me at least twice a week "Where are you going for lunch?" (at like, 10:30) and I say "I have no idea." And he says, "When you go out, can you bring me back a cookie, I'm too lazy," and then cracks up as if he's just SO FUNNY FOR BEING SUCH A LAZY SHIT. Sure, just give me a little bellboy hat and a jack-in-the-box and I'll be on my merry way.

― Je4nne ƒur¥ (Je4nne Fury), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:51 (twenty years ago)

I don't know if it's the sound of eating that's the problem so much as the food involved and the relative offensiveness of the co-worker. Rice cakes and cottage cheese is pretty bad. You should slip him some styrofoam and curdled milk an see if he notices the difference. (Answer: yes, because the curdled milk at least tastes like *something*.)

My co-worker skips lunch and has a "protein shake." He talks about creatine a lot. What are you, a fucking body builder? (Answer: no, but this, much like cottage cheese and rice cakes, gives him the illusion that he's taking care of himself.)

ALL OF YOU, JUST PLEASE GO HAVE SOME FUCKING FRENCH FRIES. You will not die from them. You will enjoy your lunch, and the office will smell like yummy french fries.

― slightly more subdued (kenan), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:54 (twenty years ago)

One of the greatest cheeses in the world is a cheese from Burgundy called Epoisses. It is particulalry malodorous. My gf had some in her carry-on on the way back from Paris once stowed overhead for maximum fetor release. After four or five hours, the flight personnel kept looking around the nearby bathroom, trying to determine where the smell was coming from and to her chagrin, she was sitting next to a Chinese businessman whom she was convinced hated cheese.

― M. White (Miguelito), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:55 (twenty years ago)

Ha, J: so I didn't know you didn't eat meat, which led me to think back on the one time I ate a meal with you, which led me to totally crack up remembering Amateurist's "Fibonacci Salad." I don't know how I'd forgotten that.

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:56 (twenty years ago)

The thing that really drives me up a wall is not the eating sounds as much as when someone tries to get every last molecule of food off the plate or bowl and clanks the spoon repeatedly and rapidly against it. URGH.

― oops (Oops), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:57 (twenty years ago)

On my flight home a couple weeks ago, I sat next to a lovely wee Korean girl who I am convinced was eating a combination of kimchee and pickled ass. I had forgotten about her until now.

Also, I thought of you while I was flying, Alex, because the asshat in front of me slammed his seatback down on my knees without so much as a how do you do, and it was all I could do to keep myself from writing a scathing message on his bald spot with my sharpie.

― luna (luna.c), Monday, 6 June 2005 17:58 (twenty years ago)

Real kimchee is made with ass, luna.

― M. White (Miguelito), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:00 (twenty years ago)

I know, but this was like kimchee that had been pickled in someone's ass. Like, for longer than usual.

― luna (luna.c), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:01 (twenty years ago)

at the place where i worked as an intern during college, there was this one guy who used to make meals w/ a LOT of garlic esp. over the weekend. every monday w/t fail, he would stink up the joint w/ his garlicky lunch. but it was hard to say anything b/c he was basically the boss's right-hand man and i was a lowly intern. eventually, though, the boss told him to knock it off.

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:02 (twenty years ago)

Unlike many of you, apparently, I'm mostly tolerant of other people's stinky eating habits, but Korea was more than even I could bear.

― M. White (Miguelito), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:03 (twenty years ago)

Sure, just give me a little bellboy hat and a jack-in-the-box and I'll be on my merry way.

I think the notion of Jeanne in a bellboy hat is....ummm, I dunno....only THE HOTTEST THING EVER!

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:04 (twenty years ago)

Oh sweet lord that sends me into complete fuckin' orbit.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:04 (twenty years ago)

Someday I will learn to enjoy kimchee. That day is not today.

― slightly more subdued (kenan), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:04 (twenty years ago)

FIBONACCI SALAD!

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:05 (twenty years ago)

I don't exactly get that one. I figured I just had to be there.

― slightly more subdued (kenan), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:06 (twenty years ago)

Don't complain about garlic -- garlic smells delicious!

Possibly the Korean we're looking for would be "keun-daeng chae" ("ass pickle" / "ass chee").

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:06 (twenty years ago)

I would like to point out that our mailman, who just arrived, smelled like a combination of garlic and wet balls. Thank you.

― luna (luna.c), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:07 (twenty years ago)

EAT HIM UP

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:08 (twenty years ago)

Soapy wet balls, or just wet balls? Or were they wet with chicken broth, like matzoh? There are good kinds of wet balls, you know.

― slightly more subdued (kenan), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:09 (twenty years ago)

Sure, just give me a little bellboy hat and a jack-in-the-box and I'll be on my merry way.

that description makes jeanne sound like an italian organ grinder's monkey -- all that's missing is the tincup!

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:09 (twenty years ago)

I have said it before and I will say it again: Chinese Pork Dumplings in the microwave.

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:09 (twenty years ago)

There are good kinds, it's true - these were not a good kind. I would go so far as to say these were a bad kind. A VERY bad kind. The fun part is that the smell is lingering!

― luna (luna.c), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:10 (twenty years ago)

http://www.anorexics.net/images/celebs/dolores_oriordon.jpg

"do you have to, do you have to, do you have to let it linger?"

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:12 (twenty years ago)

http://www.kreweofsaintanne.org/2004/Organ+Grinder+Couple.jpg

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:13 (twenty years ago)

i have to say that the smell of mcdonalds in an elevator is pretty horrible.

― kelsey (kelstarry), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:13 (twenty years ago)

http://snl.jt.org/arc/char/MaSh-Ed%20Grimley.jpg

"That's going to be a lingering pain."

― slightly more subdued (kenan), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:14 (twenty years ago)

Garlic! I was thinking the other day, if one could somehow shove the combined scents of garlic, gasoline, skunk spray, and meat-grilling-over-charcoal, and market it in bottles emblazoned with like NASCAR and WWE and JIM BEAM logos, one could CORNER the American male cologne market.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:14 (twenty years ago)

The smell of McDonalds really is disquietingly un-foodlike.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:16 (twenty years ago)

My intention was to look like an organ-grinder monkey. Alex, it troubles me ever so slightly that you'd find this hot.

― Je4nne ƒur¥ (Je4nne Fury), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:19 (twenty years ago)

Haha, Alex OTM. It's really disturbing at the bizzaro Robocop McDonalds on 58th.

― C0L1N B... (C0L1N B...), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:21 (twenty years ago)

I pretty much feel uncomfortable eating in non designated food areas. If I do it, I try to make it something SIMPLE like a CANDY BAR. I used to have a class with a woman who would eat absurd things every day -- like steaming bowls of SOUP or spaghetti. It always drove me nuts.

― gunther heartymeal (keckles), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:25 (twenty years ago)

Alex, it troubles me ever so slightly that you'd find this hot.

Its all about the bellboy cap, not the other stuff. Organ grinding does not excite me.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:33 (twenty years ago)

Ew. I like to consider myself a person relatively tolerant of the [gross as they may be] habits of others, but this thread makes my skin crawl. I can't stand hearing or watching people eat, so standing behind the free samples board at work is, at times, pure torture. Watching people smack their way through gooey bites of brownies. Often, they talk to me while their mouths are full of food. Sometimes, wet crumbs land on me.
The worst ever, maybe, was this time I was on the bus and the woman next to me pulled a box of frozen eggrolls out of her plastic grocery bag, and proceeded to noisily slurp, suck and gnaw on one of the frozen eggrolls for the next fifteen minutes before my stop. I almost got sick.

― kirsten (kirsten), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:35 (twenty years ago)

Organ grinding does not excite me.

FASCIST.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:36 (twenty years ago)

Its all about the bellboy cap, not the other stuff. Organ grinding does not excite me.

i would think that it was more about the monkey-dancing.

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:37 (twenty years ago)

I had a friend growing up who could slurp anything--sandwiches, chips, everything reduced to soup.

― The Sensational Sulk (sexyDancer), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:39 (twenty years ago)

I was at the grocery store last week and some lady came up behind me and asked if she could get some orange juice and her mouth was totally FULL OF CRUMBS. She could have at least swallowed first!

― gunther heartymeal (keckles), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:43 (twenty years ago)

Aww, geez, some of y'all are kinda fierce about this!

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:45 (twenty years ago)

Ferocity is the best way to deal with the problem, nab.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:46 (twenty years ago)

Why am I suddenly thinking of...

http://www.joblo.com/images_movie_reviews/fly_the.jpg

― slightly more subdued (kenan), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:47 (twenty years ago)

I had a friend growing up who could slurp anything--sandwiches, chips, everything reduced to soup.

the father of a high school friend of mine had a pool-construction business. my friend once told me that one morning, he went to breakfast at mcdonald's w/ some subcontractors employed by his dad -- and said subcontractors literally SLURPED DOWN several egg mcmuffins.

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:49 (twenty years ago)

Ah, yes. That's why.

― slightly more subdued (kenan), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:50 (twenty years ago)

I think the thing that really bothers me the most is when customers talk to me while their mouths are full of food. I have to imagine they would be embarrassed to do that to a waiter at a fancy restaurant. So why do they think it's okay to spit crumbs at me while they're buying bread? It's probably my dirty apron.
Anyway, I've been trying lately to not let things like this bother me so much. I think some of the reason I let dumb stuff like lip-smacking get to me is that I am, for the most part, deliriously happy, therefore I have nothing else to complain about. And people sometimes need something to complain about.
The eggroll lady was really gross, though.
x-post

― kirsten (kirsten), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:50 (twenty years ago)

Amateurist's "Fibonacci Salad."

I don't remember this! Remind me!

― jaymc (jaymc), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:50 (twenty years ago)

this kid in a freshman physics lecture once brought a wrap in to eat. the thing was loaded with garlic and spices which im sure normally smelled good, but were just awful today. it smelled like the worst burning-breaks-like fart ever.

― AaronK (AaronK), Monday, 6 June 2005 18:56 (twenty years ago)

(J: we went to that bike-messenger hangout on North Avenue, and Amateurist ordered a $9 dish called the "Fibonacci Salad," and then when it came out it was, like ... two pieces of endive, arranged in a cross, with maybe a half of a cherry tomato cut up and scattered around it? So he sent it back? I think this was time we had a TeenyFAP that Teeny couldn't come to.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 6 June 2005 19:02 (twenty years ago)

(I guess it was less actually "funny" and more just funny to suddenly remember.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 6 June 2005 19:03 (twenty years ago)

I'd rather have an Avogadro Salad.

― slightly more subdued (kenan), Monday, 6 June 2005 19:05 (twenty years ago)

that sounds like the PERFECT amateurist meal, tho!

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 6 June 2005 19:10 (twenty years ago)

Also, and this is mainly unrelated, but why do people go in on lunch orders when they don't, I dunno, ACTUALLY HAVE ANY MOTHERFUCKING MONEY?

Um, hi, I am not a bank, nor am I an ATM machine. I cannot break all of your $20s. GET ONE FIVE.

― luna (luna.c), Monday, 6 June 2005 19:24 (twenty years ago)

Wet smacking sound hate & disgust at watching someone chew and slobber OTM.

Also, Alex, if organ grinding does nothing for you, perhaps it's because you're grinding the wrong organ?

― David R. (popshots75`), Monday, 6 June 2005 19:31 (twenty years ago)

Also, Alex, if organ grinding does nothing for you, perhaps it's because you're grinding the wrong organ?

::rimshot:::

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 6 June 2005 19:32 (twenty years ago)

my fave public food consumption moment was the guy in the normally silent sterile library computer lab breaking out a tub of steaming spaghetti w meatballs and taking the headphones out of the speakers so the whole place could take in the beegees song he ws bopping along to (followed by some kind of new jack swing, i guess it was an oldies rnb station)

― dj, Tuesday, 7 June 2005 00:41 (twenty years ago)

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