It's not that uncommon to snack while on the job. Sometimes you and your co-workers are antsy for a granola bar or a small bag of chips to ease one over. Sometimes, though, you have co-workers who are willing to chow down on some hard-boiled eggs or an exotic fruit that's potent enough to clear out the office. These are the instances where office snacking went a little too far. Source
You’ll Never See or Eat Skittles The Same Way Again
“Mine is Skittles, not because there is anything wrong with Skittles, but because the co-worker broke a tooth on one, spit out the broken piece and kept eating them. Ten minutes later, he broke another tooth which he spit out and put next to the other one on his desk.” Source
The World’s Smelliest Fruit
“I used to work in an office building in Singapore. There’s a fruit there called durian, which many of the locals absolutely love. It doesn’t actually taste all that bad, but it smells like a sweaty gym sock and a dirty diaper made a baby together. And that baby then threw up in a hot car with the windows up. Every so often, someone would graciously buy a durian, cut it up, and leave it in the break room for everyone to “enjoy.” Usually right after lunch. I would put hand sanitizer up my nose to keep from vomiting.” Source
Somewhat Sensual Frosting Tasting
“I used to work with a nurse and every day…every single day she would eat two things without fail: 1.) canned peas–cold straight out of the can. 2.) a cupcake with double the frosting–she would hold it in front of her face and with her other hand dip her finger in the frosting and lick it off slowly.” Source
Sardines Are Never A Good Idea
“Only happened once: Breaking open a can of sardines on Friday night shift and dropping the can with oil into the garbage by the desk. By Saturday night shift (no janitorial service on weekend) — whewwwwwwwww!” Source
Someone Hates Every Type of Popcorn
“I feel certain I’m in the minority on this one, but I f—ing hate the smell of popcorn. Can’t stand it. Years ago at another firm, this one lady made popcorn almost every day. And of course it couldn’t just be regular popcorn, oh no, she had to change it up. I think the worst was some kind of roasted honey butter blend. It was awful and smelled like a forest fire that had also spread to a sewage plant while crossing a field of cow s–t.” Source
No Matter The Snacks, Chewing Loudly Is A Major Peeve
“A co-worker of mine is one of those people who can make the WORST sounds when eating. It’s not just that he chews with his mouth open exactly, it’s just that eating to him is a venture of sounds that I cannot stand to hear. So any snack he eats, in my opinion, is the worst. I hate the sounds.” Source
A Jolly Rancher, A Pickle, And A Handful of Ice
“I worked with a larger lady who would shove cinnamon jolly ranchers into pickles and sit there sucking and slurping on it during meetings like she was giving the sloppiest blowjob ever, to a pickle. In the middle of meetings. It was so f_—_ing disgusting, but nobody was allowed to tell her to not do it for reasons. Also sat next to an ice eater. All day. Every day, just crunching ice. I couldn’t turn my headphones up loud enough to get the sound out of my head.” Source
Tuna: Breakfast of Champions
“Before I started in my current position, there was a contractor who would eat a can of tuna every morning for breakfast. It stunk like crazy. What made it even worse is we all sit in open cubes, so you could smell the tuna over half the floor.” Source
The Office Manager Who Loved Eggs
“Our office manager would eat 3-4 hard boiled eggs a day. Luckily, I didn’t work near him, but when you went into the accounting office…holy crap it smelt of fart.” Source
The Co-Worker Who Really, REALLY Loves Peanut Butter
“I used to have a coworker who would eat peanut butter straight out of the jar. That’s not really disgusting by itself, but he would go through two jars a week usually, which is disgusting.” Source
Fried Chicken Is Best Eaten In Moderation
“Popeye’s. Now don’t get me wrong, I love the stuff, but when no one wants to do the trash in the break room for three weeks, then that s–t starts to get rancid. Just remembering the smell makes me want to vomit.” Source
Too. Many. Snacks.
“This guy eats the same thing for lunch every single day. He goes to the market in our office, he buys two bags of cheddar popcorn, two bags of beef jerky, one bag of guac flavored chips, one bag of normal potato chips, one bottle of unsweet tea and one bottle of aloe juice. It has been almost a year of me seeing this happen.” Source
Burnt Popcorn Was A Bad Choice
“Burnt buttered popcorn. The smell of buttered popcorn is bad enough because it goes everywhere, I don’t hate it but I don’t want the odor in my office. But when they burn the popcorn it’s even worse.” Source
Please Be Quiet In The Library
“Not a coworker but the patrons: anything that comes in a loud package, be it paper or plastic. Mother f’er, this is a library. Try something that I can’t hear you slowly unwrapping on the other side of the damn room.” Source
What Kind of Fish Sticks Exactly?
“Crab flavored fish sticks…cold…out of the packet. I love fish.. But they look gross. They smell gross. They come in that weirdly gross looking vacuum packed-type packaging…and we work in a closed area with little ventilation. And there’s multiple women at work who do this. Because they’re all on slimming world diets and for some reason they all eat copious amounts of crab FLAVORED fish sticks…cold…right out of that gross little vacuum packed package. With their fingers. Then touch s–t without washing their hands. All of them. I don’t know why I find it so gross. But it is.” Source
A Truly Nasty Combo
“Spirulina with natural yogurt, smells like swamp water looks like you’ve eaten s–t.” Source
Snacking Leads To A Microwave Ban
“Anything with a strong smell, pleasant or not. At my last job I had a coworker who would make herself some popcorn every day. The smell would spread through the office and make everyone want some. On the other side of the coin is seafood, which was specifically banned from the microwaves. Not that anyone paid attention. So occasionally the break room would smell like fish for the entire afternoon.” Source
Snacks With Not-So Subtle Branding
“Hmm the old security guard eats these things called ‘Bum Hummers’. They are just pickled onions. It says “1000 farts in a jar!” on the label….” Source
Two Pregnant Women, Thai Food, And A Tiny Office
“At my first job I was in my first trimester and horribly ill – I was already down 10 pounds at about eight weeks pregnant because morning sickness. I shared an office with two guys and another woman–also pregnant. The guys went out and got Thai food and brought it back into our 10’x15′ shared space. We had to ask them to take it to the break room before we started vomiting all over the place. Spoiler alert – we both ended up vomiting anyway.” Source
That One Time Someone Brought Over Sylta
“A guy I worked with once came in after lunch with a “sylta” (think the closest thing in english is called “brawn”) which he cut up and ate pieces of for the rest of the day. It’s like the crappiest pieces of meat preserved in a jelly with spices and fat. A tiny slice is disgusting, this guy ate like 1kg of it during a afternoon.” Source
The Pill Popper
“I have a coworker who’s a man and he eats birth control pills like pez. He loves them. He claims he recognizes it’s a weird obsession, but he has a sort of “whatever!” attitude since they “taste so great” and because nothing bad has happened to him so far. He’s been doing this at least for the last year. I confronted him about it over lunch once and he had a completely nonchalant reaction to the whole thing — like it was no big deal that he’s popping multiple Yasmin per day and that I was the crazy one for bringing it up.” Source