For anyone who ever attends office meetings at work, like in a conference room with people all sitting around a big table...
Do people bring food in with them? I don't mean chips or peanuts, I mean like whole meals? Do you do that? I'm in a meeting every week with about 7 or 8 people. Most bring in water or a soda or something and that's perfectly cool. But almost every week one of these people (and it's not always the same person) brings in like two slices of pizza, or maybe a big sub, or maybe a couple of hot dogs and some french fries and sits there munching away at the table as the meeting is going on. For some reason that's been driving me crazy lately, especially if that person is sitting next to me. Am I weird for thinking that? I've never made any comments or anything because no one else at these meetings seems to think it's strange at all.

Is it a lunch meeting? Unless they say "brown bag" and it's at noon, it's a little weird to bring a deli in there with you.

Not a lunch meeting and they're at 3pm.

Yeah. We have one paralegal here who works an odd schedule, she gets here like at 10 and leaves late. So she eats lunch at 3 ish. But where I work is huge on having food at meetings, provided by the firm. Like, it's kind of absurd. And there's always soda and coffee and all that stuff in the meeting rooms. I've had weeks where I had a lunch meeting, every day, for 5 straight days... with a breakfast meeting or two thrown in as well. and since they order from the same 3-4 places most of the time, I was pretty damn sick of meeting food at the end of the week.

Yeah, no. Inappropriate. It makes me mental when anyone brings their smelly lunch in the office at 3 in the afternoon (like you said: snack? fine. chinese? get out of here). Sitting next to someone in a meeting doing that would make me want to slap that hot dog out of their hand and throw it in the trash. It's inconsiderate and rude.

The only one that really gets me is heating up fish in the office microwave. For real? The whole office has to smell like day old salmon? Bleh.

...and clicky pens should be NOT allowed.

I was in a recent meeting where a co-worker, mid-meeting, picked up the newspaper and began reading it. She opened the newspaper wide open forcing some of us to rubberneck around her in order to address others at the round table.

I was (and still am apparently) annoyed and made a subtle gesture at a rubbernecking co-worker but no one else seemed to care.

Plus it is hard to tell the big boss to stop clicking her pen. DAMMIT!

Obviously, I don't work in an office, but I do find this scenario bizzare. A soda, a water, or a cup of coffee? Fine. No way would I chow down on a full meal, or any food for that matter, during a meeting that was not a specified lunch meeting with food brought in.

I know this isn't the same thing, but at that support group meeting I told you guys I used to go to, people would eat during that. We're talking about an hour long meeting during which people are trying to get support for their issues and air their concerns about their personal mental health. Is it necessary to chow down on a super-size bag of peanut M&Ms? Or, better yet, bring in one of those lunchables-for-adults and spread stinky TUNA on crackers and eat that in front of everyone? Blech.

There are lunchables for adults?

Oh, agreed about the salmon. Some people are just clueless.

Shouldn't bother me when other people eat lunch, but if I'm chained to this desk all day, don't come waltzing in here late PM with hot food and smell up the whole place. It's annoying as hell. Doing that in a meeting where no one else is eating is over the top.

I could give a nice list of office pet peeves - grr.

Now that we are on the subject, have you ever been on like an hour long flight and seen someone pop out a full on spread of food and been like "WTF? A bag of pretzels couldn't get you through the next hour?" that's kind of weird, too. Like there will be no food in whatever place you are going to?

Kind of like these things, but they come with the crackers in the packaging. I think you can get them from a vending machine. Blech again.

Not the same thing but reminded me of a college moment.

I had an evening class in college that I used to bring dinner to and eat while listening to the lecture. It was a 3 hour class that started at 6 and I got off work at 530. The professor would always lust after my food and make comments, but he let me do it and I was very happy for that.

when I started Law School it was at night, 6:30-9:30. I usually met some of my friends before class and we got dinner, but a lot of people brought food, and I get why you would do that in a 3 hour class at dinnertime after you'd been working all day.

No matter what time of day my class is there is usually at least one person eating a meal in there.

Often, it's my friend Chris. He's 6'4" and skinny as a rail and constantly eats. I assume that if he did go that 2 hour class without eating the 2 sandwiches, bag of cookies, apple and can of pop he would shrivel up and die.

I suggest you watch the meeting eater carefully and everytime they take a bite, ask them a question.

We don't have people bringing in more than a cookie or granola bar. We have worse. Much worse. We have somebody that clips her nails. While running a meeting. Then she brushes the clippings onto the floor. Sadly, everybody pretends not to notice instead of staring at her like she's bat-poop crazy. We also have way too many guys that lean back with their hands behind their heads. Guys, in case you do this and you're not aware, women universally find this to be offensive dominant ape-like behavior. When you do it, we want to shoot poisonous darts into the armpits that you are pointing at us.
Other than that, I have nothing to add to the discussion.

I worked for a guy who did that, PG. He was a sweater, so if his pits weren't already soaked in sweat, his shirt would be all stained yellow. Disgusting.

My situation is a little different. I'm not able to eat during the students' lunch time, so I eat during my planning period. About 2-3 times a week, I'll have a meeting during my planning period, so I take my lunch to those meetings fairly often.

I usually eat lean cuisines for lunch.

Kind of funny, yesterday a few hours after I was talking about fish above, we got an email from the office manager saying not to eat stinky food in the office.

After some sleuthing, I found out one of the secretaries complained because the secretary who sits in the next cube was eating KFC at her desk. And the funny thing is, the complainer is one of these people who is eating all the time at her desk. Just the other day I asked her for something and she had it sitting under a fricken corn dog. and she's complaining about people eating KFC?? Also just this morning she was eating a garlic bagel at her desk. People are so weird.

KFC sounds really really good right now.

The guy who sits near me eats L&L Hawaiian BBQ Seafood combo almost every day for lunch. It's his crack - fried mahi mahi, fried shrimp, fried scallops. Smells so amazing I cannot STAND it.

must.remember.how.unhealthy.

The thing about the person who complained is, she is kind of an emotional vampire. Like, I go out to lunch a few times a week usually. And she would always ask me to get her something while I was out. So ok, the first time - whatever. Second time - little annoyed. then she really started to take advantage and would get mad if I left without telling her. (And yes, she is "below" me in rank obviously but even if she wasn't - rude thing to expect someone to do every day on their own time.)

Finally I just had to tell her that my lunch was my personal time and I wasn't going to be getting her anything. And she was piiiiiissed about it. So I think the reason she really complained is, that girl probably said something similar. (I say "girls", but these are like 50 year old women we are talking about who need to grow the F up.)

I got you all beat on this one.
A few weeks ago a woman in my office came in one Monday morning with this humongous tupperware thing of kimchi. She says, "oh I'm so excited... I can have kimchi every day this week!" I thought to myself, "wait, isn't kimchi that stuff that smells like a cross between rotting fish and a dead body?"
Sure enough, every day at lunchtime she would heat up a big ol bowl of that stuff and then bring it to her desk (which is close to mine) and eat it.
Oh, and it didn't last a week. It lasted TWO weeks!
Ugh.

HA!

One of my co-workers will heat up one of those oriental noodle bowl things. Smells up nearly the whole first floor. He heats them up at like 10 in the morning. I complained, in a joking yet serious manner. The next day he brought me one of those bowls.

At 10:10 AM I promptly heated up my oriental noodle bowl and lost my hearing for about 20 minutes.

The guys here have discovered microwave... oh what are those things called? Pig skins? NO! PORK RINDS. MAN are those smelly! (And by guys, yes they are the same guys who created the 'pee spot'.)

"Ta Friggin da"

You aren't supposed to stay in the microwave with your noodles. That's probably why you lost your hearing.

I don't care what people eat at work but cannot understand WHY airlines serve spicy food.
There's nothing worse than being stuck in a metal tube full of rank belch.

People that bring lunch to a meeting bug me.
I don't want to hear you chomping away and talking with your mouth full during a meeting.

What annoys me more is people that plan meetings during lunchtime. They look at everyone's calendar and see everyone's free at lunchtime. Dumbass! They aren't free! They purposely didn't plan to have a meeting during lunchtime because they wanted to have lunch during lunchtime.

Sometimes I put in pretend meetings for lunchtime so noone schedules me for a meeting during lunch. Usually people still try to schedule a lunchtime meeting anyway because most people are "free" during lunch. So, then I'm double-booked for lunchtime and have to decide whether I should go to the real meeting or my pretend lunch meeting. Since my pretend lunch meeting is always scheduled first, I usually go to that one and blow off the real meeting.

I can see going to a business lunch somewhere but to schedule a regular meeting during lunchtime? That's absurd.
We usually schedule meetings right before lunch to ensure that the damned thing will end.

I have never seen and heard such a scene of someone eat amid meeting.
I need a cell phone picture.