Hello everyone. So this is kinda bizarre and I can’t figure out if I should mention this to anyone. I’m 24f and I work with someone who is 28f. She is fairly new here but she fit right in bc of her bubbly personality. I think she’s super nice and she keeps the room positive. The only issue I have with her, which only came up fairly recently, is that she burps like every 15 minutes. Genuinely. I do hear her eating at her desk constantly which I don’t care about but she burps like semi loud in a big quiet room. She’s always making some kinda noise whether it’s talking to herself or somewhat quietly to a friend on the phone. I can’t tell if she just thinks we don’t care and/or can’t hear her. Which would be close to impossible bc like I said it’s quiet as hell in here unless we are talking to a customer. To be fair she does always say excuse me after but it’s just a bit nasty. Maybe I’m just weird. Someone please tell me if I should say something or just ignore it.
Edit bc it has come up a lot. I wear headphones for my job currently. I’m also autistic so I may just have a weird thing for noises. Let me know 🙂
She might have a medical issue.
I burp frequently due to medical issues. It’s not something I can completely control and when I’m having a flare the burps increase. I can reduce them by eating small frequent meals but that’s about it.
WBTA, she’s saying excuse me when she burps. A burp is involuntary so it’s not as if she does it on purpose. Maybe she has digestive health problems.
She likely has a medical condition. You should leave her alone.
I don’t think you should say anything unless you know her well personally or are her supervisor. If other colleagues talk about it, (a) don’t let it descend into mockery, and (b) consider approaching her supervisor privately.
Ehhhh….. yeah I think you kind of would.
Look, when you’re spending so much time with the same people every single day, y’all are gonna get on each other’s nerves. You probably do stuff that annoys your coworkers too without even realizing it. You’ll probably get used to it before too long. I’d only bring it up if it happens in a way that affects business.
Also: burping that often is likely a medical condition. At least, it’s not very typical, and this is coming from someone with EoE who knows all about weird/annoying sounds the esophagus can make while eating. So either you’re exaggerating (only mentioning because it’s super common in these kinds of situations), or you’re just unaware of/not entitled to know what she has going on in her life beyond work.
Generally speaking burps are involuntary so would you also be talking to her if she sneezed too much about her “habit”?
Offices need white noise machines, waterfalls, something. It sucks having to listen to other people’s annoying and/or gross noises.
This is a manager topic. It’s not for you to confront.
It could be a medical condition. Don’t say anything
YTA. Don’t think she purposely does this nor is this a 5 minute fix so id leave it alone.
YTA
rule of thumb: if they can’t fix it in 5 minutes, don’t bring it up. She can’t help if she’s a gassy person and I’d personally rather be dealing with burps than farts.
If her talking to herself is genuinely interrupting you, then it’s fine to ask for some quiet so you can focus, but otherwise you should just ignore it.
There’s acid reflux that you can’t actually control and it’s loud.
YWBTA. I can easily see you called into a meeting with HR for overstepping office decorum by speaking to your co-worker about a health issue they have. That’s a bell that can’t be unrung.