GUM CHEWING ETIQUETTE

January 15, 2009 @ 4:42 PM - Mike O

This whole week I have been up in New Hampshire for some training on a new product EMC is going to be rolling out this year.  I am in day four of five days of this class, and I am about to lose my mind.  The fellow in front of me has been chewing, smacking, snapping, popping his gum non-stop for the entire four days.  He doesn’t just chew the gum for a little bit, he will chew a piece for an hour and when that piece has been raped enough, he spits it out and immediately puts another piece in.  Nine hours a day, all week I have been subjected to this. 

Now, I understand that people will chew gum, but in the middle of a class when the only sounds are the instructor talking and this unprofessional cad chewing his gum like a cow, and snapping it as loud as he possibly can, really aggrivates me.  It use to be considered rude and unprofessional to do something like this.....

Those of you who know me, know that this is something that has bothered me my entire life.  Loud noises derived from gum are noises that have driven me up the wall since I was a little kid.  I remember when I was 6 or 7 years old, just starting grade school and being car-pooled to school by my friends mom.  Every morning she had a piece of gum in her mouth, and she violently chewed the gum with her mouth wide open.  A rage came over me that no other pet peeve’s ever had.  I pictured myself sticking my hand in her mouth, ripping the gum out and throwing it out the window.......I never did it though.  For over 20 years, I’ve quietly sat in my chair, enraged as people rudely snapped their gum with wreckless abandon.  My normal reaction is this:  If I can get away from that person....that’s what I do.  I leave the room, go somewhere else....anything to avoid hearing that noise.  If I can’t leave the room, then find a way to decrease the noise....turn up the volume on the radio, turn up the volume on the TV, what normally happens is I will try to mentally shut down my senses.  If I am able to space out, ignore everything around me, then it can decrease how in-tune I am to the noise of gum snapping. 

I have confronted a stranger on this issue one time in my life.  I remember in college I was in the middle of my Statistics and Probability final.....for anyone who has taken a college final, it’s 3 hours of hell, and the room is about as quiet as you can possibly think.  Two hundred people in the class, and it was so quiet you could hear a mouse squeek from the other side of the room.....but one fellow a couple of seats away from me was obsessivly snapping his gum.  When this happens, my brain shuts down.  I can’t concentrate on anything, and in the middle of a major final, I couldn’t take it.  In the middle of this quiet classroom, in the middle of the final, I said to him “Hey! Do you mind not snapping your gum? I’m trying to take a final!” It was so bloody satisfying.  Everyone looked at me as if I was crazy, but I know that there must have been someone else in that class that was happy that I had spoke up. 

This affliction drives me nuts so much that I anticipate certain situations where I know I will be subjected to this noise.  One instance is when I fly on airplanes.  I fly quite a bit, twice a month on average.  A lot of people (in particular, women, and their children), believe that by chewing gum their ears will pop easier (when all they really need to do is swallow some saliva).  I dread nothing worse than being stuck on a plane (where I’m already claustriphobic) and having to deal with people snapping their gum.  I plan ahead, always packing earplugs (I found that my iPod headphone’s don’t do a very good job at blocking out the sound).  I put them in the second I get on the plane, and won’t take them out until I’m walking up the jetway.....problem solved.

So, that brings me back to my current problem.  As I type this, I’m still sitting in the class, and this asshole in front of me is still snapping his gum as loud as he can.  I obviously can’t put in earplugs right now, and confronting him is out of the question, as it has become perfectly acceptable in corporate society that chewing and snapping gum is allowed (when back in the day, it was considered rude, disgusting and completely inappropriate).  Every training class, meeting, customer visit I attend I am almost always subjected to this, and I have to put up with it when I simply just want to get away to avoid it. 

It was driving me nuts so much today that I started to search google on the subject, and came across a plethora of websites where people have the same feelings that I do.  One thing that I have always thought was that it was just me....something was wrong with me.....I have read that this annoyance has been, in the past (and possibly still today), treated by medical professionals as being tied to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, high-anxiety, chronic depression.  None of these characterize me.  I don’t have OCD, the only time I have high anxiety is when I am subjected to gum chewing.....and depression?  Give me a break.......

I came across a couple of good sites, this site:  http://www.sector404.org/archives/2002/09/25/is-there-a-gum-chewing-etiquette started as someone who has the similar problem, but turned into hundreds of people responding, one of which is a Doctor in Audiology named Marsha Johnson.  She has been doing research in this area, and dubbed it Soft Sound Sensitivity Syndrome. 

If you go to this site:  http://www.tinnitus-audiology.com/softsound.html, you can read her thoughts on the issue.

Now, her findings don’t fully synch with me, but a lot of it hits the nail on the head.  It’s the first time I’ve actually looked into this, which is surprising considering it’s bothered me my whole life. 

That’s all I really have, really I just made this post as a way to vent my anger at the person in front of me.  I probably sound like an insane person at this point......I’m actually quite normal, but just be don’t snap your gum or chew with your mouth open around me, or I may kill you (obviously a joke......)