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Comment by brailsafe | Hacker News Reader

My biggest hurdle—aside from undocumented code—at my new company, is fucking mouth noises from coworkers and the sound of crumpling snack bags in an open office. It's to the extent where I have to leave the area and regain composure before mentioning it. If I can't find a way to manage, I'll leave, but I'm not in the financial position to have that luxury yet. What will probably happen, is I'll work up to a slow competency with their codebase, and they'll fire me before I get to quit. Optimistically I'll find a way to cope, either by dampening the noise or leaving the office for a coffee shop; something I've started doing.

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I have the exact same trouble with mouth noises. I couldn't explain the extreme irrational anger I felt when a co-worker was chewing on something while others hardly even noticed. It used to be very unsettling before I came know that it was a known condition with an official name[1]. While knowing that hasn't cured it, if I encounter someone making these noises, to avoid outbursts, I am now quick to put on headphones and play white noise[2] and mentally telling myself that it's me, not them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misophonia

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzjWIxXBs_s

Yep, I become outwardly violent when I hear specific sounds. I have to physically leave the area to regain composure.

I had to do this recently when a co-worker was eating from a glass bowl and kept slamming the metal spoon around in it. I don't know if I was upset at the sound or the sheer inconsiderateness, but I had to get up and take a walk.

A few days ago, my adjacent coworker started cracking and eating eggs in whatever form they can be cracked and eaten as a solid. I was repulsed for obvious reasons, and angry because of the sound. It seems like a comedy

Are you talking about hard-boiled eggs?

I don't eat them myself, so I'd guess hardboiled ya. There is one way to do it that makes the shell soft I believe.

> physically leave the area to regain composure

This is what I have to do when I hear someone whistling in the office. Also other sounds and behaviours, i.e. the guy sitting next to me started clipping his nails at his desk one morning. I had to go stand outside for an hour before I calmed down.

I've definitely come across this and learned a bit about it. These links should be at least somewhat helpful for anyone in this thread who's unaware theirs a name. It's really distressing and I've come to realize that my dad and brother feel the same. In my case, I also have ADHD—or at least have been prescribed medication for it at 27—so being taken out of any zone I'd managed to get myself in is really unfortunate. Good luck with your solution! I've found headphones helpful, but at some point constant white noise gets tiresome and music loses its appeal.

I've noticed this particular kind of issue is helped significantly by white noise generators. The last office I worked in (i'm now remote) had a white noise generator built in that cancelled out a lot of those sounds like chip bags and chewing that are super jarring in a vacuum. I didn't even realize it was there until the day it broke down for a few hours and we ended up with a sudden eerie silence. Suddenly I was being bombarded with those kinds of noises that had never been very distracting before.

Maybe it's something you could suggest?

There are also apps like Noisli which are personal white noise machines. I find it works well when I need "quiet" time.

I would add myNoise. The free tier includes many free white noise generators: https://mynoise.net/noiseMachines.php

Thanks for the suggestion. I hadn't thought about a physical ambient noise generator. Typically I'll try and use Coffeetivity and music, but it gets tiresome.

I've been driven crazy by all that, and I won't say what else because I'm afraid that you'd notice it too.

What I'd suggest:

1. You're going to harp on it. It starts with the annoying sounds, but then you're telling yourself about how rude they are, how gross they are, the injustice of it all.

Yes, here and there you've got a point, but 99% of it is you trying to rationalize your feelings, and then it wants to assign blame because people are the perpetrators of it.

2. Take breaks to stop harping on it. I vape, so that's my excuse, but you don't even need one, you're just taking five minutes every hour or so to stretch your legs. Deliberately do something that occupies your mind and gets your stress levels down.

3. See if you can work from home a day a week, or even a half-day. Take vacation as regularly as possible.

I think it's both made worse by stress and increases stress levels, classic feedback loop, so my approach is to avoid it as much as possible and use other means to get my stress levels down.

You'll have good days and bad days, if you're really down and ready to yell at people, maybe talk to a shrink.

I think these are good on-point suggestions, all of which I'm doing to some extent. Outright blame is tough to control. I'm trying to continually remind myself that those are my opinions of their behaviour, and they just are habituated to that for whatever reason. I can't assume that, particularly in an ethnically diverse office, everyone would have an identical institutionalized definition of polite. Also that my experience of it is rational, in so much as something uncontrollable couldn't be irrational, and that's just better to find a way to work with or around.

Thankfully, this is a relatively small and flat org that somewhat embraces autonomy. I personally take as many breaks as I can or want because it's still part of work. Likewise working out of a coffee shop is something I'm very comfortable with, so I've started doing that as well. Working from home is less common here, so that'll be a discussion I think.

Also thanks for not mentioning whatever the other one was. The sounds I'm fully stressed about are the ones I mentioned, but others are just revolting in a vaccuum. Like farts, audible burps, coughing without covering.

When noise gets bad for me, I put in foam ear plugs, wear large headphones and use the following command to summon a pleasant oasis somewhere under a tropical waterfall far from the misophonic hell.

alias noise='play -n synth brownnoise synth pinknoise mix synth sine amod 0.02 80'

What does the play command come from?

it's included with sox

http://sox.sourceforge.net/Main/HomePage

Hey, thanks for the word.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misophonia

For other people thinking of rolling their own solution, p5.js has a sound library that is easy to use; should be pretty quick to write a one-button webpage that makes pink noise.

https://p5js.org/reference/#/p5.Noise

Your situation is so absurd that I'm immediately reminded of the film "Joe vs. the Volcano".

I think everyone here wishes you the best of luck.

I know he can get the job, but can he _do_ the job?

It can be a real struggle

Thank you kind stranger. Haven't heard of it but maybe I'll give it a watch. The synopsis sounds about right

Wow, you're even more noise sensitive that me. Suggestion: noise cancelling headphones. Good ones are really effective.

They do - bose qc20 have changed my life for the better.

I did work short term in an open office where someone suggested it was "rude" of me to wear earphones. Same person chewed with their mouth open while eating crunchy food at their desk all day, within earshot. But.... I'm rude somehow.

That is absolutely bananas

You might be suffering from misophonia. It is a condition where you are extremely sensitive to certain classes of sounds, eating noises being one of the most common. Some self help patient groups do exist, but the condition is not well treatable.

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