If you have seasonal allergies, you know they can be rough. While I don’t have horrible allergies, I know I’m allergic to something because every once in awhile when I’m near a certain window or the air conditioning is on, I’ll feel the sudden need to sneeze.

I’ve known other people with much worse allergies, specifically to pollen, where even with over the counter allergy medication, they could hardly stand to be outside in the spring.

While it can be annoying to have allergies, it can also be annoying to be around someone with allergies.

In this story, one employee complains about her supervisor, who is constantly coughing or clearing his throat because of allergies. She finds it hard to concentrate at work with all the coughing, but she’s not sure if she should tell him that or not.

Let’s read the whole story.

WIBTA if I told my supervisor his constant coughing is disruptive?

I’m 38F, working in a very small marketing team for a company that could be mistaken for Dunder-Mifflin or Initech.

We all got called back into the office last spring after everyone started getting vaccinated.

I’m not happy about this anyway, but since we’ve all been back the past 3 months, my supervisor has had a persistent cough. Like, coughing or clearing his throat every 1-3 minutes. All GD day.

It sounds like he’s allergic to something.

When we ask him if he’s ok, if he’s sick, he says he’s allergic to something.

We ask him if he’s been to the doctor, he says he has, but the allergy medicine they give him makes him groggy so he doesn’t want to go that route.

I get that he can’t help it, that there’s something unknown irritating his throat. But even with headphones playing trap music I can still hear the coughing, stabbing me in the ears.

It’s disruptive and I can’t focus.

She’s not sure what to do.

I know that possible raises are in the works, and he would be the one to recommend them, so I don’t want to jeopardize that.

I don’t want him to feel attacked or criticized.

WIBTA for bringing up the issue and asking him to close his office door most of the day, or do something, anything to fix his cough?

That’s a tricky one. She doesn’t want to jeopardize her raise, but I can understand how it would be hard to focus.

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Let’s see what Reddit suggests.

This person doesn’t think talking to him about it would change anything.

Another person suggests headphones.

Here’s another suggestion not to say anything.

This person was in a similar situation.

It sounds really annoying, but if he can’t really do anything about it, she’s going to have to find a way to block out the distractions. A good pair of noise canceling headphones could do the trick. Or, I wonder if it would be possible for her to make up an excuse to need to move to a desk further from his office.

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