Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Shut up! SHUT UP! SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP! AAAAAARHGH!

One of the problems with being cooped up with people all day is that there is very little privacy. The chief problem, though, is that due to the bullpen/cube farm-like nature of my current existence, there is no protection from other people's noises.

Disclaimer: the person I am about to complain about is generally the sweetest, nicest people in my office, if not the world. I don't really bear her any ill will. Whew. Conscience assuaged.

Most people, in my office, realize that their conversations, especially their phone conversations, can be distracting. So they use their inside voices, or, like me, attempt to have all personal conversations in another room. When I was a temp, this was easy. No one had their own phone lines, so people could take calls on their cell, and move to a place where no one could hear them. It was a natural thing, but to prevent annoying others, and so that no one could hear their business. But now we have our own phone lines, and for some people, the concept that their conversations may be bothering others goes out the window. When I get/make a phone call, I take it using the quietest voice I can muster, or I go use the land line in the file room. So does almost everybody in my office.

Except for one person, the one who sits right next to me. (The one who, incidentally, just got a new, LOUD cell phone with about twenty different ringers. And who leaves it on her desk when she goes out of the room, so that whoever calls her will try her cell phone, make the loudest, most distracting noises possible. this happens at least three times a day.) To be fair, this morning she stated that she will set her phone to vibrate, admitting that she forgets to do that.

But the real problem is that, cell phone or land line, this person has conversations at her desk. With no concept of an inside voice. And she spends a decent amount of time on the phone. Today, for example, she's trying to arrange a party. This requires several phone calls. Loud ones. Ones that penetrate through my headphones and my carefully created protective noise ward of ipod and radio paradise music. A voice which, while normally pleasant, takes on a different aspect when It has to break through my aural defenses. I am trying not to listen, but her voice reaches into my brain, shoves in vodka-soaked needles, attaches those needles via jumper cables to a the batteries of 1993 Chevy Suburban, and starts the car. Fingernails on the blackboard of my soul. Rendering me completely unable to concentrate, or work. It's killing me. Please tell me that other people have had similar experiences. You know, people that have a habit/behavior/lack of social awareness that make you want to kill them, if it were not for the fact that they are otherwise incredibly nice people, and doubtless have no idea how annoying that that particular thing is.

Please tell me that other people have contemplated unspeakable acts of swift and blinding violence. And then decided not to, because, you know, Prison Rape.

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