I am coming up on nearly 9 years of sitting in the cube farm. The walls are grey, the carpeting is grey, even our desks and cabinets are grey. I remember the first time I walked in here, I thought there was no way I was going to be able to sit in there without feeling claustrophobic. Caged, even. Jeez...where's my little spinny wheel?
However, like most anything, you get used to your environment, and you adapt. Like guinea pigs. In your cage.
I can't say it's really all that bad...I have a great job, one that I am happy to have. Over the years, though, I have had some *truly* whacked out people that have sat near me.
Obviously, there is no privacy. If you are on the phone, anyone sitting near you can hear everything you say with acute clarity...even more so if you are trying to be private about your conversation. Suddenly there are no more clackity-clack sounds, whispered conversations grind to a halt...and the silence is deafening. Fight with your spouse? I know about it. Little heathens for kids? Yeah, I know all about that too. Problems with your credit? trying to buy a house? an embarrassing medical problem? on a diet?...yep, I know allll about it. And wish I didn't.
There's one guy that used to sit in the farm....he hated his wife, or maybe just women in general, but especially his wife. No doubt. He was so mean to her on the phone...raising his voice, telling her to shut up, that she was stupid, criticizing any little thing she did. He just made me want to throw up every time I saw his ugly face. Every so often, I may or may not have buried some tuna or other rotten smelling food in his garbage can when he walked away from his desk. I imagine that the stench was unreal...especially when it got hot in here in the afternoon. This probably wouldn't have been so bad if our garbage was picked up more than twice a week. Yeah, I know...that's wasn't nice, but it wasn't to make me feel better...it was for his wife.
I remember another guy that used to sit a few rows away from me that would talk on his speaker-phone all morning long. For those that don't sit in a farm, this is a pretty major social faux pas. It's just not done. Worse, he was a pompous @ss that had been booted from a nice cushy office and felt that he was too good to be sitting in the farm. *sigh*. He really had to go; he just wasn't fitting into the farm schema. What to do?
Welllllll.....near him sat an old school fax machine that had run out of toner, perhaps a few years before. You could dial the fax machine, but it wouldn't pick up...and would just ring and ring. Very annoying...if you sat right beside it. Every time he got on a speaker-phone call, I may or may not have dialled the number to the fax machine and then placed the phone down on my desk for 5 or even...10 minutes. Riiiiiiiiiiiing. Riiiiiiiiiiing. Inevitably, he would have to switch off of speakerphone because the person he was talking to couldn't hear him, and he seemed genuinely puzzled (and highly irritated) that it always seemed to do that when he was talking on the phone. Odd. He lasted a month.
The first Christmas that I worked here, I sat right near a guy that played the same Irish Christmas CD over and over and over again. All day long, every day. By the 8th day, I thought I might be going insane and despite the fact that I was wearing noise cancelling headphones, I could still hear every single note played. Being new, I didn't understand that normal societal politeness just doesn't apply in the farm with some people; I went to him and told him how much I enjoyed the music he was playing. I was wondering, however, if he had any other Christmas CD's? That as much as I liked the current selection, it was getting a little "old". He smiled, and said absolutely...and for the next 10 straight days, I listened to wonderful sounds of Christmas as represented by bagpipes. It's a Scottish Christmas. Yay. That's so much better...thank you.
My mistake was in not going with my first inclination which would have been to render his CD/DVD drive permanently inoperable. A few well placed toothpicks and some peanut butter and that sucker would have never opened again. But, that would be destroying property, and I don't do that. The better option would have been to hide his speakers, until such time that Christmas was over. The following year.
On the whole, there are some very nice people that sit near me, and we all tend to leave each other alone and behave like civilized folks. Every now and again...we get a dolt in the mix.
I almost feel sorry for them. muwahahaha....
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