i worked at a place a couple years ago, and shared a cubicle with a co-worker, nate. one time he had to work on a flash animation for the company website. this particular piece of flash had music that went along with it. nate needed to synchronize the music with the animations, and so needed to keep listening to the music over & over & over… this could potentially get very annoying for his co-workers. so nate used headphones to work. i don’t recall anyone asking him to use headphones, he just did so because he’s not a jerk.
let’s look at my current work environment. the HR lady that yelled at me across the office is working on a powerpoint. for one slide, she has a sound of a car screeching to a halt. i have heard that car screech to a halt about 25 times in the past 30 minutes. yes, i *am* annoyed. i don’t begrudge the fact she’s adding sounds to her ppt – that’s great. it bugs me that she has a door and doesn’t use it, she doesn’t use headphones, and she can’t freakin’ turn down her volume! i can hear the *ding* when she gets a piece of mail, and she’s like 25 feet away! jiminy crickets, i don’t like this woman at all!
I sympathize. May I suggest, in order to preserve your sanity, that you procure a set of headphones for yourself? Listen to any kind of music you wish…just let it drown out the other stuff. And, you’re right, you shouldn’t have to do this because she’s the one being noisy in the public workspace…but for sanity’s sake? Perhaps it’d be worth it.
I can barely remember that flash project. Good thing, probably…
I really feel for you, man. Makes me wonder if she does it on purpose for some stupid reason. For me, when I or my computer make an abrupt noise in the company of others, I get a quick, uncomfortable hot-flash and start to sweat due to the looks I figure I’m getting. I do everything I can to avoid those occurrences.
Maybe she wants attention? Throw something at her.
nate (the ex-co-worker)
i have a set of headphones. but it gets hot when i wear them.
raegan suggested that i toss a mini-snickers wrapped in a note at another lady in the office when she uses her speaker phone… that way she can’t get mad when i hit her in the head. i just don’t want to waste a good snickers bar…
Ah, nice to see you around again! How’s married life treatin’ ya? (o:
Fibercakes would be a nice thing to throw at her (instead of wasting a snickers), but I guess you wouldn’t really know about fibercakes.. they need to be invented just for the reason of co-workers, if they’re not already invented. (it’s a “commercial” that Morgan’s youth group did about getting back at co-workers with the new “FiberCakes!” *evil giggle*)
I miss seein’ ya around! You should stop in at our Tue. night worship practices sometime! God bless!
!!Rachel!!
Yes. Nothing is worth wasting a good mini-Snickers bar. Except maybe in exchange for a regular-sized Snickers bar.
But if you do ever throw a Snickers bar at her, freeze it first.
theOtherNate
That was pretty funny…
I agree with Nate, throw something at her. Kush ball, anyone?
azileretsis
i miss the kush ball wars. i miss working with fun people. those were good days. we should all get together and start a company together, like Microserfs. that’d be cool.