Editor’s note: This post was not written by the author of this blog. The author of this post has asked to remain anonymous on account of he/she does not want to lose his/her job. This is likely the first post of many, however, because this person’s co-worker is kind of nuts.
So a few months after I started my current job, a “part-time” person was hired and given the cubicle right next to mine. I say “part-time” in quotations because I feel like she is here more than I am and I’m full time. I had heard all the horror stories about cubicles long before I ever got a real job but figured it couldn’t really be THAT bad. And it wasn’t, until “cubicle neighbor,” as I like to call her (or CN for short), started. I didn’t notice it at first, but slowly things began to catch my attention. Here is just a sampling of what I deal with on a regular basis.
– Her cell phone usage. The woman gets more personal phone calls while at work than anyone I have ever met. Usually it’s her dad or her kids. Mostly her kids. Who are teenagers. But they call her all day, every day. I will hear her talking with them at 10:30 on a Tuesday morning about anything and everything as I sit here and wonder, aren’t they in school? Some of the conversations I’ve overheard? Well let’s see. There was the time she was yelling at one of her kids for getting a ticket for going the wrong way on a one-way street. Another time she was yelling at one of her kids for putting his/her contacts in water because he/she was out of contact solution and so they ruined their contacts and had no extra pairs. Last week she was discussing spaghetti sauce recipes with someone.
My favorite thing she does with her cell phone? She will make about 4 or 5 phone calls and leave messages asking people to call her back, and proceed to immediately go into a meeting but leave her cell phone at her desk. And not on vibrate- no. Ringer ON. So when all of these people start calling back, her phone is ringing off the hook. One time it rang so much that I actually went in and interrupted the meeting she was in to tell her that her phone was ringing non- stop. I was hoping she’d get the hint that it was annoying the crap out of me and come silence it. Her response? “Oh it’s probably just my kids…. They’ll be ok.”
– Here is a copy of an email I sent to Laura about CN one day:
“I just walked from my desk to the copier to make a quick copy of something, and on my way to the copy area, I saw cubicle neighbor standing next to a bookshelf we have, with a huuuuuge PHONE BOOK in her hands, looking for a phone number. I have multiple problems with this.
1) It’s called the internet. You can find a phone number in a matter of 10 seconds or less using this cool thing they have now called GOOGLE. And if you don’t find it there, you can definitely find it on whitepages.com instead of wasting 20 minutes thumbing through a phone book with 500 + pages. 2) I’m pretty sure that phone book (and everything else on that book shelf) is from the early 90s. 3) It’s 2011.”
– CN uses a typewriter. An excerpt from another email to Laura: “So right now, the cubicle neighbor is not bugging me with the noise of her cell phone or desk phone or annoying laugh or questions about how to copy and paste something in a word document. She IS, however, bugging me with the sound of a typewriter. Yes. A typewriter. Two questions. 1) Why do we still have a typewriter in this office? B) What could anyone possibly need a typewriter for when they have a computer????????? Seriously. The sound of the typewriter is almost making me want to burst out laughing. I can’t get over the fact that she is actually using that right now.”
– And finally- the meanest of my rants about CN which I slightly regret but not really because come on, how can you not be annoyed by a woman who does all of these things as well as sits at her desk (when she’s not on her phone) just smiling to herself all day long. Another email to Laura:
“Sometimes when I listen to cubicle neighbor talk on the phone, I respond to things she says under my breath. I say what I would like to say to her out loud if I were the person on the other end of the phone.
Just now:
CN: “Well nothing’s ever straightforward for me! mra ha ha ha”
Me: “That’s because you’re retarded.”
Good God I’m mean. But I dare any one of you people reading this to sit in a cubicle next to this nonsense for a week straight and tell me you’re not going absolutely insane.
On account of... 