November 21, 2008
Question posed to a boy in the next cubicle. I’d never had any interaction with him before. He was rarely in the office at all, because he was a roving network support technician.
“Hi, would you mind using your handset on your conference calls instead of using speakerphone?”
“That’s not an option”.
“But it looks like your hands are free. It doesn’t seem like it would be a big deal and the rest of us wouldn’t have to listen to the calls. They’re pretty long and…”
With a look like he could have killed me, “I REPEAT: It’s not an option.”
And as threw my arms in the air in defeat and walked away, I heard, “Bitch”.
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Not Brief Enough Encounters | 
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Posted by Sunny Disposition
November 20, 2008
There was a man in the house, and it seemed good. — Picnic, 1955
A boy would come around. They’d compare their travels to Europe, mostly. She was single, he was married. Odd, eh? NOT.
One day, he showed up at lunchtime. With a white sheet blanket and a picnic basket. I sat across the 4-foot-wide hall from her. I watched in awe as he laid the white blanket out in the middle of the hall. And then wine glasses and a sparkling something. Followed by olives and cheese and bread in little containers.
They sat down in the middle of this spot in the hall and began to chat and eat. They clinked glasses to start and, by the end, he was laying on his side with his palm against his head like a 15-year-old boy in a field of love.
They saw me looking at them, but they didn’t seem to care. So I pointed my chair at them, leaned back and just stared. 30 minutes out of my day. But it had to be done. Time well spent? Of course not. But I couldn’t ignore them and I couldn’t leave. They’d win. Something.
They didn’t blink or look or move or ask or think or speak to me or apologize or offer to move to a conference room or..NOTHIN.
I listened to their conversation. He couldn’t travel as much as he liked to anymore, because his wife didn’t like to leave the kids. His wife didn’t like this, she didn’t like that. Picnic gal loved everything and giggled. I shook my head a few times in futile disgust.
They never offered me so much as a bread crumb or an olive pit.
To this day, I have no explanation. How does something like this happen? Why does something like this happen? All I can remotely come up with is that she was the secretary to an HR Director.
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Posted by Sunny Disposition
November 12, 2008
Dear Management,
PLEASE stop sending emails reminding employees about cubicle etiquette. It must remind the offenders that they have offensive tendencies they don’t think they’re using effectively enough. It never fails that the days following the email, phone conversations get louder and more frequent – and sometimes on speakerphone, radio volumes get turned up, over the cubicle talking increases, cell phones ring longer, perfume is doused even more heavily, popcorn gets burned, and so on.
We can’t hear. We can’t breathe. We need air. We’re grateful for your effort, but need to ask you to stop helping us.
Thank you,
The Righteous
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Posted by Sunny Disposition
November 5, 2008
“We farm.”
This overheard during an all-morning-long phone conversation with an insurance agent. With a little googling effort on my part, I discover she is what’s called a Poll-Ette. I thought it had something to do with voting at first, but no, she’s with an organization that promotes cow education. I think that means they educate people about cows, not the other way around.
What’s that expression about being raised in a barn? Now don’t get me wrong, I love a good farmer, but I can’t say I want one confined to a cubicle next to me. They’re not meant for cubicle dwelling. They have outside behavior.
The constant chair movement. The radio. The phone calls. The outside voice. The opening and closing of drawers every day and all day long. And the chewing. I know, it’s just too obvious to insert a cow/cud comparison here, so I won’t, but I hear unnatural levels of chewing.
Oprah did an audience participation test recently called “Are you rude?” One of the tell-tale signs you were rude was whether or not you had ever typed on your computer while talking on the phone. This is something I would never do. It’s rude. But guess who does? Ol’ Poll-Ette.
So where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Which brings me back to the farm and the insurance. And that I think I’d rather try to get my work done sitting next to a cow than a Poll-Ette.
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Posted by Sunny Disposition
